BEATRICE.
I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come.
BENEDICK.
You take pleasure then in the message?
BEATRICE.
Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point, and choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well.
[Exit.]
BENEDICK.
Ha! ‘Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner,’ there’s a double meaning in that. ‘I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me,’ that’s as much as to say, Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.
[Exit.]
ACT III
SCENE I. Leonato’s Garden.
Enter Hero, Margaret and Ursula.
HERO.
Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour;
There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice
Proposing with the Prince and Claudio:
Whisper her ear, and tell her, I and Ursala
Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse
Is all of her; say that thou overheard’st us,
And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honey-suckles, ripen’d by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter; like favourites,
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her,
To listen our propose. This is thy office;
Bear thee well in it and leave us alone.