MUCH
– BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS
The following material is based
upon an audio lecture available on the web page for English 154. Although this text material is not identical
to the audio lecture, it is essentially the same information. You should have read the play before you
begin this lecture. The text referred to
is the Signet paperback edition of the play, a book you should have opened as
you read this material.
Although
Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing in 1600, just five years after
his early romantic triumphs of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, his dramatic effects and characterizations are much more
sophisticated than his earlier plays. In
this play we see the mature Shakespeare in operation, writing for his acting
company when it was near the pinnacle of its achievement. It is one of four romantic comedies which
were written around the same time – the late 1590’s and early 1600’s – and
included Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. We know the play was popular in its day
because it appears in a separate quarto
edition, almost always a sign of popularity, published in 1600, and stating
that it had recently been performed by Shakespeare’s company, called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men at that time.
The basic
structure of the play is three different plot lines which are intertwined:
1.)
Claudio and Hero: the conventional
young lovers who have a crisis in their relationship and then are reunited at
the end of the play.
2.)
Dogberry: a bumbling amateur policeman,
who with his associates, the volunteer watchmen, figure in the action when they
catch the bad guys.
3.)
Beatrice and Benedick: two
battling, witty lovers who begin the play hating each other and end up in a
different kind of loving relationship.
Shakespeare
took the idea of the young lover falsely accused of infidelity from several
different sources, including the Italian writers Bandello in his book Novelle
and Aristo in Orlando Furioso.
Bandello’s work had been translated into French by the writer
Belleforest, from whom Shakespeare had taken material for his play Hamlet
written around this same time. Even
Shakespeare’s contemporary Edmund Spencer had used a similar story in his great
work The Faerie Queen. The comic
characters of Dogberry and his buddies don’t seem to come from any particular
source. They are similar to the working
class characters of Bottom and his acting friends in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Upon closer examination we
can see that Dogberry may have been included for a somewhat serious satiric
purpose, which we’ll explore later. When
most people think of Much Ado About Nothing, they think of Beatrice and
Benedick, the battling lovers, who come not from any one source but from a long
tradition in theater and popular culture of witty, bickering couples. The models for these sophisticated combatants
may have come from contemporary real life figures. In his important work, The Book of the
Courtier, the Italian writer Castiglione, many of whose ideas and
observations found their way into Shakespeare’s plays, described such lovers in
a Renaissance court he observed:
I have also seen a most fervent love
spring in the
heart of a woman who seemed at first not
to bear
him the least affection in the world,
only for that they
had
heard say that it was the opinion of many that
they loved together.
In other
words, this unnamed woman disdained the man until she heard someone say she was
really in love with him. This
misperception was the trigger, according to Castiglione, to cause the woman to fall
in love with the man in question.
Similar figures of bright, sophisticated people falling in love are
found in earlier romantic comedies by the English writer John Lyly. Besides these possible external sources
Shakespeare had already created similar lovers in his early comedies Love’s
Labors Lost and Taming of the Shrew.
The courtly lovers in the first play engage in sexually-charged banter;
those in the second, Petruchio and Kate, actually battle one another before
falling in love.
This idea
of people achieving romantic bliss through insult and antagonism has always
been around. There are many examples in
our popular culture. People my age will
remember the great comedies of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, films like Adam’s
Rib and Pat and Mike, which were based on couples who were in love
but had to struggle through all the comic complications of their trying to
one-up each other. A number of recent
movie comedies explore the same dynamics.
The popular television series Moonlighting, with Sibyl Shepherd
and Bruce Willis, used the same dynamics; in fact one particular show was a
take-off on Shakespeare’s Shrew.
