BENEDICK	Why, that's spoken like an honest drovier: so they
	sell bullocks. But did you think the prince would
	have served you thus?

CLAUDIO	I pray you, leave me.

BENEDICK	Ho! now you strike like the blind man: 'twas the
	boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.

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 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.

	[Re-enter DON PEDRO]

DON PEDRO	Now, signior, where's the count? did you see 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 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, being
	overjoyed with finding a birds' 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 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 stolen his birds' nest.

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

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.

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 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 star. I would not marry her, though she
	were endowed with all that Adam bad 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
	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 follows her.

DON PEDRO	Look, here she comes.

	[Enter CLAUDIO, BEATRICE, HERO, and LEONATO]

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 will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the
	furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of
	Prester John's foot, fetch you a hair off the great
	Cham's beard, do you any embassage to the Pigmies,
	rather than hold three words' conference with this
	harpy. You have no employment for me?

DON PEDRO	None, but to desire your good company.

BENEDICK	O God, sir, here's a dish I love not: I cannot
	endure my Lady Tongue.