Much Ado Key Quotes (related to Hero and Leonato)

Question 1

Act 2, Scene 3
Leonato guiles Benedick Q1

Answer 1

O God, counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it. (Oh God! Pretending? Then pretend passion has never seemed so much like real passion, at least the way she displays it.)

• repetition of counterfeit (pretending)
• use of “God”
• could also reflect Shakespeare’s religious view

Question 2

Act 2, Scene 3
Leonato guiles Benedick Q2

Answer 2

What effects, my lord? She will sit you—you heard my daughter tell you how. (What symptoms, my lord? You know, she will sit—but you heard my daughter tell you about it.)

Question 3

Act 2, Scene 3
Leonato guiles Benedick Q3

Answer 3

Oh, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found “Benedick” and “Beatrice” between the sheet?

Question 4

Act 3, Scene 1
Hero guiles Beatrice Q1

Answer 4

Say that thou overheardst us, and bid her steal into the pleachèd bower where honeysuckles ripened by the sun forbid the sun to enter. (Say that you overheard us, and tell her to sneak into the leafy arbour where the honeysuckles, brought to full bloom by the sun, now block the sunlight from entering.)

Question 5

Act 3, Scene 1
Hero guiles Beatrice Q2

Answer 5

If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, made a foul blot; (If he has a dark complexion, she’ll say that Nature must have spilled some ink while drawing his ugly portrait.)

Question 6

Act 3, Scene 1
Hero guiles Beatrice Q3

Answer 6

I know her spirits are as coy and wild as haggards of the rock. (I know that she’s as shy and untameable as a wild hawk in the mountains.)

Question 7

Act 4, Scene 1
Leonato’s anger at Hero Q1

Answer 7

Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me? (Does any man here have a dagger for me to stab myself?)

Question 8

Act 4, Scene 1
Leonato’s anger at Hero Q2

Answer 8

O Fate! Take not away thy heavy hand! Death is the fairest cover for her shame that may be wished for.

(Oh, Fate, don’t spare your heavy hand of punishment! The best thing I could wish for to cover up her shame is death.)

Question 9

Act 4, Scene 1
Leonato’s anger at Hero Q3

Answer 9

Wherefore! Why, doth not every earthly thing cry shame upon her? Could she here deny the story that is printed in her blood?

(Why shouldn’t she look up? Why, isn’t everything on earth condemning her? Can she deny the story that is written in her guilty blush?)

Question 10

Act 4, Scene 1
Leonato’s anger at Hero Q4

Answer 10

O she is fall’n into a pit of ink, that the wide sea hath drops too few to wash her clean again and salt too little which may season give to her foul tainted flesh!

(Oh, but now you have fallen into a pit of ink, and even the wide sea doesn’t have enough water to wash you clean again, or enough salt to preserve your rotting flesh!)

Question 11

Act 4, Scene 1
Hero’s humility

Answer 11

“Refuse (disown) me, hate me, torture me to death!”