Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/221

1885.] to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none. Adam's sons are my brethren; and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

Leon. Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

Beat. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too importunate, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me, Hero; wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace. The first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

Leon. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.

Beat. I have a good eye, uncle: I can see a church by daylight."

Beatrice is now in the gayest spirits, and in the very mood to encounter her old enemy, Benedick. He appears forthwith at the revel at Leonato's house, masked like the other guests. Benedick has thrown himself in her way; he has danced with her; and thinking she does not penetrate the disguise of his domino and mask, has been telling her he had been informed that her wit was borrowed and her temper disdainful. She knows him at once, but affects not to do so; so that in the dialogue between them, the actress has the most delightful scope for bringing out the address, the graceful movement, the abounding joyousness which make Beatrice the paragon of her kind. With a plaintive, ill-used air, she asks him –

"Beat. Will you not tell me who told you so?

''Bene. (in a feigned voice).'' No, you shall pardon me.

Beat. Nor will you tell me who you are?

Bene. Not now.

Beat. That I was disdainful, – and that I had my good wit out of the 'Hundred Merry Tales.'"

Then, as if the truth had just flashed upon her, she continues –

"Well, this was Signor Benedick that said so.

Bene. What's he?

Beat. I am sure you know him well enough.

Bene. Not I, believe me.

Beat. Did he never make you laugh?

Bene. I pray you, what is he?"

By this time Benedick has begun to wish himself anywhere but where he is. But his restlessness only stimulates Beatrice to take her full revenge upon him by presenting him in the light which, to a high-spirited man, would be intolerable. Never again shall he venture to say she had her wit out of 'The Hundred Merry Tales.'

"Beat. Why, he is the Prince's jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit but in his villainy; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. ..."

Benedick tries to break away from her, saying, "When I know the gentleman, I'll tell him what you say;" but he is not allowed to escape.

"Do, do!" says Beatrice, mocking him. "He'll but break a comparison or two on me; which, peradventure, not marked, or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy; and then there's a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night."

With this Beatrice lets him go; but how deeply her barbed shafts have pierced him is seen anon, when he returns to the scene. He has been laughing at Claudio for, as he believes, letting Don Pedro win his mistress Hero for himself,