MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING ACT I SCENE I.-LEONATO'S orchard. Enter LEONATO, HERO and BEATRICE with a Messenger. Leon. I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this night to Messina. Mess. He is very near by this: he was not three leagues Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action? 5 ACT I. SCENE 1.] Acts and scenes not marked in Q. Folio divides the play Q, Ff. ACT I. SCEne 1. Enter Leonato In the Quarto and Folios the stage direction is: Enter Leonato, Gouernour of Messina, Innogen his wife, Hero his daughter, and Beatrice his neece, with a messenger. And the stage direction for Act II. Scene i. is: Enter Leonato, his brother, his wife, Hero his daughter, etc. The name Innogen was first omitted by Theobald, who suggests that Shakespeare had “in his first plan designed such a character, which, on a survey of it, he found would be superfluous; and therefore he left it out." Furness thinks it more probable that Shakespeare" in remodellingan old play carelessly suffered the old stage direction to remain and merely omitted to erase the name of a character which 3 did not enter his plan " (see on 12 = "Beard. She shall be bail'd. Drawer, bring up some wine, use her well, Her husband is a gentleman of sort. Leon. A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings Leon. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there 10 15 appears much joy in him, even so much that joy 20 could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness. Leon. Did he break out into tears? Mess. In great measure. Leon. A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces 25 truer than those that are so washed. How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping! 15. bettered] Ff 3, 4; bettred Q, Ff 1, 2. Serjeant. A gentleman of sort! A woman of her fashion shall find Than ten of your gentlemen of In none of these passages, however, is 12. Pedro] Corrected by Rowe. Furness suggests that the name Peter of Q and Ff crept in from the same old copy which perhaps gave Innogen. 13, 14. figure lamb lion] Notice the cross alliteration. Throughout the messenger speaks in elaborate, euphuistic language, and Leonato replies in the same strain. ... 17. uncle] Not mentioned elsewhere. As Boas remarks: "The reference to him here helps to connect the Florentine Claudio with Messina, and to explain how he had become acquainted with Hero before this ended action.'" It also serves, like many lines in this play, to give a wider and more intimate background to the characters, and to create in us the illusion of lives and homes apart from the action on the stage. It is possible, however, that this uncle, like the son of Antonio (1. ii. 2) and the Innogen of the opening stage directions, may also be careless survivals from an old play. 18. much] For other instances of this adverbial use of much see Abbott's Shakes. Gram., § 51 and cf. As You Like It, 1. ii. 196; and Chapman, Bussy D'Ambois, 1. i. (Plays, ed. Shepherd, p. 144):: "No, my lord, he is much guilty of the bold extremity." 21. badge] "A badge was a mark of service, worn by the retainers of a nobleman; hence appropriately used for a mark of inferiority, and as such an expression of modesty" (W. A. Wright). = 25. A kind... kindness] kind instinctive, natural, true to nature; as Beat. I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no? Mess. I know none of that name, lady: there was none 30 such in the army of any sort. Leon. What is he that you ask for, niece? Hero. My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua. Mess. O, he's returned, and as pleasant as ever he was. Beat. He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged 35 Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he 28. Mountanto] Q, Ff; Montanto Pope. Burbolt Q, Ff. often. See Lucrece, 1423; and Henry V. II. Chorus 19. A play on the two meanings of the word, similar to the one in the text, is found in Gower's Confessio Amantis, iii. 374-378 (Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay, p. 236) :— "And for he hath destourbed kinde And was so to nature unkinde, Unkindelich he was transformed, That he, which erst a man was formed, Into a womman was forschape." It is not necessary to refer to Hamlet's famous aside. your 28. Mountanto] From montanto or montant, an old fencing term, defined by Cotgrave as "an upright blow or thrust." Capell cites a passage from Every Man in his Humour, IV. V. (Gifford's Jonson, ed. Cunningham, i. 45): "I would teach these nineteen the special rules, as your punto, passada, your montanto; till they could all play very near . . . as well as my self." The word occurs also in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 11. iii. 27: "To see thee fight, to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant." This seems to be as apt a nickname for the kind of braggart that Beatrice pretends to consider Benedick as his titles for her-"Dear Lady Disdain" and "my Lady Tongue." 35. set up his bills] as a means of public advertisement. Steevens quotes from Nashe's Have with you to Saffron Walden (Works, ed. Grosart, iii. 179): "setting vp bills, like a Bear-ward or Fencer, what fights we shall haue, and ,what weapons she will meete me at." 38. bird-bolt] Pope 2, Theobald; Bills were posted to advise the public of · Salewood. O, they are bills for chambers. Easy (reads). Against St. Andrew's, at a painter's house, there's a fair chamber furnished to be let;' etc. 36. flight] Either the flight-arrow, a light and well-feathered arrow for long distance shooting, or the exercise of flight shooting, in which that kind of arrow was used. The New Eng. Dict. gives: "For the best game of the flight, we shall have a flight of golde of the value of xs." (Vicary's Anatomy, App. III. 178). 