No Fear Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 2, Scene 1, Page 3
Original Text |
Modern Text |
|
|
|
ANTONIO
(to
HERO)Well, niece, I trust you will be
ruled by your
father.
|
ANTONIO
(to
HERO) Well, niece, I trust that you
will defer to your father on these important decisions.
|
|
45 |
BEATRICE
Yes, faith, it is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy and
say,
“Father, as it please you.” But yet for all
that, cousin, let
him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and
say, “Father, as it please me.”
|
BEATRICE
Surely, my cousin has a duty to please her father. But if the
husband her father chooses isn’t handsome, she should
sweetly tell her father that she will please herself—with
another one.
|
|
LEONATO
Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a
husband.
|
LEONATO
Well, niece, I hope that I will see you married one day.
|
|
|
50 |
BEATRICE
Not till God make men of some other metal than earth.
Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a
piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod
of wayward marl? No, uncle, I’ll none.
Adam’s sons are my
brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.
|
BEATRICE
No, I won’t take a husband until they make men out of
something other than dirt. What woman wouldn’t be
distressed, being lorded over by a handful of dust? Can you imagine
being hitched to a lump of clay? No, uncle, I won’t be
married. And anyhow, if Adam is the father of all mankind, then his sons are my brothers,
and really I believe that incest is a sin.
|
|
55 |
LEONATO
(to
HERO) Daughter, remember what I told
you. If the
Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.
|
LEONATO
(to
HERO) Daughter, remember what I told
you. If the Prince asks for your hand in marriage, you know what to
tell him.
|
|
60 65 |
BEATRICE
The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed
in good time. If the Prince be too important, tell him there
is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For
hear me, Hero, wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a
Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace. The first suit is hot
and hasty like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the
wedding, mannerly modest as a measure, full of state and
ancientry; and then comes repentance, and with his bad
legs falls into the cinquepace faster and faster till he sink
into his grave.
|
BEATRICE
But cousin, make sure he woos you properly and appropriately. If
he is too insistent, tell him that romance is like a dance: it has
its own rhythm and timing. Look, the three stages of romance are
like three different dances. The wooing is like a Scottish jig: hot
and fast and full of whimsy and illusion. The wedding is a like a
dance you would do before the King: proper and decorous. Finally,
you get to the part where you regret having gotten married in the
first place. It is like the lively cinquepace: it goes faster and faster until you eventually topple over
and die.
|
