WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Much Ado About Nothing Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: Don Pedro: Good den, good den. Claudio: Good day to both of you. Leonato: Hear you, my lords! Don Pedro: We have some haste, Leonato. Leonato: Some haste, my lord! Well, fare you well, my lord. 5 Are you so hasty now? Well, all is one. Don Pedro: Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man. Antonio: If he could right himself with quarrelling, Some of us would lie low. Claudio: Who wrongs him? 10 Leonato: Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou! Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword; I fear thee not. Claudio: Marry, beshrew my hand Leonato: If it should give your age such cause of fear! In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword. Tush, tush, man; never fleer and jest at me; 15 I speak not like a dotard nor a fool, As under privilege of age to brag What have I done being young, or what would do 20 Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head, Thou hast so wrong'd mine innocent child and me That I am forc'd to lay my reverence by, And with grey hairs and bruise of many days Do challenge thee to trial of a man. 25 I say thou hast belied mine innocent child; Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart, And she lies buried with her ancestors O! in a tomb where never scandal slept, Save this of hers, fram'd by thy villainy. 30 Claudio: My villainy! Leonato: Thine, Claudio; thine, I say. Don Pedro: You say not right, old man. Leonato: My lord, my lord, I'l prove it on his body if he dare, 35 Despite his nice fence and his active practice, His May of youth and bloom of lustihood. Claudio: Away! I will not have to do with you. Leonato: Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill'd my child; If thou kill'st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man. 40 Antonio: He shall kill two of us, and men indeed; But that's no matter; let him kill one first. Win me and wear me; let him answer me. Come, follow me, boy; come, sir boy, come follow me; Sir boy, I'll whip you from your foining fence; Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will. 45 Leonanto: Brother Antonio: Content yourself. God knows I lov'd my niece; And she is dead, slander'd to death by villains, That dare as well answer a man indeed As I dare take a serpent by the tongue. Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops! 50 Leonanto: Brother Antony – Antonio: Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea, And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple – Scambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys, That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, Go anticly, and show outward hideousness, And speak off half a dozen dang’rous words, How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst; 55 60 And this is all. Leonato: But, brother Antony – Antonio: Come, 'tis no matter. Don Pedro: Do not you meddle; let me deal in this. Gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience. My heart is sorry for your daughter's death; But, on my honour, she was charg’d with nothing But what was true, and very full of proof. 65 Leonato: My lord, my lord – Don Pedro: I will not hear you. 70 Leonato: No? Antonio: Come, brother, away. I will be heard. And shall, or some of us will smart for it. What does Shakespeare make you feel about Leonato at this point in the play?