English – Much Ado; Beatrice + Benedick (not Act 2 Scene 1)

A1S1 Beatrice: “is Signor Mountanto returned from the wars…?” Beatrice: “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick. Nobody marks you.”Benedick: “God keep your Ladyship still in that mind, so some gentle-man or other shall ‘scape a predestinate scratched face.”Beatrice: “Scratching could not make it worse an ’twere such a face as yours were.”Leonato: “…a kind of merry war.”Leonato: “…they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”
A2S1 Beatrice: “Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice.”
A2S3 Benedick: “Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour?”
A3S1 Beatrice: “What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? Contempt, farewell! And maiden pride, adieu!”Beatrice: “…love on, I will requite thee, Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.”
A3S2 Benedick: “Gallants, I am not as I have been.”Claudio: “I hope he be in love.”
A3S4 Beatrice: “Benedictus, why benedictus? You have some moral in this benedictus.”
A4S1 Benedick: “I protest I love thee.”Beatrice: “I was about to protest I loved you.”NB: Feminist notes here.Beatrice: “Oh God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace,”Benedick: “I am engaged, I will challenge him.”Leonato: “Hence from her, let her to die.”Leonato: “O she is fallen / Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea / Hath drops too few to wash her clean again”
A5S1 Benedick (to Claudio): “You are a villain, I jest not.
A5S2 Benedick:” … And, I pray thee, now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?Beatrice: “For them all together, which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?”Benedick: “‘Suffer love’, a good epithet…”Benedick: “I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.”Beatrice: “Alas poor heart, if you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours.”
A5S4 Benedick: “And I do with an eye of love requite her.”Benedick: “They swore that you were almost sick for me.”Beatrice: “They swore that you were well nigh dead for me.”Beatrice: “No truly, but in friendly recompense.”Benedick: “Here’s our own hands against our hearts.”Leonato: “We’ll have dancing afterward.”Benedick: “First, of my word, therefore play music…get thee a wife…”Benedick:” I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him.”
July 6, 2019