CLAUDIO. How sweetly you do minister to love, That know love’s grief by his complexion! But lest my liking might too sudden seem, I would have salv’d it with a longer treatise. DON PEDRO. What need the bridge much broader than the flood? The fairest grant is the necessity. Look, what will serve is fit: ’tis once, thou lov’st, And I will fit thee with the remedy. I know we shall have revelling tonight: I will assume thy part in some disguise, And tell fair Hero I am Claudio; And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart, And take her hearing prisoner with the force And strong encounter of my amorous tale: Then after to her father will I break; And the conclusion is, she shall be thine. In practice let us put it presently. [Exeunt.] SCENE II. A room in Leonato’s house. Enter Leonato and Antonio, meeting. LEONATO. How now, brother? Where is my cousin your son? Hath he provided this music? ANTONIO. He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of. LEONATO. Are they good? ANTONIO. As the event stamps them: but they have a good cover; they show well outward. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the Prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance; and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it. LEONATO. Hath the fellow any wit that told you this? ANTONIO. A good sharp fellow: I will send for him; and question him yourself. LEONATO. No, no; we will hold it as a dream till it appear itself: but I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you and tell her of it. [Several persons cross the stage.] Cousins, you know what you have to do. O! I cry you mercy, friend; go you with me, and I will use your skill. Good cousin, have a care this busy time. [Exeunt.] SCENE III. Another room in Leonato’s house. Enter Don John and Conrade. CONRADE. What the good-year, my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad? DON JOHN. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit. CONRADE. You should hear reason. DON JOHN. And when I have heard it, what blessings brings it? CONRADE. If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance. DON JOHN. I wonder that thou (being as thou say’st thou art, born under Saturn) goest about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man’s jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man’s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man’s business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humour.