Enter Don PEDRO, LEONATO, and CLAUDIO.

D. Pedro. Come, shall we hear this music? Claud. Yea, my good lord:- How still the evening is,

As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony!

D. Pedro. See you where Benedick hath hid himself?

Claud. O! very well, my lord: the music ended, We'll fit the kid-fox with a penny-worth.

Enter BALTHAZAR, with musicians.

D. Pedro. Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that song again.

Balth. O! good my lord, tax not so bad a voice To slander music any more than once.

D. Pedro. It is the witness still of excellency, To put a strange face on his own perfection:I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.

Balth. Because you talk of wooing, I will sing: Since many a wooer doth commence his suit

especially among the ladies, in Shakespeare's time; scarce any of them being so richly dowered with other gifts as to be content with the hair which it had pleased Nature to bestow. The Poet has several passages going to show that this custom was not much in favour with him; as in Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv. sc. 3, where Biron " mourns that painting and usurping hair should rav ish doters with a false aspect." That in this as in other things his mind went with Nature, further appears from his making so sensible a fellow as Benedick talk that way.

H.

A deal of learned, but, as it would seem, not very wise ink has been shed about this little innocent word. Some editors print it hid-fox; others say kid means discovered or detected, there being an old word, kith, kid, with that meaning; as in John Skelton's Image of Ypocresy: The truth cannot be hid, for it is plain kid." Probably there need be no scruple about taking the word to mean a young fox. Richardson quotes it as such in his Dietionary.

H.

To her he thinks not worthy; yet he woos,

Yet will he swear, he loves.

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. D. Pedro. Why, these are very crotchets that he

speaks;

Note, notes, forsooth, and nothing!

[Music. Bene. [Aside.] Now, divine air! now is his soul Is it not strange, that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies ?" — Well, a horn for my money, when all's done.

ravished!

The Song.
I.

Balth. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never:

Then sigh not so,

But let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into, Hey nonny, nonny.

II.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy ;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy:
Then sigh not so, &c.

A similar tribute to the power of music occurs in Twelfth Night, Act ii. sc. 3, only it is there spoken of as able to "draw three souls out of one weaver."

H.

D. Pedro. By my troth, a good song.
Balth. And an ill singer, my lord.

D. Pedro. Ha? no, no; faith, thou singest well enough for a shift.

Bene. [Aside.] An he had been a dog, that should have howl'd thus, they would have hang'd him : and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief! I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.

D. Pedro. Yea, marry; dost thou hear, Balthazar? I pray thee, get us some excellent music; for to-morrow night we would have it at the lady Hero's chamber-window.

Balth. The best I can, my lord.

D. Pedro. Do so: farewell. [Ereunt BALTHAZAR and musicians.] Come hither, Leonato: What was it you told me of to-day? that your niece Beatrice was in love with signior Benedick ?

Claud. [Aside to Pedro.] O, ay:-Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.—[Aloud.] I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

Leon. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful, that she should so dote on signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.

7 That is, the owl; vUKTikopat. So, in 3 Henry VI. "The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time." Thus also Milton, in L'Allegro" And the night-raven sings.”

* An allusion to the stalking-horse, whereby the fowler anciently screened himself from the sight of the game. It is thus described in John Gee's New Shreds of the Old Snare: "Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have known in the fencountries and elsewhere, that do shoot at woodcocks, snipes, and wild-fowl, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carry before them. having pictured on it the shape of a horse; which while the silly fowl gazeth on, it is knocked down with hail-shot and so put into the fowler's budget.'

H.

Bene. [Aside.] Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

Leon. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it, but that she loves him with an enraged affection: - it is past the infinite of thought. D. Pedro. May be, she doth but counterfeit. Claud. 'Faith, like enough.

Leon. O God! counterfeit ! There never was counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion, as she discovers it.

D. Pedro. Why, what effects of passion shows she?

Claud. [Aside.] Bait the hook well; this fish will

bite.

Leon. What effects, my lord!

She will sit you, -you heard my daughter tell you how.

Claud. She did, indeed.

D. Pedro. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me: I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.

Leon. I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against Benedick.

Bene. [Aside.] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.

Claud. [Aside.] He hath ta'en the infection; hold

it up.

D. Pedro. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

Leon. No, and swears she never will; that's her

torment.

Claud. 'Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: "Shall 1," says she, "that have so oft encounter'd him with scorn, write to him that I love him?"

Leon. 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.

Claud. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.

Leon. O! When she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

Claud. That.

Leon. O

9

she tore the letter into a thousand half pence; rail'd at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her: 166 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.”

Claud. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, cries; "O sweet Benedick! God give me pa

tience!"

Leon. She doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the ecstasy hath so much overborne her, that my daughter is sometime afraid she will do a desperate outrage to herself: It is very true.

D. Pedro. It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it.

Claud. To what end? He would but make a sport of it, and torment the poor lady worse.

D. Pedro. An he should, it were an alms to hang him She's an excellent sweet lady; and out of all suspicion she is virtuous.

Claud. And she is exceeding wise.

That is, into a thousand small pieces; it should be remem bered that the silver halfpence, which were then current, were very minute pieces.