BENEDICK	I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such
	matter: there's her cousin, an she were not
	possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty
	as the first of May doth the last of December. But I
	hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?

CLAUDIO	I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the
	contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

BENEDICK	Is't come to this? In faith, hath not the world
	one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?
	Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?
	Go to, i' faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck
	into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away
	Sundays. Look Don Pedro is returned to seek you.

	[Re-enter DON PEDRO]

DON PEDRO	What secret hath held you here, that you followed
	not to Leonato's?

BENEDICK	I would your grace would constrain me to tell.

DON PEDRO	I charge thee on thy allegiance.

BENEDICK	You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a dumb
	man; I would have you think so; but, on my
	allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance. He is
	in love. With who? now that is your grace's part.
	Mark how short his answer is;--With Hero, Leonato's
	short daughter.

CLAUDIO	If this were so, so were it uttered.

BENEDICK	Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor
	'twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be
	so.'

CLAUDIO	If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it
	should be otherwise.

DON PEDRO	Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.

CLAUDIO	You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.

DON PEDRO	By my troth, I speak my thought.

CLAUDIO	And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.

BENEDICK	And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.

CLAUDIO	That I love her, I feel.

DON PEDRO	That she is worthy, I know.

BENEDICK	That I neither feel how she should be loved nor
	know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that
	fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake.

DON PEDRO	Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite
	of beauty.

CLAUDIO	And never could maintain his part but in the force
	of his will.

BENEDICK	That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she
	brought me up, I likewise give her most humble
	thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my
	forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick,
	all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do
	them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the
	right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which
	I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.

DON PEDRO	I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.

BENEDICK	With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord,
	not with love: prove that ever I lose more blood
	with love than I will get again with drinking, pick
	out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen and hang me
	up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of
	blind Cupid.

DON PEDRO	Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou
	wilt prove a notable argument.

BENEDICK	If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot
	at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on
	the shoulder, and called Adam.

DON PEDRO	Well, as time shall try: 'In time the savage bull
	doth bear the yoke.'

BENEDICK	The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible
	Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set
	them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted,
	and in such great letters as they write 'Here is
	good horse to hire,' let them signify under my sign
	'Here you may see Benedick the married man.'