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Enter the Prince [Don Pedro].

D. Pedro. Now, signior, where’s the Count? Did you see him?

Bene. Troth, my lord, I have play’d the part of Lady Fame. I found him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren. I told him, and I think I told him true, that your Grace had got the good will of this young lady, and I off’red him my company to a willow- either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipt.

D. Pedro. To be whipt? What’s his fault?

Bene. The flat transgression of a schoolboy, who being overjoy’d with finding a bird’s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it.

D. Pedro. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer.

Bene. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the garland too, for the garland he might have worn himself, and the rod he might have bestow’d on you, who (as I take it) have stol’n his bird’s nest.

D. Pedro. I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner.

Bene. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say honestly.