"Give me your candid opinion of Hero," Claudio, asked, and Borachio settled himself for comfortable listening.
"Too short and brown for praise," was Benedick's reply; "but alter her color or height, and you spoil her.""In my eyes she is the sweetest of women," said Claudio.
"Not in mine," retorted Benedick, "and I have no need for glasses.
She is like the last day of December compared with the first of May if you set her beside her cousin. Unfortunately, the Lady Beatrice is a fury."Beatrice was Leonato's niece. She amused herself by saying witty and severe things about Benedick, who called her Dear Lady Disdain.
She was wont to say that she was born under a dancing star, and could not therefore be dull.
Claudio and Benedick were still talking when Don Pedro came up and said good-humoredly, "Well, gentlemen, what's the secret?""I am longing," answered Benedick, "for your Grace to command me to tell.""I charge you, then, on your allegiance to tell me," said Don Pedro, falling in with his humor.
"I can be as dumb as a mute," apologized Benedick to Claudio, "but his Grace commands my speech." To Don Pedro he said, "Claudio is in love with Hero, Leonato's short daughter."Don Pedro was pleased, for he admired Hero and was fond of Claudio.
When Benedick had departed, he said to Claudio, "Be steadfast in your love for Hero, and I will help you to win her. To-night her father gives a masquerade, and I will pretend I am Claudio, and tell her how Claudio loves her, and if she be pleased, I will go to her father and ask his consent to your union."Most men like to do their own wooing, but if you fall in love with a Governor's only daughter, you are fortunate if you can trust a prince to plead for you.
Claudio then was fortunate, but he was unfortunate as well, for he had an enemy who was outwardly a friend. This enemy was Don Pedro's stepbrother Don John, who was jealous of Claudio because Don Pedro preferred him to Don John.
It was to Don John that Borachio came with the interesting conversation which he had overheard.
"I shall have some fun at that masquerade myself," said Don John when Borachio ceased speaking.
On the night of the masquerade, Don Pedro, masked and pretending he was Claudio, asked Hero if he might walk with her.
They moved away together, and Don John went up to Claudio and said, "Signor Benedick, I believe?" "The same," fibbed Claudio.
"I should be much obliged then," said Don John, "if you would use your influence with my brother to cure him of his love for Hero.
She is beneath him in rank."
"How do you know he loves her?" inquired Claudio.
"I heard him swear his affection," was the reply, and Borachio chimed in with, "So did I too."Claudio was then left to himself, and his thought was that his Prince had betrayed him. "Farewell, Hero," he muttered; "I was a fool to trust to an agent."Meanwhile Beatrice and Benedick (who was masked) were having a brisk exchange of opinions.
"Did Benedick ever make you laugh?" asked she.
"Who is Benedick?" he inquired.
"A Prince's jester," replied Beatrice, and she spoke so sharply that "I would not marry her," he declared afterwards, "if her estate were the Garden of Eden."But the principal speaker at the masquerade was neither Beatrice nor Benedick. It was Don Pedro, who carried out his plan to the letter, and brought the light back to Claudio's face in a twinkling, by appearing before him with Leonato and Hero, and saying, "Claudio, when would you like to go to church?""To-morrow," was the prompt answer. "Time goes on crutches till I marry Hero.""Give her a week, my dear son," said Leonato, and Claudio's heart thumped with joy.
"And now," said the amiable Don Pedro, "we must find a wife for Signor Benedick. It is a task for Hercules.""I will help you," said Leonato, "if I have to sit up ten nights."Then Hero spoke. "I will do what I can, my lord, to find a good husband for Beatrice."Thus, with happy laughter, ended the masquerade which had given Claudio a lesson for nothing.
Borachio cheered up Don John by laying a plan before him with which he was confident he could persuade both Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero was a fickle girl who had two strings to her bow. Don John agreed to this plan of hate.
Don Pedro, on the other hand, had devised a cunning plan of love.
"If," he said to Leonato, "we pretend, when Beatrice is near enough to overhear us, that Benedick is pining for her love, she will pity him, see his good qualities, and love him. And if, when Benedick thinks we don't know he is listening, we say how sad it is that the beautiful Beatrice should be in love with a heartless scoffer like Benedick, he will certainly be on his knees before her in a week or less."So one day, when Benedick was reading in a summer-house, Claudio sat down outside it with Leonato, and said, "Your daughter told me something about a letter she wrote.""Letter!" exclaimed Leonato. "She will get up twenty times in the night and write goodness knows what. But once Hero peeped, and saw the words 'Benedick and Beatrice' on the sheet, and then Beatrice tore it up.""Hero told me," said Claudio, "that she cried, 'O sweet Benedick!'"Benedick was touched to the core by this improbable story, which he was vain enough to believe. "She is fair and good," he said to himself. "I must not seem proud. I feel that I love her.
People will laugh, of course; but their paper bullets will do me no harm."At this moment Beatrice came to the summerhouse, and said, "Against my will, I have come to tell you that dinner is ready.""Fair Beatrice, I thank you," said Benedick.
"I took no more pains to come than you take pains to thank me,"was the rejoinder, intended to freeze him.
But it did not freeze him. It warmed him. The meaning he squeezed out of her rude speech was that she was delighted to come to him.
