Audition Side 1 – Beatrice and Benedict
BEFORE THIS SCENE: Benedick’s friends decided to try to trick Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love with each other. Before this, Benedick and Beatrice despised each other. Benedick has overheard his friends saying that Beatrice only acts like she hates him because she’s worried that if she shows him her true feelings then he will laugh at her. Right before this scene, he has a revelation that he does indeed love Beatrice.
Beatrice has been ordered to come out and ask Benedick to come inside for dinner. She is puzzled by his behavior, but still manages to throw a few barbs at him.
BENEDICK: (to the audience) Here comes Beatrice. By this day, she’s a fair lady! I do spy some marks of love in her.
(Beatrice enters)
BEATRICE: Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
BENEDICK: Fair, Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
BEATRICE: I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come.
BENEDICK: You take pleasure then in the message?
BEATRICE: Yea, just so much as you take upon a knife’s point. You have no stomach, signor? Fare you well. (She exits)
Audition Side 2 – Don John and Borachio
BEFORE THIS SCENE: Don John is the Prince’s half-brother from the wrong side of the blanket. He hates his brother. He hates everything to do with his brother. He has to act like he likes his brother when he’s around him, though, in order to keep his status. Borachio is Don John’s servant. Claudio and Hero have vowed to love each other and marry. Claudio is the Prince’s friend. Don John wants to do something to thwart this marriage.
JOHN: It is so. The Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.
BORACHIO: Yea, my lord, but I can cross it.
JOHN: Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me. I am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his affections ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?
BORACHIO: I think I told your lordship, a year since, how much I am in favor of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.
JOHN: I remember.
BORACHIO: The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the prince your brother, spare not to tell him that he hath wronged his honor in marrying the renowned Claudio to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero.
Audition Side 3 – Benedict Monologue
BEFORE THIS SCENE: Benedick has just overheard his friends talking about how much Beatrice loves him. He talks to the audience.
BENEDICK: This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne; they have the truth of this from Hero. Love me? Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. They say the lady is fair – ‘tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous – ‘tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me – by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? No, the world must be people. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
Audition Side 4 – Beatrice Monologue
BEFORE THIS SCENE: Beatrice has just overheard her cousin and maid talking about how much Benedick loves Beatrice but is afraid to show it. She talks to the audience.
BEATRICE:
What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemned 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 a holy band,
For others say thou dost deserve, and I
Believe it better than reportingly.
Audition Side 5 – Hero and Ursula
BEFORE THIS SCENE: Benedick and Beatrice’s friends and family have decided to trick them into falling in love with each other. Hero and the family maid Ursula are discussing how much Benedick loves Beatrice. They know that Beatrice is eavesdropping. At times, they are bigger with their words and gestures to get the point across to the hiding Beatrice.
HERO: No truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful.
I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggard of the rock.
URSULA: But are you sure that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?
HERO: So says the prince, and my new-trothed lord.
URSULA: And did they bid you tell her of it, madame.
HERO: They did entreat me to acquaint her of it,
But I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick,
To wish him wrestle with affection
And never let Beatrice know of it.
URSULA: Why did you so?
HERO: O god of love!
Nature never framed a woman’s heart
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes.
She cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.
URSULA: Sure I think so,
And therefore certainly it were not good
She knew his love, lest she’ll make sport at it.
AUDITION SIDE 6 – Leonato, Claudio, Don Pedro, Antonio
BEFORE THIS SCENE: Claudio, thinking that Hero has been untrue to him (Don John and Borachio’s plan worked), jilted her on their wedding day. Now Leonato, Antonio, and their family have come up with a plan to make him feel sorry for wronging Hero. They tell him that she is dead because of him.
CLAUDIO: (to Antonio and Leonato) Good day to both of you.
LEONATO: Hear you, my lords –
PEDRO: We have some haste, Leonato.
LEONATO: Some haste, my lord! Well, fare you well, my lord.
Are you so hasty now? Well, all is one.
PEDRO: Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.
ANTONIO: If he could right himself with quarreling,
Some of us would lie low.
CLAUDIO: Who wrongs him?
LEONATO: Marry, thou dost wrong me, thou dissembler, thou!
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, framed by thy villainy!
CLAUDIO: Away! I will not have to do with you.
PEDRO: My heart is sorry for your daughter’s death,
But on my honor, she was charged with nothing
But what is true, and very full of proof.