Note to Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.285-289: "The body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments . . . ."


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Much Ado About Nothing,
Act 1, Scene 1, line 285.
The body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither: ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience: —Don Pedro and Claudio mocked Benedick, and now Benedick warns them against thinking that they are wits. They mocked him for using the phrase "I commit you to the tuition of God." Now he tells them that they, too, use common phrases and clichés, and oftentimes not very well. Using tailoring as a metaphor, he compares their supposed wit to a garment decorated with stray bits of cloth ("guarded with fragments"), and adds that their supposed witticisms have little to do with what they are saying ("are but slightly basted on"). He concludes by admonishing them to examine their conscience, so that they will see what he says is true.