Don Pedro
Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of today, that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signor Benedick?
Claudio
(Aside) O, ay; stalk on, stalk on, the fowl sits. - I did never think that lady would have loved any man.
Claudio uses the image of a cat stalking a resting bird to tell the men they have caught Benedick’s attention.
Leonato
No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote on Signor Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor.
Which lines are intended to be overheard by Benedick and which are comments between the men themselves? Does this help us imagine the scene?
Benedick
(Aside) Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?
Is that really the way things are?
Leonato
By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it; but that she loves him with an enraged affection: it is past the infinite of thought.
Don Pedro
May be she doth but counterfeit.
Claudio
Faith, like enough.
Leonato
O God! Counterfeit? There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it.
Beatrice can’t be faking her feelings as they seem too real. No one has ever faked passion as well as this.
Don Pedro
Why, what effects of passion shows she?
Claudio
(To DON PEDRO and LEONATO) Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.
Leonato
What effects, my lord? She will sit you - you heard my daughter tell you how.
Does Leonato run out of things to say? How do the others cover for him to keep up the pretence?
Don Pedro
How, how, pray you? You amaze me; I would have I thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.
Leonato
I would have sworn it had, my lord, especially against Benedick.
Benedick
(Aside) I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it; knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.
A gull is another word for trick. Benedick can’t believe this is all a joke as someone as respected as Leonato is saying it.
Claudio
(To DON PEDRO and LEONATO) He hath ta'en the infection; hold it up.
He believes us, keep going.
Don Pedro
Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?
Leonato
No, and swears she never will; that's her torment.
Claudio
'Tis true, indeed, so your daughter says. 'Shall I,' says she, 'that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?’
Leonato
This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she'll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us all.
A ‘smock’ is a slip or nightdress. Mentioning Hero as a witness to Beatrice’s behaviour makes their story more believable.