BEATRICE.
And how long is that think you?
BENEDICK.
Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum:
therefore is it most expedient for the wise,—if Don Worm, his conscience,
find no impediment to the contrary,—to be the trumpet of his own virtues,
as I am to myself. So much for praising myself, who, I myself will bear
witness, is praiseworthy. And now tell me, how doth your cousin?
BEATRICE.
Very ill.
BENEDICK.
And how do you?
BEATRICE.
Very ill too.
BENEDICK.
Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I leave you too, for
here comes one in haste.
Enter Ursula.
URSULA.
Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder’s old coil at
home: it is proved, my Lady Hero hath been falsely accused, the Prince and
Claudio mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all, who is fled
and gone. Will you come presently?
BEATRICE.
Will you go hear this news, signior?
BENEDICK.
I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy
eyes; and moreover I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. The Inside of a Church.
Enter Don Pedro, Claudio and Attendants,
with music and tapers.
CLAUDIO.
Is this the monument of Leonato?
A LORD.
It is, my lord.
CLAUDIO.
[Reads from a scroll.]
Epitaph.
Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies:
Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies.
So the life that died with shame
Lives in death with glorious fame.
Hang thou there upon the tomb,
Praising her when I am dumb.
Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.
Song.
Pardon, goddess of the night,
Those that slew thy virgin knight;
For the which, with songs of woe,
Round about her tomb they go.
Midnight, assist our moan;
Help us to sigh and groan,
Heavily, heavily:
Graves, yawn and yield your dead,
Till death be uttered,
Heavily, heavily.
CLAUDIO.
Now, unto thy bones good night!
Yearly will I do this rite.
DON PEDRO.
Good morrow, masters: put your torches out.
The wolves have prey’d; and look, the gentle day,
Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about
Dapples the drowsy East with spots of grey.
Thanks to you all, and leave us: fare you well.
CLAUDIO.
Good morrow, masters: each his several way.
DON PEDRO.
Come, let us hence, and put on other weeds;
And then to Leonato’s we will go.
CLAUDIO.
And Hymen now with luckier issue speed’s,
Than this for whom we rend’red up this woe!
[Exeunt.]
SCENE IV. A Room in Leonato’s House.
Enter Leonato, Antonio, Benedick, Beatrice,
Margaret, Ursula, Friar Francis and Hero.
FRIAR.
Did I not tell you she was innocent?
LEONATO.
So are the Prince and Claudio, who accus’d her
Upon the error that you heard debated:
But Margaret was in some fault for this,
Although against her will, as it appears
In the true course of all the question.
ANTONIO.
Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.
BENEDICK.
And so am I, being else by faith enforc’d
To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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