in that corner?
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.
May be she doth but counterfeit.
Faith, like enough.
O God, counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of
passion came so near the life of passion as she
discovers it.
Why, what effects of passion shows she?
Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.
What effects, my lord? She will sit you, you heard
my daughter tell you how.
She did, indeed.
How, how, pray you? You amaze me: I would have I
thought her spirit had been invincible against all
assaults of affection.
I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially
against Benedick.
I should think this a gull, but that the
white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot,
sure, hide himself in such reverence.
He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.
Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?
No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.
'Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: 'Shall
I,' says she, 'that have so oft encountered him
with scorn, write to him that I love him?'
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.
Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a
pretty jest your daughter told us of.
O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she
found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?
That.
O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence;
railed at herself, that she should be so immodest
to write to one that she knew would flout her; '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.'
Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs,
beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses; 'O
sweet Benedick! God give me patience!'
She doth indeed; my daughter says so: and the
ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my daughter
is sometime afeared she will do a desperate outrage
to herself: it is very true.
It were good that Benedick knew of it by some
other, if she will not discover it.
To what end? He would make but a sport of it and
torment the poor lady worse.
An he