with a fury" – a qualification made in very soreness at the triumph her superior skill, in the carte and tierce of badinage, has so recently given her over him. Claudio, who, on seeing Hero again, finds that the admiration he had felt for her before going to the war has deepened into an absorbing passion, writhes under the banter of his unsympathetic friend, and is very glad to have the support of Don Pedro, who now joins them. His coming is the signal for Benedick to start off afresh into protestations of his indifference to the whole female sex, and of his fixed determination to live a bachelor. When Don Pedro, who knows human nature a great deal too well to take such protestations for serious earnest, says, "I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love," Benedick rejoins, "With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord, but not with love." Don Pedro adheres to his opinion, quoting the line, "In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke;" and this draws from Benedick the protest, on which so much of the humour of what happens afterwards depends, –
"Bene. 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.'
D. Pedro. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly.
Bene. I look for an earthquake too, then."
Benedick gone, Claudio is free to open the state of his heart to his patron and friend, Don Pedro. He fears his liking may seem too sudden, and explains that it was of old standing. Before he had gone with the Prince on the expedition just ended, he had looked on Hero –
"With a soldier's eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love.
But now I am returned, and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I liked her ere I went to wars."
This being the state of his heart, why should he not have urged his suit in person? Instead of doing so, however, he at once adopts Don Pedro's suggestion, that she should be wooed by proxy: –
"I know we shall have revelling to-night;
I will assume thy part in some disguise,
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio;
And in her bosom I'll unclasp my heart,
And take her hearing prisoner with the force
And strong encounter of my amorous tale."
Brides for princes have often been wooed by proxy, and with results not always satisfactory to the princes, but here the order of things is reversed. Surely the man who could leave another to plead for him in such a cause, can have no great strength of character; and that this is true of Claudio, seems to me to be very clearly shown by his subsequent conduct. Presently we see how easily he allows himself to be swayed, as weak men will, by what other people say, when Don Pedro's brother, Don John, to gratify the personal grudge he feels for having been supplanted by Claudio in his brother's regard, persuades him that Don Pedro is playing him false, and wooing Hero for himself.