One of
the things which makes this comedy so memorable is the contrast between the
conventional lovers, Claudio and Hero, who do everything by the book and are
registered at Nordstrom’s and will end up with 2.3 kids living in Blackhawk,
and the unconventional lovers, Beatrice and Benedick, who are at odds not only
with each other but with the society in which they find themselves; neither of
them will play by the rules. The two
courtships proceed simultaneously and become linked dramatically. In fact in a very dramatic scene the fate of
Hero and Claudio becomes the heart of Beatrice and Benedick’s future
success. Despite this connection
Beatrice and Benedick’s relationship dominates the play and fascinates the
audience. Unlike couples like Romeo and
Juliet, these two seem unfazed by love.
They present themselves as worldly sophisticates consciously playing
parts which set them at odds with those around them. Their attitudes are reflected in their
language. We would assume given the
romantic nature of this play that most of the language would be in verse, but
it is not! Most of the language of the play is in prose. Furthermore, the few times Beatrice and
Benedick try to speak in the language of love, they are ill-at-ease and
self-conscious. Much Ado About
Nothing has one of the highest proportions of prose among all of
Shakespeare’s plays. The prose reflects
the anti-romantic attitudes of its principal characters, their refusal to play
the game demanded by their society – Benedick as the ardent, poetic lover,
Beatrice as the coy, flirtatious maiden.
Dogberry,
Verges and the Watch are reminders of the ordinary, workaday world in which
this rarefied romance takes place. You
may have these noble gentlemen and ladies engaged in elaborate courtship
rituals under the watchful eye of a royal monarch, Don Pedro. But somebody still has to police the place,
arrest the bad guys and make sure the drunks get home and into bed. That’s the role of Dogberry and his
buddies. Ordinarily they would never
come in contact with Don Pedro or the lovers.
Nothing surprises the intellectual Beatrice and Benedick; Dogberry and
the Watch barely understand what’s going on, missing the meaning of words all
the time. One of the great comic ironies
of this play is that with all these bright people (it’s almost like a
convention of Mensa at times), the ones who uncover the plot of the villains
are the dopey cops. It’s not entirely
clear at the end of the play that they understand what they accomplished, but
by god, they’re the heroes.
The society
of Much Ado is very tight, a small world in which everyone knows each
other. The fact that they are so
close-knit is what makes it possible for an unscrupulous villain like Don John
to take advantage of the good guys, at least temporarily. This social closeness is also what makes the
manipulation of Beatrice and Benedick so exhilarating; they have known each
other for some time so that they think the other person holds no
surprises. Then when their friends start
revealing the other person is in love, they have to re-examine their
relationship. For example, Benedick has
to search hard for “hidden meanings” in Beatrice’s behavior and pronouncements
to prove this love exists. Beatrice has
to analyze her own bitter feelings toward Benedick and find reasons to make him
worthy of her love. The relationship
between these two is actually pretty complicated; they’re more than just
battling lovers. David Stevenson, in his
introduction to the play in the Signet edition, says of them on page lxviii,
after having referred to Claudio and Hero as acting like children,
Beatrice and Benedick, wholly unchildlike,
present another view of the
essential stuff of the play, a view that
cuts across the conventional one
[the love of Claudio and Hero], and
insinuates doubts lurking in sophis-
ticated minds as to its necessary
validity. They are everywhere presented
as completely aware of the fact that they
are playing roles with and for each
other – Beatrice as shrew, Benedick as
misogynist [hater of women] – and
enjoying the playing. The subject matter of their game is a
distaste for
institutionalized romantic love leading
to marriage, the precise kind of “love”
that Claudio and Hero accept easily and
without thought. The only obstacle
to Claudio’s pursuit would be the sort of
thing he thinks had happened, a lack
of sexual virtue on the part of the girl
who has caught his fancy. The subtle
obstacle to the union of Benedick and
Beatrice is that neither is ever sure of
what he or she would be like if they
agreed to quit playing their respective
roles.
Indeed, part of the dramatic (and psychological) excitement at the
play’s end is that neither one of this
pair is yet certain of what emotions
really lie below the level of
role-playing.
We are
watching Benedick and Beatrice discovering their new roles even as we watch
them falling in love.
The men
in the play are obsessed, both comically and seriously, with cuckoldry, the betrayal of men by the
women they love. There is a large
folklore about cuckoldry which the play uses.
