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.
LEONATO.
O! she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; railed at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her: ‘I measure him,’ says she, ‘by my own spirit; for I should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love him, I should.’
CLAUDIO.
Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; ‘O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!’