I just want something to copy and write up. I'd like to show you, what I'm doing for my SAT's. And I think these are lovely scenes, to be quite honest with you. Shakespere. <3
It is called "Much Ado About Nothing," and it's about vendetta's and love. It's quite funny. If you need anything translating into modern english do feel free. These are the scenes we are studying.

Act One Scene One - Lines 1 - 133.

The play opens at the home of Leonato. Leonato is the Governor of Messina. With him are, Hero (his daughter), Beatrice (his niece) and a messenger who has just arrived with a message from the Prince of Aragon, Don Pedro.

Leonato: I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina.

Messenger: He is very near by this. He was not three leagues off when I left him.

Leonato: How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?

Messenger: But few of any sort, and none of name.

Leonato: A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio.

Messenger: Much deserved on his part, and equally remembered by Don Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure of a lamb, and the feats of a lion. He hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

Leonato: He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.

Messenger: I have already delievered him letters, and there appears much joy in him, even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.

Leonato: Did he break out into tears?

Messenger: In great measure.

Leonato: A kind overflow of kindness; there are no faces truer than those what are so washed. How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

Beatrice: I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars, or no?

Messenger: I know none of that name, lady; there was none such in the army of any sort.

Leonato: What is he that you ask for, niece?

Hero: My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.

Messenger: O, he's returned, and as pleasant as ever he was.

Beatrice: He set up his bills here in Messina, and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? For indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.

Leonato: Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

Messenger: He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.

Beatrice: You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it. He is a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an excellent stomach.

Messenger: And a good soldier too, lady.

Beatrice: And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a lord?

Messenger: A lord to a lord, a man to a man, stuffed with all honourable virtues.

Beatrice: It is so, indeed, he is no less than a stuffed man; but for the stuffing - well, we are all mortal.

Leonato: 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 then.

Beatrice: Alas, he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he had 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 a known a reasonable creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every month a new sworn brother.

Messenger: Is't possible?

Beatrice: Very easily possible. He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.

Messenger: I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

Beatrice: No: an he were, I would burn my study. But, I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil?

Messenger: He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.

Beatrice: O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease. He is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pounds ere a be cured.

Messenger: I will hold friends with you, lady.

Beatrice: Do, good friend.

Leonato: You will never run mad, niece.

Beatrice: No, not till a hot January.

Messenger: Don Pedro is approached.

Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar and Don John.

Don Pedro: Good Signior Leonato, are you come to meet your trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

Leonato: Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace. For trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave.

Don Pedro: You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your daughter.

Leonato: Her mother hath many times told me so.

Benedick: Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

Leonato: Signior Benedick, no, for then were you a child.

Don Pedro: You have it full, Benedick: we may guess by this what you are, being a man. Truly, the lady fathers herself. Be happy, lady, for you are like an honourable father.

Benedick: If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as like him as she is.

Don Pedro and Leonato move away and talk together.

Beatrice: I wonder that you will be still talking, Signior Benedick. Nobody marks you.

Benedick: What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?

Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.

Benedick: Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none.

Beatrice: A dear happiness to women. They would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

Benedick: God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate scratched face.

Beatrice: Scratching could not make it worse, and 'twere such a face as yours were.

Benedick: Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.

Beatrice: A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.

Benedick: I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, a' God's name. I have done.

Beatrice: You always end with a jade's trick. I know you of old.


Act 2, Scene 1, Line 183 - End of Scene.

Enter Don Pedro, Hero and Leonato. They join Benedick who is still on stage.

Don Pedro: Now, Signior, where's the Count? Did you see him?

Benedick: Troth, my lord, I have played 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 offered him my company to a willow-tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

Don Pedro: To be whipped! What's his fault?

Benedick: The flat trangression of a schoolboy - who being overjoyed with finding a bird's nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it.

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

Benedick: 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 bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have stolen his bird's nest.

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

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

Don Pedro: The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you: the gentleman that danced with her told her she is much wronged by you.

Benedick: O, she misused me past the endurance of a block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She tole me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince's jester, that I was duller than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near here: she would infect to the North Star. I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed. She would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her; you shall find the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure her. For certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary, and people sin upon purpose becaust they would go thither. So indeed, all disquiet, horror and perturbation follows her.

Enter Claudio and Beatrice.

Don Pedro: Look, here she comes.

Benedick: Will your Grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; feth you a hair off the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?

Don Pedro: None, but to desire your good company.

Benedick: O God, sir, here's a dish I love not. I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.

Exit Benedick.

Don Pedro: Come, lady, come: you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.

Beatrice: Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice: therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.

Don Pedro: You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

Beatrice: So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools. I have brought Count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.

Don Pedro: Why, how now, Count! Wherefore are you sad?

Claudio: Not sad, my lord.

Don Pedro: How then? Sick?

Claudio: Neither, my lord.

Beatrice: The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, not well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.

Don Pedro: I' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true, though, I'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. Here, Claudio. I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have broke with her father, and his good will obtained. Name the day of marriage, and God give thee joy!

Leonato: Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes. His Graec hath made the match and all grace says Amen to it.

Beatrice: Speak, Count, 'tis your cue.

Claudio: Silence is the perfectest herald of joy; I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours; I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.

Beatrice: Speak, cousin, or if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak neither.

Don Pedro: In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.

Beatrice: Yea, my lord. I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her heart.

Claudio: And so she doth, cousin.

Beatrice: Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry "Heigh-ho for a husband!"

Don Pedro: Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

Beatrice: I would rather have one of your father's getting. Hath your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them.

Don Pedro: Will you have me, lady?

Beatrice: No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days. Your Grace is too costly to wear every day. But I beseech your Grace, pardon me. I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

Don Pedro: Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you, for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.

Beatrice: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried, but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born. Cousins, God give you joy!

Leonato: Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?

Beatrice: I cry you mercy, uncle. By your Grace's pardon.

Exit Beatrice.

Don Pedro: By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

Leonato: There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord. She is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I have my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.

Don Pedro: She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

Leonato: O, by no means. She mocks all her wooers out of suit.

Don Pedro: She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

Leonato: O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.

Don Pedro: Count Claudio, when mean you go to church?