In this folklore, which goes back to prehistoric times, when a man’s wife
was unfaithful he would grow horns
on his forehead, horns which were invisible to him but which everyone else in
the community could see. So everyone
would laugh at the poor victim behind his back, making the sign of the cuckold
(forefinger and little finger held out from your fist) while he would only have
a headache as a sign of his affliction. Since horns were the sign of the
cuckold references to animals with horns, such as oxen and cattle, are also associated with this obsession. Another animal connected to the cuckold was
the cuckoo bird, a large migratory
bird of the English woodlands whose name may well be connected with
cuckoldry. According to folklore the
cuckoo would lay its eggs in the nests of other birds, such as hedge sparrows,
which would then unwittingly raise the young of this intruder. In the same way the cuckolded husband would
raise the child of another without ever realizing that it was not his own. Once again you can see the element of
possible public humiliation in this situation.
If you have ever watched the animated TV series King of the Hill,
you may remember the character who lives next door and is heavily into
conspiracy theories but fails to ever notice that all his kids are the spitting
image of the Indian shaman with whom his wife is involved. In
This
obsession was especially strong among members of the upper classes where it was
assumed that a man was destined to be a cuckold as soon as he married. This extreme attitude goes back to the early
Middle Ages when the tradition of courtly love evolved throughout
You can
imagine how women reacted to this male obsession. They actually seem pretty ambivalent about
their husband’s fears. They resented
this idea that they were so weak that almost anything could set them off and
lead them to their neighbor’s bed. At
the same time they realized that this male fear did give them some power in
their relationships within a male-dominated society.
Finally
the title of the play is a kind of play on this theme of cuckoldry. At one level the name seems a throw-away
title: “a play where nothing really happens.”
In Shakespeare’s time “nothing” was often pronounced as “noting,” as in the
process of setting down musical notes, notes that were sometimes called
“pricks.” In Elizabethan slang “prick”
meant the same thing it does in ours. So
another translation of the title is “Much Ado About the Sex Act,” a kind of
spoof on the enormous guilt that some people try to lay on others about sexual
affairs.
Act I, Scene 1
The play
opens with the end of a war; a time of hostility and suspicions has passed so
people are no longer on their guard.
Notice how the casualties, the body count, are presented in the first
five lines and the social distinction that is made. Most of the opening sequence is Beatrice
talking about Benedick, whom the other characters seem to know very well. Notice in how many different ways she insults
him and the nature of these insults.
(Of course, we cannot really insult someone unless we know them well
enough to push the right buttons.) [Act
I, scene 1, lines 1 – 91]
Leonato,
Governor of Messina, receives word that the king, Don Pedro of
When
Beatrice takes over the conversation at line 29, she focuses almost exclusively
on Benedick, and it becomes clear she, Leonato and Hero know him well. She begins by referring to him as “Signior
Mountanto” which your notes explain is a fencing term for a particularly fancy
stance or thrust. The suggestion here is
that there’s something phony about him, as if he studied books on fencing and
learned the terminology rather than actually fighting. At line 37 she invents an elaborate story
that the last time he had been in town, Benedick issued a challenge to Cupid
for an archery contest. (The suggestion here is that Benedick disdains women
and refuses to fall in love.) The only person who would stand in for Cupid was
Leonato’s fool, or professional jester, who nevertheless bested Benedick using
only a crude cross-bow called a “burbolt.”
It would be like having a home run hitting contest using a whiffle
bat. For a gentleman like Benedick
losing such a contest to lower-class person like a jester would be a terrible
insult. Some scholars think that the
point of this invented story is that Beatrice herself was the fool, that she
fought for love and defeated Benedick.
It is true that the couple has had some kind of attraction in the past
which had ended badly for Beatrice, which we’ll see referred to later, but the
idea that Beatrice was the jester is a bit of a stretch. At line 40 she asks a very strange question:
“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.” The suggestion here is that Beatrice is in no
danger of having to commit cannibalism because she is sure Benedick is
incapable of performing as a soldier, that he is a coward. Others in the play will also question his
courage.
