William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

ACT 5. 2. Scene II. LEONATO'S Garden.

[Enter BENEDICK and MARGARET, meeting.]

BENEDICK.
Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands by
helping me to the speech of Beatrice.

MARGARET.
Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?

BENEDICK.
In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over
it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.

MARGARET.
To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?

BENEDICK.
Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; it catches.

MARGARET.
And yours as blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not.

BENEDICK.
A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I
pray thee, call Beatrice. I give thee the bucklers.

MARGARET.
Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.

BENEDICK.
If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice;
and they are dangerous weapons for maids.

MARGARET.
Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.

BENEDICK.
And therefore will come.

[Exit MARGARET.]

    The god of love,
    That sits above,
 And knows me, and knows me,
   How pitiful I deserve,--

I mean, in singing: but in loving, Leander the good swimmer,
Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole book full of
these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the
even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned
over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in
rime; I have tried: I can find out no rime to 'lady' but 'baby',
an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn', a hard rime; for 'school',
'fool', a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: no, I was not born
under a riming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

[Enter BEATRICE.]

Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?