Читать книгу The Complete Works of Shakespeare онлайн

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Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.

Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it. He is a very valiant trencherman, he hath an excellent stomach.

Mess. And a good soldier too, lady.

Beat. And a good soldier to a lady, but what is he to a lord?

Mess. A lord to a lord, a man to a man, stuff’d with all honorable virtues.

Beat. It is so indeed, he is no less than a stuff’d man. But for the stuffing—well, we are all mortal.

Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.

Beat. Alas, he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man govern’d with one; so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse, for it is all the wealth that he hath left to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his companion now? he hath every month a new sworn brother.