When the
messenger sticks up for Benedick and says he has done “good service” at line
46, Beatrice deliberately interprets the word incorrectly to mean “serving up a
meal” and agrees that “He is a very valiant trencherman” or eater. The messenger continues to try and defend
Benedick from this unwarranted attack and at line 52 asserts that he is “a good
soldier too, lady.” Beatrice once again deliberately misconstrues the statement
at line 52: “And a good soldier to a lady, but what is he/ to a lord?” that is,
a good soldier compared to a lady. The
messenger persists, saying that Benedick is “stuffed with all honorable
virtues,” but Beatrice answers at line 56 that “he is no less than a stuffed/
man. But for the stuffing – well, we are all mortal.” In her keen wit Benedick
is stuffed like a scarecrow, and whatever he is stuffed with doesn’t bear close
examination. When Leonato explains that
“There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her,” Beatrice come
back at line 62, “In our last conflict/ four of his five wits went halting
[limping] off, and now/ is the whole man governed with one.” Your notes explain
about the five wits; the key here is that she asserts that in a contest of
wits, he is the loser.
Up to
this point Beatrice has attacked Benedick’s courage, his integrity and his
intelligence. Now at line 68 she shifts
her ground, asking “Who is his companion now? / He hath every month a new sworn
brother.” At line 71 she expands on her
charge: “He wears his faith but/ as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes
with the next block.” Your notes explain the reference to the “hat block.” When she finds out he is now friendly with
Claudio, Beatrice exclaims in mock concern at line 84, “Good help the noble/
Claudio if he have caught the Benedict; it will cost/ him a thousand pound ere
‘a be cured,” making his friendship sound like a disease. Beatrice’s charge here is that Benedick is
disloyal and fickle in his affection.
When the messenger at around line 75 says, “I see, lady, the gentleman
is not in your books,” Beatrice replies, “No, and [if] he were, I would burn my
study.” She is sharp-tongued and bitter
in her witticisms, but the most interesting thing is that she attacks Benedick’s behavior as a gentleman. In none of the
important attributes of a Renaissance gentleman – loyalty, courage,
consistency, and accomplishment – does he measure up. There was nothing more important to a man in
the upper classes than his reputation as a gentleman, so her attacks go to the
core of his identity. Everyone knows about
this feud: Hero at line 34 recognizes “Signior Mountanto” as Benedick; Leonato
at line 45 warns that Benedick will pay her back. This recognition is what makes this series of
elaborate insults comprehensible: the other characters interpret their
significance for the messenger and for us.
Leonato calls it “a merry war of wits,” but the more we see in the first
two acts, the less “merry” it appears.
At line 89, just after Beatrice had announced that anyone who was
friends with Benedick would “run mad,” Leonato observes, “You will never run mad,
niece,” to which she replies, “No, not till a hot January.” According to your notes, what Leonato means
is “You will never catch the Benedick,” but it also can be taken to mean you
will never fall in love, lose your self-control. At that time women were
programmed to seek a husband above all else, so Leonato’s crack is not just a
good-natured observation but a kind of warning to change her behavior, become
more like his daughter Hero. Beatrice is
defiant in her rejection of the social expectation. Even the messenger is impressed by her fervor
and says at line 87, “I will hold friends with you, Lady.” As a general rule in a Shakespearean play, when a character says he or she will never do something, they will.
In the
next sequence we meet Don Pedro of
The
greetings between Don Pedro and Leonato are elaborate and filled with
flattery. At line 92 the king asks,
“Good Signior Leonato, are you come to/ meet your trouble? The fashion of the
world is to/ avoid cost, and you encounter it.” It was very expensive to
entertain a monarch and all his court, and Pedro plans to stay at least a
month. Queen Elizabeth used to drop in
on ambitious nobles who seemed interested in political intrigue to seize her
crown. She would stay until she had
driven them almost to bankruptcy, thereby curbing their financial means to
oppose her or her policies. Leonato’s
invitation to host the king is an act of significant generosity without any
apparent political motive. Leonato’s
response at line 95 is equally flattering:
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.
