Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/224

218 and his queasy stomach," he shall fall in love with Beatrice.

While they are perfecting their little well-meant plot, Don John and his retainer, Borachio, are hatching theirs for destroying Hero's reputation, and breaking off her marriage, by making Don Pedro and Count Claudio believe that, on the night before her wedding-day, they see Borachio leave her chamber by the window. The way in which the temporary success of this second plot is made to work most effectually for the permanent success of the first, is one of the many proofs of Shakespeare's transcendent skill in dramatic construction.

There is no need to speak at length of the admirable scene in which Don Pedro, Leonato, and Count Claudio persuade Benedick that Beatrice dotes upon him, while "she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor him," and "will die ere she will make her love known." So cleverly is the dialogue managed, that Benedick must have had a heart of stone, as well as superhuman acuteness, had he not been moved by it. He does not easily fall into the snare. Don Pedro alone could not have deceived him. But how can he refuse to believe Leonato, "the white-bearded fellow," whom he knows to be devoted to Beatrice? Was it conceivable that he, her uncle and guardian, should be speaking pure fiction, when he says that "she loves Benedick with an enraged affection, – it is past the infinite of thought"? And why should Claudio, his own familiar and trusted friend, be in the same tale, unless he had really learned from Hero, as he says he has, the true state of Beatrice's affection, and "that she will die ere she make her love known"?

The conspirators have not spared Benedick, while extolling Beatrice – dwelling much on his scornful and contemptuous spirit, – and Don Pedro, at the same time that he protests he "loves him well," adding very craftily a wish, that Benedick "would modestly examine himself, to see how much he is unworthy to have so good a lady." Benedick's first thought is not of his own shortcomings. In this, as we presently see, he is very different from Beatrice. He at once, with pardonable complacency, accepts the fact that Beatrice loves him: in that belief all his former invectives against her are forgotten, and he feels her love "must be requited." She is no longer "Lady Disdain," "the fury," "the harpy." On the contrary, she is "fair," "virtuous," "wise, but in loving him." In any case he "will be horribly in love with her;" and so possessed is he with the triumphant feeling that he stands high in her regard, that when she presently appears to tell him she is "sent against her will to bid him come in to dinner," he actually "spies some marks of love in her," and finds a meaning flattering to the thought in the very phrases which she studiously uses to prove with what reluctance she had come upon the errand. He leaves the scene, protesting, "I will go get her picture!"

Now it is Beatrice's turn to fall into a similar snare. It is laid for her by Hero and her gentlewoman Ursula; and in the very exuberance of a power that runs without effort into the channel of melodious verse, Shakespeare passes from the terse vivid prose of the previous scene into rhythmical lines, steeped in music and illuminated by fancy. Margaret is despatched to tell Beatrice that her cousin