William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (274 page)
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Authors: William Shakespeare
Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare
BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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ANTONIO
Which I will do with confirmed countenance.
BENEDICK
Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.
FRIAR To do what, signor?
BENEDICK
To bind me or undo me, one of them.
Signor Leonato, truth it is, good signor,
Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.
Signor Leonato, truth it is, good signor,
Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.
LEONATO
That eye my daughter lent her, ’tis most true.
BENEDICK
And I do with an eye of love requite her.
LEONATO
The sight whereof I think you had from me,
From Claudio and the Prince. But what’s your will?
From Claudio and the Prince. But what’s your will?
BENEDICK
Your answer, sir, is enigmatical.
But for my will, my will is your good will
May stand with ours this day to be conjoined
In the state of honourable marriage,
In which, good Friar, I shall desire your help.
But for my will, my will is your good will
May stand with ours this day to be conjoined
In the state of honourable marriage,
In which, good Friar, I shall desire your help.
LEONATO
My heart is with your liking.
FRIAR And my help.
Here comes the Prince and Claudio.
Enter Don Pedro and Claudio with attendants
DON PEDRO
Good morrow to this fair assembly.
LEONATO
Good morrow, Prince. Good morrow, Claudio.
We here attend you. Are you yet determined
Today to marry with my brother’s daughter?
We here attend you. Are you yet determined
Today to marry with my brother’s daughter?
CLAUDIO
I’ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.
LEONATO
Call her forth, brother, here’s the Friar ready.
Exit Antonio
DON PEDRO
Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what’s the matter
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
CLAUDIO
I think he thinks upon the savage bull.
Tush, fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold,
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee
As once Europa did at lusty Jove
When he would play the noble beast in love.
Tush, fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold,
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee
As once Europa did at lusty Jove
When he would play the noble beast in love.
BENEDICK
Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low,
And some such strange bull leapt your father’s cow
And got a calf in that same noble feat
Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.
And some such strange bull leapt your father’s cow
And got a calf in that same noble feat
Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.
Enter Antonio with Hero, Beatrice, Margaret, and Ursula, masked
CLAUDIO
For this I owe you. Here comes other reck’nings.
Which is the lady I must seize upon?
Which is the lady I must seize upon?
⌈ANTONIO⌉
This same is she, and I do give you her.
CLAUDIO
Why then, she’s mine. Sweet, let me see your face. 55
LEONATO
No, that you shall not till you take her hand
Before this Friar and swear to marry her.
Before this Friar and swear to marry her.
CLAUDIO (
to Hero
)
to Hero
)
Give me your hand before this holy friar.
I am your husband if you like of me.
I am your husband if you like of me.
HERO (
unmasking
)
unmasking
)
And when I lived I was your other wife;
And when you loved, you were my other husband.
And when you loved, you were my other husband.
CLAUDIO
Another Hero!
HERO Nothing certainer.
One Hero died defiled, but I do live,
And surely as I live, I am a maid.
And surely as I live, I am a maid.
DON PEDRO
The former Hero, Hero that is dead!
LEONATO
She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived.
FRIAR
All this amazement can I qualify
When after that the holy rites are ended
I’ll tell you largely of fair Hero’s death.
Meantime, let wonder seem familiar,
And to the chapel let us presently.
When after that the holy rites are ended
I’ll tell you largely of fair Hero’s death.
Meantime, let wonder seem familiar,
And to the chapel let us presently.
BENEDICK
Soft and fair, Friar, which is Beatrice?
BEATRICE (
unmasking
)
unmasking
)
I answer to that name, what is your will?
BENEDICK
Do not you love me?
BEATRICE Why no, no more than reason.
BENEDICK
Why then, your uncle and the Prince and Claudio
Have been deceived. They swore you did.
Have been deceived. They swore you did.
BEATRICE
Do not you love me?
BENEDICK Troth no, no more than reason.
BEATRICE
Why then, my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula
Are much deceived, for they did swear you did.
Are much deceived, for they did swear you did.
BENEDICK
They swore that you were almost sick for me.
BEATRICE
They swore that you were wellnigh dead for me.
BENEDICK
’Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?
BEATRICE
No, truly, but in friendly recompense.
LEONATO
Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.
CLAUDIO
And I’ll be sworn upon’t that he loves her,
For here’s a paper written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashioned to Beatrice.
For here’s a paper written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashioned to Beatrice.
HERO And here’s another,
Writ in my cousin’s hand, stol’n from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
BENEDICK A miracle! Here’s our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light, I take thee for pity.
BEATRICE I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.
BENEDICK (
kissing her
) Peace, I will stop your mouth.
kissing her
) Peace, I will stop your mouth.
DON PEDRO
How dost thou, Benedick the married man?
BENEDICK I’ll tell thee what, Prince: a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No, if a man will be beaten with brains, a shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it, and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it. For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee, but in that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised, and love my cousin.
CLAUDIO I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life to make thee a double dealer, which out of question thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee.
BENEDICK Come, come, we are friends, let’s have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives’ heels.