One
senses that behind the elaborate praise and expressions of hospitality there is
a real fondness between the king and his official. We see it at line 155 when the King and
Leonato leave. Royal protocol required
that the monarch leave a room first by himself, but Pedro insists that they go
out together. We see this closeness in a
subtle way at line 100 when Pedro turns and acknowledges Leonato’s daughter,
Hero, by saying “I think this is your daughter.” You can imagine all the people crowding
around to see the mighty monarch, and so the protocol was to wait until the
king signaled that he was willing to meet all the friends and family
assembled. Here Pedro honors his host by
taking the initiative in acknowledging Hero.
Leonato’s response may seem strange to us, for he says “Her mother hath
many times told me so,” which is a stock comic line revealing that obsessive
fear of cuckoldry I mentioned earlier.
Remember, this was in the days before DNA and paternity testing when a
husband had to rely primarily on his wife’s assurance about being the father of
his own children. Benedick, being a
smart-ass even in this serious moment, jumps in with an inappropriate remark at
line 102: “Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?” to which Leonato quips,
“Signior Benedick, no, for then were you a child.” This, of course, implies that Benedick is the
kind of gentleman who might impregnate a married woman in an adulterous affair,
a conclusion Pedro humorously applauds at line 105. Here again we see evidence that these people
all know each other well; Leonato would not insult Benedick if he were a
stranger. Benedick tries to cover up his
gaffe at line 110 by quickly asserting that Hero looks just like her
father.
At that
point Beatrice lets loose with her first broadside: “I wonder that you will
still [always] be talking, / Signior Benedick; nobody marks [notices]
you.” Benedick acknowledges her at line
115 by saying, “What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” The word “disdain” had a special force for
courtly gentlewomen. In works like
Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier mentioned earlier, upper class women
were cautioned repeatedly not to be disdainful.
They were expected to act in a friendly, flirtatious manner and trade
banter with men. To be called “Lady
Disdain” would be a major put-down for most women, but Beatrice doesn’t deny
the label, she revels in it! At line 116 she explains, “Is it possible Disdain
should die while she hath such meet [good] food to feed it as Signior
Benedick?” Of course she is disdainful
because Benedick makes it so easy! She
adds that “Courtesy [the set of values governing the behavior of gentle folks]
itself must convert to Disdain if you come/ in her presence.” It’s not just her;
it’s the whole way of life for courtly gentility that Benedick
contradicts. Benedict, playing on the
word “convert,” pronounces at line 120, “Then is courtesy a turncoat.”
Now, in a
statement of sheer arrogance at line 120 Benedict, like Beatrice, declares that
he won’t play the game of courtship Renaissance gentlemen were supposed to:
But it
is certain
I am loved of all ladies, but only you
excepted; and I
would I could find in my heart that I had
not a hard
heart; for truly I love none.
The
complete gentleman was supposed to fall in love on a regular basis; courtship
was what defined his achievement in gentility.
Benedick’s rejection of love and of women runs against the expectation
of his society. Beatrice says that’s
good news for women at line 124: “A dear happiness for women! They would else/
have been troubled with a pernicious suitor.” This contrary position is the
only thing which Beatrice apparently shares with him. She declares at line 125,
“I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humor for/ that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than/
a man swear he loves me.” She credits
her inability to feel affection, her “cold blood,” for sharing Benedick’s
“humor” or personality type. Comparing a
declaration of love to a dog barking at a crow not only diminishes the emotion
of love, it makes it sound fairly ridiculous.
Benedick returns the insult at line 129: “God keep your ladyship still
[always] in that mind, / so some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate/
scratched face.” Giving Beatrice the
title of “your ladyship” is a way of mocking her, and calling her scratching
“predestinate” heightens the insult by making it appear that Beatrice’s vicious
attack on men is inevitable.
