Page 1346 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there
live we as merry as the day is long.

ANTONIO
(to Hero) Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father. [45]

BEATRICE
Yes, faith; it is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please
you’. But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make

another curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please me’.

LEONATO
Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted [50] with a husband.

BEATRICE
Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a
woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account
of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, [55] I’ll none. Adam’s sons

are my brethren, and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

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

BEATRICE
The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be [60] not wooed in good time.
If the Prince be too important, 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 cinquepace; the first suit is hot and hasty,
like a Scotch jig, and [65] full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest,
as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and,

with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into
his grave.

LEONATO
Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly. [70]