Love and Other Trifling Lunacies

Since this is also my year of reading Shakespeare's plays I am being introduced to the ones I have never considered reading before. The following passage is from Much Ado About Nothing and in truth I find it more romantic (in the truest sense of the world) than the moonings of Romeo and Juliet. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, these two have met before and Beatrice, from what we can understand, did fall in love with Benedick. But he played her for a fool. And now, when they meet there is a "merry war" between them, a skirmish of words...I loved Emma Thompson as Beatrice and Kenneth Branagh as Benedick. The movie is available on YouTube and I seriously recommend you watch it.



BEATRICE: I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.

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.

BENEDICK: Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and Iwould 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. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

BENEDICK: God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face.

BEATRICE: Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were.

BENEDICK: Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

BEATRICE: A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

BENEDICK: I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God's name; I have done.

BEATRICE: You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.