William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

ACT 2. 3. Scene III. LEONATO'S Garden. (continued)

CLAUDIO.
Faith, like enough.

LEONATO.
O God! counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of passion came so near
the life of passion as she discovers it.

DON PEDRO.
Why, what effects of passion shows she?

CLAUDIO.
[Aside.] Bait the hook well: this fish will bite.

LEONATO.
What effects, my lord? She will sit you; [To Claudio.] You heard
my daughter tell you how.

CLAUDIO.
She did, indeed.

DON PEDRO.
How, how, I pray you? You amaze me: I would have thought her spirit
had been invincible against all assaults of affection.

LEONATO.
I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against Benedick.

BENEDICK.
[Aside] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded
fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.

CLAUDIO.
[Aside.] He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.

DON PEDRO.
Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

LEONATO.
No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.

CLAUDIO.
 Tis true, indeed;so your daughter says: 'Shall I,' says she, 'that
have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?'

LEONATO.
This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she'll
be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till
she have writ a sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all.

CLAUDIO.
Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your
daughter told us of.

LEONATO.
O! when she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found
Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

CLAUDIO.
That.