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Have been deceived; for they swore you did.
Beat. Do not you love me?
Bene.

Troth, no, no more than reason.
Beat. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and
Ursula,

Are much deceiv'd; for they did swear you did. Bene. They swore that you were almost sick for me.

Beat. They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.

Bene. 'Tis no such matter:-Then you do not
love me?

Beat. No, truly, but in friendly recompense.
Leon. Come, cousin, I am sure you love the

gentleman.

Claud. And I'll be sworn upon't, that he loves her;
For here's a paper, written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashion'd to Beatrice.

Hero
And here's another,
Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.

Bene. A miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts!-Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.

Beat. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion; and, partly, to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.

Bene. Peace, I will stop your mouth. [Kissing her. D. Pedro. How dost thou, Benedick the married man?

Bene. I'll tell thee what, prince; a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour: Dost thou think, I care for a satire, or an epigram? No: if a man will be beaten with brains, he shall wear nothing handsome about him: In brief, since I do propose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against t; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but in that thou art like to be my Kinsman, live unbruised and love my cousin.

Claud. I had well hoped, thou wouldst have

I Because.

nied Beatrice, that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double dealer; which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee.

Bene. Come, come, we are friends:-let's have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts, and our wives' heels.

Leon. We'll have dancing afterwards.

Bene. First o'my word: therefore play, musicPrince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.2

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight, And brought with armed men back to Messina. Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow; I'll devise thee brave punishments for him.-Strike up, pipers. [Dance. Exeunt.

THIS play may be justly said to contain two of the most sprightly characters that Shakspeare ever drew. The wit, the humourist, the gentleman, and the soldier are combined in Benedick. It is to be lamented, indeed, that the first and most splendid of these distinctions is disgraced by unnecessary profaneness; for the goodness of his heart is hardly sufficient to atone for the liflashes out in the conversation of Beatrice, may be excence of his tongue. The too sarcastic levity, which cused on account of the steadiness and friendship so apparent in her behaviour, when she urges her lover to risk his life by a challenge to Claudio. In the conduct of the fable, however, there is an imperfection similar to that which Dr. Johnson has pointed out in The Merry Wives of Windsor: the second contrivance is less insame incident is become stale by repetition. I wish genious than the first-or, to speak more plainly, the some other method had been found to entrap Beatrice, than that very one which before had been successfully practised on Benedick.3

Much Ado about Nothing, (as I understand from one of Mr. Vertue's MSS.) formerly passed under the title on the 20th of May, 1613, the sum of forty pounds, and of Benedick and Beatrix. Heming the player received, twenty pounds more as his Majesty's gratuity, for ex de-hibiting six plays at Hampton Court, among which was this comedy.

2 Steevens, Malone, and Reed, conceive that there is an allusion here to the staff used in the ancient trial by wager of battle; but Mr. Douce thinks it is more probable the walking stick or staff of elderly persons was intended, such sticks were often tipped or headed with horn, sometimes crosswise, in imitation of the crutched sticks or potences of the friars, which were borrowed from the celebrated tau of St. Anthony.

STEEVENS.

3 Mr. Pye thus answers the objection of Steevens. The intention of the poet was to show that persons of either sex might be made in love with each other by supposing themselves beloved, though they were before enemies; and how he could have done this by any other means I do not know. He wanted to show the sexes were alike in this case, and to have employed different motives would have counteracted his own design.'

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

WE may presume the plot of this play to have been dew, and spring-perfumes are the element of these ten the invention of Shakspeare, as the diligence of his der spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carcommentators has failed to trace the sources from pet with green leaves, many coloured flowers, and dazwhence it is derived. Steevens says that the hint for itzling insects; in the human world they merely sport in was probably received from Chaucer's Knight's Tale.

In the Midsummer Night's Dream,' says Schlegel, there flows a luxuriant vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have arisen without effort by some ingenious and lucky aceident, and the colours are of such clear transparency that we think that the whole of the variegated fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described resembles those elegant pieces of Arabesque, where little Genii, with butterfly wings, rise half embodied above the flower cups. Twilight, moonshine,

a childish and wayward manner with their beneficent or noxious influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery; their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream. To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical enchantment, which, by a contrary enchantment, may be immediately suspended, and then renew. ed again. The different parts of the plot; the wedding of Theseus, the disagreement of Oberon and Titania, the flight of the two pair of lovers, and the theatrical operations of the mechanics, are so lightly and happily interwoven, that they seem necessary to each other for

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