38. bird-bolt] A short, blunt-headed arrow. The word seems to be used here with double significance. (1) The bird-bolt was the weapon allowed to fools as being less dangerous than the long-distance arrow. Cf. Marston's What You Will, Induction (Old English Plays, 1814, ii. 201): "Some boundless ignorance, should on sudden shoot His gross knobbed bird-bolt," etc., quoted by Steevens. (2) The bird-bolt seems to have been the kind of arrow commonly used by Cupid. Halliwell gives several quotations in support of this, and to these may be added a line in The City killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for indeed, I promised to eat all of 40 his killing. Leon. Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you, I doubt it not. Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars. Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it: 45 he's a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an excellent stomach. Mess. And a good soldier too, lady. Beat. And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a lord? Mess. A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues. Beat. It is so indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man: but for the stuffing,—well, we are all mortal. ... Q, Ff. 50 43. be meet] be met Capell. 44. these] Q, F; those Ff 2-4. 45. victual] vittaile Q. 45. eat] ease F. 54. for the stuffing,-well, we are •] Theobald; for the stuffing wel(l), we are Gallant (Hazlitt's Dodsley, xi. 200): "Now the boy with the bird-bolt be praised!" and Biron's words in Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii. 25: "Proceed, sweet Cupid: thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap." The whole passage in the text is obscure. Perhaps Beatrice means that Benedick, who thought himself "loved of all ladies," insolently challenged Cupid to a contest at the god's chosen pastime. The fool accepted the challenge on behalf of Cupid, but substituted the bird-bolt for the flightarrow, partly in derision as being better suited to Benedick's clumsy handling, and partly because it was both his own weapon and the favourite missile of the god of love. 66 39. killed and eaten] W. A. Wright And then hee looks as if he had 43. meet with] even with, as often. See Tarlton's Fests (Shakes. Society, p. 14): "Tarlton having flouted the fellow for his pippin which hee threw, he thought to be meet with Tarlton at length"; Bartholomew Fair, II. i. (Gifford's Jonson, ed. Cunningham, ii. 162): "Well, I shall be meet with your mumbling mouth one day." 46. valiant trencher-man] man of hearty appetite (trencher, from old French trenchoir wooden platter), as in Massinger, The Unnatural Combat, III. i. (ed. H. Coleridge, p. 35): "As tall a trencherman, that is most As e'er demolish'd pye-fortification 47. stomach] Cf. 11. iii. 244 post, 51, 52. stuffed virtues] Compare Romeo and Juliet, III. v. 183: "Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts." 53. stuffed man] Perhaps, as W. A. Wright suggests, "Beatrice is still. thinking of Benedick's prowess as a valiant trencher-man"; considering Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her: they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them. 55 Beat. Alas, he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the 60 whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is Beatrice's headlong method of conversation it is more likely that she simply catches at the messenger's word as an opening for the easy gibe that Benedick is not a real man but a dummy. 54. stuffing,-well,] Theobald may have copied this punctuation from Davenant's Law Against Lovers, wherein as Farmer pointed out-this speech occurs. It adds much to the point of Beatrice's words. Boas, who retains the pointing of Q, is doubtful if the meaning of well, suggested by Theobald's emendation, is " an Elizabethan use." But see line 128 below: "Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher." Also lines 235, 240 of this same scene. 60. five wits] i.e. common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, memory; probably "reckoned five," as Johnson says, "by analogy to the five senses, or the five inlets of ideas." Knight points out that "by the early writers the 'five wits' were used synonymously with the five senses " and he quotes in proof a passage from Chaucer's The Persones Tale [ed. Skeat, p. 712, 11. 212-214]. To this may be added a later passage in this same sermon "And this is for to sinne in herte, in mouth, and in dede, by thy fyve wittes, that been sighte, heringe, smellinge, tastinge, or savouringe, and felinge," (p. 712, ll. 955-958); also the description of Sir Gawayne, who bore on his shield the mystic pentagram (Sir Gawayne and The Green Knight, ed. R. Morris: Early English Text Society, 1869, p. 21): 66 Fyrst he watz funden fautlez in his fyue wyttez, & efte fayled neuer pe freke in his fyue fyngres, & alle his afyaunce vpon folde watz in pe fyue woundez þat Cryst kazt on þe croys," where the five wits almost certainly mean the five senses. Also in Gower's Confessio Amantis, iv. 2541-2550 (Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay, p. 369), there is a reference to the three stones of the old philosophers : "The Ston seconde I thee behote Is lapis animalis hote, The whos vertu is propre and cowth For Ere and yhe and nase and mouth, Wherof a man may hiere and se And smelle and taste in his degre, And forto fiele and forto go It helpeth man of bothe tuo: The wyttes fyve he underfongeth To kepe, as it to him belongeth." That the five wits were not always reckoned as synonymous with the five senses is clear from the morality of Everyman, in which the character called Five wits represents the faculties of the mind, not of the body; and Shakespeare, in Sonnet cxli., makes the distinction final: "But my five wits, nor my five senses |