Page 1354 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have stolen his bird’s nest.

DON PEDRO
I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner. [210]

BENEDICK
If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say honestly.

DON PEDRO
The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you; the gentleman that danced with her
told her she is much wronged by you. [215]

BENEDICK
O, 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, that I was the
Prince’s jester, that I was duller [220] 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. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no
living near [225] her, she would infect to the north star. I would not marry
her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he

transgressed. She would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have
cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her; you shall find [230]
her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would
conjure her; for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as

in a sanctuary, and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither;
so, indeed, all disquiet, horror, and perturbation [235] follows her.

Enter Claudio and Beatrice.

DON PEDRO
Look, here she comes.

BENEDICK
Will your grace command me any service to the world’s end? I will go on the

slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on. I