At this
point the humor quickly degenerates into a kind of playground brawling between
two kids, the insults coming quicker and quicker:
Beat:
Scratching could not make it [the face] worse and [if]
‘twere such a face as yours were.
Bene:
Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher [speaker of repetitive nonsense]
Beat: A bird of my tongue us better than a beast of
yours.
Bene:
I would my horse had the speed of
your
tongue, and so good a continuer
[stamina]. But keep your
way, a God’s name! I have done.
Most of
this exchange is pretty clear. Beatrice
picks up on Benedick’s slam calling her a “parrot-teacher,” the Elizabethan
equivalent of a broken record. She
accepts the label but asserts that it’s better than the “beast” of his
tongue. At the end, after having
compared Beatrice, insultingly to his horse, Benedick tries to walk away,
announcing that he is finished with the exchange. In a battle like this, who gets the last word
is important for prestige. So Beatrice
at line 140 calls him on his effort to define when the fight is over: “You
always end with a jade’s trick. I know/ you of old.” Your notes explain what a
“jade’s trick” is; the key point for us is that Beatrice alludes to a past
relationship that forms the basis for their present hatred. We never find out much about it, but it’s
clear that Beatrice is obsessed with Benedick: seeking news about him, talking
about him, insulting him in creative ways.
If Benedick wasn’t really interested in her, under this professed
hatred, he wouldn’t spend his time in this elaborate game of
one-up-man-ship. He would simply walk
away and ignore her.
Don Pedro
announces that they will be staying for a month, and Leonato welcomes
everyone. At line 149 he makes a point
of offering a special welcome to Don John: “Let me bid you welcome, my/ lord;
being reconciled to the Prince your brother, I/ owe you all duty.” The reality
is undoubtedly that when the rebels lost the war, Don John made the best deal
he could to save his own skin. He’s not
really “reconciled” with his brother but rather under house arrest. Nevertheless, Leonato, a real gentleman, puts
the best face on the situation. For his
part Don John answers tersely at line 152 “I thank you. I am not of many words, but I/ thank
you.” Not being of “many words”
certainly sets him apart from the people we have met so far in the world of
In this
next exchange Claudio and Benedick are left alone. In the play up to this point what kind of
language has been used – verse or prose?
Claudio begins by asking Benedick what he thinks of Leonato’s daughter, Hero. Why do you think he asks Benedick? How does Benedick react to Claudio’s love
interest? Finally Don Pedro comes in. Notice how he interacts with Benedick and
Claudio. Does he seem to treat them as
an all-powerful monarch would treat his subordinates? [Act I, scene 1, line 156 – 281]
The
language is in this sequence is prose, as it has been from the beginning of the
play. This choice is unusual in that
nearly every character thus far is a royal or noble member of that society, and
such people normally speak in verse in the plays. On the other hand the dominant tone has been
comic and irreverent, which usually appears in prose. Watch for the change from prose to verse.
As soon
as they are alone Claudio asks Benedick what he thinks of Hero. Now the text does not give us any reason why
he asks, at line 164, for Benedick’s “sober judgment,” but he should know
better. All he gets are some one-liners
and bitter witticisms about women and men who love them. Claudio should know better; Benedick has no
“sober judgment.” Although there is no
reason given, we can sense in the text that Claudio asks because he is very insecure. Claudio is quite young and inexperienced, and
he doesn’t trust his own feelings, so that’s why he turns to the worst possible
person he could seek advice from.
Benedick treats Claudio’s revelation with utter contempt, but notice
that he is always careful not to insult Hero specifically; it’s always, I hate
women, she’s a woman, so I hate her. At
line 165 he asks “Would you have me speak after my custom, as being a/
professed tyrant to their sex?” However,
later at line 167, “Only this commendation I can/ afford her, that were she
other than she is, she were/ unhandsome, and being no other than she is, I/ do
not like her.” So here he comes as close as he ever does to acknowledging that
she is good-looking, not “unhandsome,” and yet he still doesn’t like her.
