All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I lik’d her ere I went to wars.’
In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity.
‘Claudio. No, Leonato,
I never tempted her with word too large,
But, as a brother to his sister, shew’d
Bashful sincerity, and comely love.
Hero. And seem’d I ever otherwise to you?
Claudio. Out on thy seeming, I will write against it:
You seem to me as Dian in her orb,