Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/222

216 but no sooner does Claudio leave him, than the jibes of Lady Beatrice recur to his memory: –

"That my lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The Prince's fool! Ha! it may be, that I go under that title, because I am merry. Yea, so; I am apt to do myself wrong. I am not so reputed. It is nought but the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person, and so gives me out. Well, I'll be revenged as I may."

"As he may!" There is an amusing despair in the confession. He feels that Beatrice has fairly driven him off the field. This becomes more apparent when Don Pedro breaks in upon his musing with these unwelcome words, "The lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you; the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you." Poor Benedick at once lets out the secret, which Beatrice had kept from the Prince, that the gentleman in question was himself. Indignation makes him eloquent and witty even beyond his wont.

"Oh, she misused me past the endurance of a block. An oak, but with one green leaf on it, would have answered her. My very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been myself," – ah, where was then his vaunted shrewdness? – "that I was the Prince's jester, and that I was duller than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest, with such impossible conveyance upon me, that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. ... I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed."

Not marry her! Are we to read in this, that Benedick had at some time nourished dreams about her, not wholly consistent with his creed of celibacy? Not unlikely, if we couple this remark with what he had said to Claudio about her beauty as compared with Hero's. But, while they speak, Beatrice is seen approaching with her Uncle, Claudio, and Hero, and, in the same spirit of exquisite exaggeration, Benedick, who in his present mood will not run the risk of a fresh encounter, asks Don Pedro if he will not "command him any service to the world's end?" offering to go anywhere, do anything, "rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy," and makes his escape, exclaiming as he goes, "O God, sir, here's a dish I love not; I cannot endure my Lady Tongue." All this time Benedick quite forgets that he has himself to blame if Beatrice has dealt sharply with him; for had he not given her the severest provocation by attacking her under the shelter of his mask? If volubility of speech were her sin, how much greater is his? Rich as her invention is, and fertile her vocabulary, Benedick excels her in both. But what great talker ever knew his own weakness?

Meanwhile Beatrice has been requested by Don Pedro to bring Count Claudio. She has evidently found out, by the way, the secret of his sullenness; and when Don Pedro inquires the cause, she puts the case with her usual aptness and pleasantry, "The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well: but civil, Count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion." He is speedily disabused of his suspicions, and made happy by Don Pedro's assurance that Hero has been won for him, and her father's "goodwill obtained."

Despite of all that she has said against marriage for herself, Beatrice, who is in Hero's secret, is glad of a result which makes her cousin happy. "Speak, Count,"