Page 1353 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

CLAUDIO

If it will not be, I’ll leave you.
Exit.

BENEDICK
Alas, poor hurt fowl, now will he creep into sedges! But that my Lady Beatrice
should know me, and not know me! The Prince’s fool! Ha? It may be I go

under that title because I am merry. Yea, but so I am apt [185] to do myself
wrong. I am not so reputed; it is the base, though bitter, disposition of
Beatrice that puts the world into her person, and so gives me out. Well, I’ll be
revenged as I may.

Enter Don Pedro, with Leonato and Hero.

DON PEDRO

Now, signor, where’s the Count? Did you see [190] him?

BENEDICK
Troth, my lord, I have played the part of Lady Fame. I found him here as
melancholy as a lodge in a warren; I told him, and I think I told him true, that
your grace had got the good will of this young lady; and I [195] offered him
my company to a willow-tree, either to make him a garland, as being

forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

DON PEDRO
To be whipped! What’s his fault?

BENEDICK
The flat transgression of a schoolboy, who, [200] being overjoyed with
finding a bird’s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it.

DON PEDRO
Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer.

BENEDICK

Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been [205] made, and the garland too;
for the garland he might have worn himself, and the rod he might have