1599 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Page: 15

merry. Yea, but so I am apt 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.

Pedro. Now, signior, where's the Count? Did you see him?
Bene. 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 off'red 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 whipt.
Pedro. To be whipt? What's his fault?
Bene. The flat transgression of a schoolboy who, being
overjoyed
with finding a bird's nest, shows it his companion, and he
steals
it.
Pedro. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The
transgression is
in the stealer.
Bene. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the
garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself, and
the
rod he might have bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have
stol'n
his bird's nest.
Pedro. I will but teach them to sing and restore them to the
owner.
Bene. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say
honestly.
Pedro. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you. The gentleman
that
danc'd with her told her she is much wrong'd by you.
Bene. O, she misus'd 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 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 her; she would infect to the North