When it’s
clear that Claudio is thinking about marrying Hero, Benedick’s opposition
becomes ferocious. At line 190 he
complains, “Is it come to this? In faith, hath not the world/ one man but he
will wear his cap with suspicion.” As
your notes make clear this is a reference to that obsession with cuckoldry; any
married man will suspect that he is growing horns beneath his cap. “Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore
again?” It seems to Benedick all the
unmarried men are being picked off. At
line 232 we see Benedick’s misogyny (hatred of women):
That a woman conceived me, I thank
her;
that she brought me up, I likewise
give her most
humble thanks. But that I will have a rechate
winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle
in an
invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon
me.
Because I will not do them the wrong to
mistrust any,
I will do myself the right to trust none;
and the fine
is (for the which I may go the finer), I
will live a
bachelor.
Despite
the importance of women in bringing Benedick into this world, he declares he
will never marry so he can avoid being made a cuckold. The “rechate” is a call on a hunting horn
that you might carry on a strap called a “baldrick.” This is a very elaborate and indirect
reference to the cuckold’s horns associated with deer’s antlers, from which men
sometimes hung their baldrick. Because
he will not marry, Benedick concludes, or reaches “the fine,” that he can spend
more money on himself and his clothes, “go the finer.” The key here is
Benedick’s insufferably patronizing generalization about women. He bases his relationship with half of
humanity on what he fears some unspecified women might do to him. You see why I called this an obsession with cuckoldry. For all his
rejection of women, there is one he finds attractive -- Beatrice. At line 186,
talking about Hero, he says, “There’s her cousin, and she were not/ possessed
with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty/ as the first of May doth the last
of December.” So there is an attraction
between the two of them.
Benedick may
reject women and marriage, but Don Pedro assures him that he will eventually
change his mind and become a husband, or as Pedro puts it rather inelegantly,
“bear the yoke.” Benedick, at line 253, is adamant in his denial:
The savage bull may, but if ever the
sensible
Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s
horns and set
them in my forehead, and let me be vilely
painted,
and in such great letters as they write
“Here is good
horse to hire,” let them signify under my
sign “Here
you may see Benedick the married man.”
We get
the horn reference again, and now Benedick declares that if he ever does marry,
his friends should advertise the fact with the kind of crudely painted signs
that peasants used to offer their horses for rent. The important thing is, of course, Benedick’s
absolute statement that he will not do something that circumstances are about
to lead him to do. Benedick is destined
to become the thing he despises – a husband! – and his emphatic denial will
make his transformation all the more comic.
Throughout
this sequence Don Pedro, who enters at line 196, hardly acts like a political
or social superior. The teasing and
verbal high jinks intensify, as if he were just one of the guys. He too is portrayed in the text as if he were
very young, or at least wanted to be.
Benedick has been asked to keep Claudio’s interest in Hero secret, but
no sooner does Pedro enter than Benedick tells him, I have a secret, and at
line 199, “I would your Grace would constrain [force] me to tell.” Don Pedro then
uses something very serious to further the joke, demanding at line 200: “I
charge thee on thy allegiance.” Each
noble took a personal oath of allegiance to the king as his “liege lord,” so
this is a very powerful tool being used to reveal some gossip. It shows that Pedro does not maintain a social distance from his closest courtiers. In mock seriousness Benedick tells Claudio
that he must give up his secret because his king has commanded. He asks Pedro to guess who Claudio is in love
with and can’t wait for the answer and blurts out at line 20: “with Hero,
Leonato’s short daughter.” When Pedro
praises Claudio’s choice, the young man doubts his sincerity at line 214: “You
speak this to fetch me in [fool me], my lord,” which suggests that Claudio has
been made the butt of jokes by the king in the past. This is one more piece of
evidence that Claudio is the youngest of the three and that Pedro does not
stand upon ceremony with his courtiers.
