told, had never hinted at faults so serious? But Beatrice neither reproaches her cousin, nor seeks to extenuate the defects laid to her charge. She trusts Hero implicitly, and being herself incapable of deceit or misrepresentation, she regards Hero's heavy indictment as a thing not to be impugned. The future, she resolves, shall make it impossible for any one to entertain such a conception of her as Hero has described.
This is the turning-point in Beatrice's life; and in the representation it should be shown by her whole demeanour, and especially by the way the lines just quoted are spoken, that a marked change has come over her since, "like a lapwing," she stole into the bower of honeysuckles. Thus the audience will be prepared for the development of the high qualities which she soon afterwards displays.
She is then one of the brilliant group that accompanies Hero to the altar. When Claudio brings forward his accusation against his bride, Beatrice is struck dumb with amazement. Indignation at the falsehood of the charge, and at the unmanliness that could wait for such a moment to make it, is mingled with the keenest sympathy for Leonato as well as for Hero. I never knew exactly for which of the two my sympathy should most be shown, and I found myself by the side now of the one, now of the other. Hero had her friends, her attendants round her; but her kind uncle and guardian stands alone. Strangely enough, his brother Antonio, who plays a prominent part afterwards, is not at the wedding.
Beatrice's blood is all on fire at the disgrace thus brought upon her family and herself. When she hears the vile slander supported by Don Pedro; and when Don John, that sour-visaged hypocrite whom she dislikes by instinct, with insolent audacity throws fresh reproaches upon the fainting Hero, her eye falls on Benedick, who stands apart bewildered, looking on the scene with an air of manifest distress. In that moment, as I think, Beatrice makes up her mind that he shall be her cousin's champion. Were she not a woman, she would herself enter the lists to avenge the wrong: since she cannot do this directly, she will do it indirectly by enlisting this new-found lover in her cause. How happy a coincidence it is, that Hero has so lately brought the fact of Benedick's devotion to her knowledge! All remembrance of the harsh, the unkind accusations against herself, with which the information was mixed up, has vanished from her mind. It was Hero who revealed to her the unsuspected love of Benedick, – at least its earnestness and depth, – and Hero shall be the first to benefit by it.
Benedick is so present to her thoughts, that when Hero faints in her arms, she calls to him, as well as to Leonato and the Friar, to come to her assistance. "Help, uncle! Hero! why, Hero! Uncle! Signor Benedick! Friar!" Nor is he unmoved by what he has noted in Beatrice. Her deep emotion has touched him, and he begins to waver in his belief in the charge against Hero, when he hears Beatrice exclaim, with a voice resonant with the energy of assured conviction, "Oh, on my soul, my cousin is belied!" He is not disinclined to accept the Friar's suggestion that "there is some strange misprision in the princes," and his instinct at once leads him to suspect that they have been the dupes of Don John.
