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Than to drive liking to the name of love;

But now I am return'd, 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 lik'd her ere I went to wars.

In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity.

Claudio. No, Leonato,

I never tempted her with word too large,

But, as a brother to his sister, show'd

Bashful sincerity, and comely love.

Hero. And seem'd I ever otherwise to you?

Claudio. Out on thy seeming, I will write against it:

You seem to me as Dian in her orb,

As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;

But you are more intemperate in your blood

Than Veilus, or those pamper'd animals

That rage in savage sensuality.

Hero. Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?

Leonato. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.

Benedick. This looks not like a nuptial.

Hero. True! O God!

The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespeare seems to have been fond. He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines:

Friar. She dying, as it must be so maintain'd,

Upon the instant that she was accus'd,

Shall be lamented, pity'd, and excus'd,

Of every hearer: for it so falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,

While 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

Whilst it was ours.—So will it fare with Claudio;

When he shall hear she dy'd upon his words,

The idea of her love shall sweetly creep

Into his study of imagination;

And every lovely organ of her life

Shall come apparel'd in more precious habit,

More moving, delicate, and full of life,

Into the eye and prospect of his soul,

Than when she liv'd indeed.

The principal comic characters in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Benedick and Beatrice, are both essences in their kind. His character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less happily effected by the pretended story of Beatrice's love for him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the best, that of the trick which is thus practised on Benedick, or that in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity on him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare (which they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner in which Beatrice is described as coming to hear the plot which is contrived against herself:

For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs

Close by the ground, to hear our conference.

In consequence of what she hears (not a word of which s true) she exclaims when these good-natured informants are gone:

What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?

Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?

Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride adieu!

No glory lives behind the back of such.

And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee;

Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand;

If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee

To bind our loves up in an holy band:

For others say thou dost deserve; and I

Believe it better than reportingly.

And Benedick, on his part, is equally sincere in his repentance with equal reason, after he has heard the grey-beard, Leonato, and his friend, 'Monsieur Love', discourse of the desperate state of his supposed inamorata.

This can be no trick; the conference was sadly borne.—They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her affections have the full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censur'd: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive