Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written between 1598 and 1599. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623.

The play is set in Messina and revolves around two romantic pairings that emerge when a group of soldiers arrive in the town. The first, between Claudio and Hero, is nearly scuppered by the accusations of the villain, Don John. The second, between Claudio's friend Benedick and Hero's cousin Beatrice, takes centre stage as the play continues, with both characters' wit and banter providing much of the humour.

W. G. Clark; W. A. Wright (eds.) The Works of William Shakespeare, vol. 2 (Cambridge and London: Macmillan and Co., 1863)

Act I

Scene i

A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.
- Leonato, l. 8

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age; doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation, than you must expect of me to tell you how.
- Messenger, l. 10

How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!
- Leonato, l. 23

He is a very valiant trencher-man.
- Beatrice, l. 41

Beatrice: What is he to a lord?
Messenger: A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues.
Beatrice: It is so indeed, he is no less than a stuffed man: but for the stuffing, — Well, we are all mortal.
- l. 45

They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.
- Leonato, l. 52

In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the 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 all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature.
- Beatrice, l. 55

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.
- Beatrice, l. 62

Messenger: I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
Beatrice: No; an he were, I would burn my study.
- l. 64

He is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! if he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere a’ be cured.
- Beatrice, l. 70

Don Pedro: The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
Leonato: Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.
- l. 80

Benedick: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it, as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.
- l. 101

Benedick: I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor.
- l. 106

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
- Beatrice, l. 113

I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer.
- Benedick, l. 120

I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.
- Don Pedro, l. 126

Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?
- Benedick, l. 141

Benedick: Would you buy her, that you enquire after her?
Claudio: Can the world buy such a jewel?
- l. 151

Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?
- Benedick, l. 170

Like the old tale, my lord: ‘it is not so, nor ’twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.’
- Benedick, l. 183

Don Pedro: By my troth, I speak my thought.
Claudio: And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.
Benedick: And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.
Claudio: That I love her, I feel.
Don Pedro: That she is worthy, I know.
Benedick: That I neither feel how she should be loved, nor know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake.
- l. 190

That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.
- Benedick, l. 204

Don Pedro: ‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.’
Benedick: The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns, and set them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted; and in such great letters as they write ‘Here is good horse to hire,’ let them signify under my sign ‘Here you may see Benedick the married man.’
- l. 225

Nay, mock not, mock not. The body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither: ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience: and so I leave you.
- Benedick, l. 245

Act II

Scene i

He is of a very melancholy disposition.
- Hero, l. 5

I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
- Beatrice, l. 25

He that hath a beard is more than a youth; and he that hath no beard is less than a man.
- Beatrice, l. 30

As merry as the day is long.
- Beatrice, l. 40

I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.
- Beatrice, l. 70

Speak low, if you speak love.
- Don Pedro, l. 85

Friendship is constant in all other things,
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself,
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch,
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
- Claudio, l. 154

It keeps on the windy side of care.
- Beatrice, l. 283
  Cf. Twelfth Night, act 3, sc. 4, l. 156: Still you keep o’ th’ windy side of the law.

I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.
- Beatrice, l. 296

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
- Claudio, l. 275

Don Pedro: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
Beatrice: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.
- l. 302

If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer: his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods.
- Don Pedro, l. 345

I will tell you my drift.
- Don Pedro, l. 350
  Cf. Coriolanus, act 3, sc. 3, l. 117: We know your drift.

Scene iii

He was wont to speak plain, and to the purpose.
- Benedick, l. 15

It is the witness still of excellency
To put a strange face on his own perfection.
- Don Pedro, l. 42

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.
Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
   Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
   Since summer first was leavy:
       Then sigh not so, &c.
- Balthazar, l. 57

Sits the wind in that corner?
- Benedick, l. 91

Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.
- Claudio, l. 100

Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.
- Benedick, l. 209

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
- Benedick, l. 217

Shall quips, and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
- Benedick, l. 218

