William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

ACT 1. 3. 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.

CONRADE.
Yea; but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it
without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother,
and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you
should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself:
it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

DON JOHN.
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace; and it
better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage
to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a
flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing
villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog;
therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I
would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime,
let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.

CONRADE.
Can you make no use of your discontent?