LEONATO We’ll have dancing afterward.
BENEDICK First, of my word. Therefore play, music. (
To Don Pedro
) Prince, thou art sad, get thee a wife, get thee a wife. There is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.
To Don Pedro
) Prince, thou art sad, get thee a wife, get thee a wife. There is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.
Enter Messenger
MESSENGER
My lord, your brother John is ta’en in flight,
And brought with armed men back to Messina.
And brought with armed men back to Messina.
BENEDICK Think not on him till tomorrow, I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him. Strike up, pipers.
Dance, and exeunt
HENRY V
THE Chorus to Act 5 of
Henry V
contains an uncharacteristic, direct topical reference:
Henry V
contains an uncharacteristic, direct topical reference:
Were now the General of our gracious Empress—
As in good time he may—from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him!
‘The General’ must be the Earl of Essex, whose ‘Empress’—Queen Elizabeth—had sent him on an Irish campaign on 27 March 1599; he returned, disgraced, on 28 September. Plans for his campaign had been known at least since the previous November; the idea that he might return in triumph would have been meaningless after September 1599, and it seems likely that Shakespeare completed his play during 1599, probably in the spring. It appeared in print, in a short and debased text, in (probably) August 1600, when it was said to have ‘been sundry times played by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain his servants’. Although this text (which omits the Choruses) seems to have been put together from memory by actors playing in an abbreviated adaptation, the Shakespearian text behind it appears to have been in a later state than the generally superior text printed from Shakespeare’s own papers in the 1623 Folio. Our edition draws on the 1600 quarto in the attempt to represent the play as acted by Shakespeare’s company. The principal difference is the reversion to historical authenticity in the substitution at Agincourt of the Duke of Bourbon for the Dauphin.
As in the two plays about Henry IV, Shakespeare is indebted to
The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth
(printed 1598). Other Elizabethan plays about Henry V, now lost, may have influenced him; he certainly used the chronicle histories of Edward Hall (1542) and Holinshed (1577, revised and enlarged in 1587).
The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth
(printed 1598). Other Elizabethan plays about Henry V, now lost, may have influenced him; he certainly used the chronicle histories of Edward Hall (1542) and Holinshed (1577, revised and enlarged in 1587).
From the ‘civil broils’ of the earlier history plays, Shakespeare turns to portray a country united in war against France. Each act is prefaced by a Chorus, speaking some of the play’s finest poetry, and giving it an epic quality. Henry V, ‘star of England’, is Shakespeare’s most heroic warrior king, but (like his predecessors) has an introspective side, and is aware of the crime by which his father came to the throne. We are reminded of his ‘wilder days’, and see that the transition from ‘madcap prince’ to the ‘mirror of all Christian kings’ involves loss: although the epilogue to
2 Henry IV
had suggested that Sir John would reappear, he is only, though poignantly, an off-stage presence. Yet Shakespeare’s infusion of comic form into historical narrative reaches its natural conclusion in this play. Sir John’s cronies, Pistol, Bardolph, Nim, and Mistress Quickly, reappear to provide a counterpart to the heroic action, and Shakespeare invents comic episodes involving an Englishman (Gower), a Welshman (Fluellen), an Irishman (MacMorris), and a Scot (Jamy). The play also has romance elements, in the almost incredible extent of the English victory over the French and in the disguised Henry’s comradely mingling with his soldiers, as well as in his courtship of the French princess. The play’s romantic and heroic aspects have made it popular especially in times of war and have aroused accusations of jingoism, but the horrors of war are vividly depicted, and the Chorus’s closing speech reminds us that Henry died young, and that his son’s protector ‘lost France and made his England bleed’.
2 Henry IV
had suggested that Sir John would reappear, he is only, though poignantly, an off-stage presence. Yet Shakespeare’s infusion of comic form into historical narrative reaches its natural conclusion in this play. Sir John’s cronies, Pistol, Bardolph, Nim, and Mistress Quickly, reappear to provide a counterpart to the heroic action, and Shakespeare invents comic episodes involving an Englishman (Gower), a Welshman (Fluellen), an Irishman (MacMorris), and a Scot (Jamy). The play also has romance elements, in the almost incredible extent of the English victory over the French and in the disguised Henry’s comradely mingling with his soldiers, as well as in his courtship of the French princess. The play’s romantic and heroic aspects have made it popular especially in times of war and have aroused accusations of jingoism, but the horrors of war are vividly depicted, and the Chorus’s closing speech reminds us that Henry died young, and that his son’s protector ‘lost France and made his England bleed’.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
Prologue
Enter Chorus as Prologue
CHORUS
Enter Chorus as Prologue
CHORUS
O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention:
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O pardon: since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them,
Printing their proud hoofs i‘th’ receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass—for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history,
Who Prologue-like your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. Exit
The brightest heaven of invention:
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraisèd spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O pardon: since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great account,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them,
Printing their proud hoofs i‘th’ receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’accomplishment of many years
Into an hourglass—for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history,
Who Prologue-like your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. Exit
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