Act III

Scene i

The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.
- Ursula, l. 26

Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
- Hero, l. 106

Scene ii

From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.
- Don Pedro, l. 9
  Cf. Pliny, Natural History, bk. 7, ch. 17
  Beaumont and Fletcher, The Honest Man's Fortune, act 2, sc. 2
  Thomas Middleton, A Mad World, My Masters, act 1

Every one can master a grief but he that has it.
- Benedick, l. 25

Scene iii

Are you good men and true?
- Dogberry, l. 1

To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.
- Dogberry, l. 14

The most senseless and fit man.
- Dogberry, l. 19

You shall comprehend all vagrom men.
- Dogberry, l. 21

2 Watch: How if a’ will not stand?
Dogberry: Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.
- l. 24

Is most tolerable, and not to be endured.
- Dogberry, l. 32

Dogberry: Well, you are to call at all the ale-houses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.
Watch: How if they will not?
Dogberry: Why, then, let them alone till they are sober: if they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for.
- Dogberry, l. 39

They that touch pitch will be defiled.
- Dogberry, l. 51
  Cf. Ecclesiasticus, ch. 13, v. 1: He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.
  Henry IV, Part 1, act 2, sc. 4, l. 396: This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is, and steal out of your company.
- Dogberry, l. 54

Verges: If you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to the nurse and bid her still it.
Watch: How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us?
Dogberry: Why, then, depart in peace, and let the child wake her with crying; for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes will never answer a calf when he bleats.
- l. 60

I know that Deformed.
- 1 Watch, l. 115

Borachio: Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is? how giddily a’ turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty? sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh’s soldiers in the reeky painting, sometime like god Bel’s priests in the old church-window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as massy as his club?
Conrade: All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
- Borachio, l. 120

Scene v

I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.
- Verges, l. 12

Comparisons are odorous.
- Dogberry, l. 15
  Cf. John Fortescue: Comparisons are odious.

If I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.
- Dogberry, l. 20

A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in, the wit is out.
- Dogberry, l. 33

Act IV

Scene i

O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!
- Claudio, l. 19

O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
- Claudio, l. 34

I never tempted her with word too large;
But, as a brother to his sister, show’d
Bashful sincerity and comely love.
- Claudio, l. 51

I have mark’d
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes.
- Friar, l. 159

For it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.
- Friar, l. 217

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit,
More moving-delicate and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul.
- Friar, l. 224

I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?
- Benedick, l. 266

Scene ii

Is our whole dissembly appeared?
- Dogberry, l. 1

Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves; and it will go near to be thought so shortly.
- Dogberry, l. 20

Yea, marry, that's the eftest way.
- Dogberry, l. 32

Flat burglary, as ever was committed.
- Dogberry, l. 46

O villain! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.
- Dogberry, l. 52

O that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
- Dogberry, l. 69

A fellow that hath had losses; and one that hath two gowns, and every thing handsome about him.
- Dogberry, l. 78

Act V

Scene i

Patch grief with proverbs.
- Leonato, l. 17

Men
Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel.
- Leonato, l. 20

Charm ache with air, and agony with words.
- Leonato, l. 26

’Tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself.
- Leonato, l. 27

Therein do men from children nothing differ.
- Antonio, l. 33

For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods,
And made a push at chance and sufferance.
- Leonato, l. 35

Some of us will smart for it.
- Antonio, l. 109

In a false quarrel there is no true valour.
- Benedick, l. 120

What though care killed a cat.
- Claudio, l. 131
  Cf. Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour, act 1, sc. 1: Care'll kill a cat.
  George Wither, "A Christmas Carol", st. 8: Hang sorrow, care will kill a cat.

Don Pedro: Officers, what offence have these men done?
Dogberry: Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
Don Pedro: First, I ask thee what they have done; thirdly, I ask thee what’s their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed; and, to conclude, what you lay to their charge.
- l. 202

Scene ii

I was not born under a rhyming planet.
- Benedick, l. 36

Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
- Beatrice, l. 45

Scene iii

Done to death by slanderous tongues.
- Claudio, l. 3

Scene iv

Get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.
- Benedick, l. 117

External links

Encyclopedic article on Much Ado About Nothing on Wikipedia
Works related to Much Ado About Nothing on Wikisource