Don Pedro
sees Benedick’s bragging misogyny as a challenge and at line 246 he tells him,
“Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith/ thou wilt prove a notable
argument.” In other words, we will not let you forget what you’ve vowed when
you too fall in love. This statement may
help explain why it is Pedro who will later set up the comic plot to convince
Benedick that Beatrice is in love with him.
At the
end of this sequence Pedro sends Benedick in to tell Leonato that they will
attend his dinner party that night at line 266.
Benedick answers, “I have almost matter enough in me for/ such an
embassage, and so I commit you --” Now what he is doing in the last five words
is imitating the fancy verbal flourishes that Elizabethan gentlemen used at the
end of their letters. When you
painstakingly wrote a letter with a quill pen, it wasn’t like ending an e-mail
message. You needed to close your
communications in some elegant manner, and Pedro and Claudio join the joke and
throw out examples of such tag lines at 271 – 274. Benedick responds humorously by lecturing
them that they are dressing up their discourse, but it won’t work. At line 278 he warns them, “Ere you flout old
ends any further, examine your/ conscience.
And so I leave you.” One of
Benedick’s favorite comic approaches is to play the moral watchman over his
friends who, he pretends, are rapidly degenerating.
In this
final sequence what happens to the language and why does it change? Why does Claudio seek Don Pedro’s help in
winning the hand of Hero? What exactly
is it that Don Pedro proposes to do? [Act I, scene 1, line 280 – 318]
I’ll
leave it to you to tell me how and why the language changes in this
sequence. Claudio’s asking Pedro for
help in winning Hero demonstrates again his youth. It was custom in those days for a monarch to
accept young men from noble families into his court where they could learn
firsthand how to be effective courtly gentlemen and serve the king. Such boys and adolescents would become wards
of the king, and it may well be that Claudio has been such a ward in the past,
looking to Pedro as his surrogate father.
But it is also clear that he is not comfortable acting on his own
behalf. And it is very unusual for Pedro
to jump in and offer to take a very active role, not only in arranging the
marriage, but actually playing the part of the love-besotted Claudio in
disguise to win Hero’s love.
There are
some interesting elements in this exchange.
At line 284 Claudio’s first question is “Hath Leonato any son?” In those days marriage was as much a
financial commitment as a romantic one.
You needed to take into consideration how marrying a particular woman
would affect your family’s financial status, especially if you were a member of
the upper classes as these two kids are.
So Claudio’s question, which sounds rather cold-blooded to us, is really
appropriate: if I marry Hero will I inherit Leonato’s estate when he dies or
does he have a son who will get most of the property? Once that’s settled, Pedro asks, “Do you
affect her?” or are you fond of her.
Claudio’s answer at line 286 reveals something about the young man:
When you went onward on this ended action
[the war],
I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task at
hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love.
But now I am returned and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their
rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying I liked her ere I went to war.
For all
of his youth Claudio is not impulsive.
He has taken time to examine his feelings, to take care of his business
as a soldier, and has watched as “liking” grew to “love.” This is not a wildly unrestrained affair as,
for instance, was Romeo and Juliet.
Don Pedro
approves and at line 299 to offers to act as the negotiator, to “break with her
and with her father, / And you shalt have her.”
Claudio is most appreciative at line 302:
“How
sweetly you do minister to love/ That know love’s grief by his complexion
[appearance]!” You have to wonder if
Pedro has ever been in love, especially when you see what he does next. He proposes at line 310 not only to
negotiate a marriage settlement but to win the love of the young woman:
I know we shall have reveling tonight.
I will assume thy part in some disguise
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio,
And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart
And take her hearing prisoner with the
force
And strong encounter of my amorous tale;
Then after to her father will I break,
And the conclusion is, she shall be
thine.
In practice, let us put it presently.
This
seems very strange. Why would Claudio
consent to allow the king to impersonate him in the actually wooing? Why would Pedro suggest such a masquerade? Often this character is played as a man who
is lonely, despite his friendships starved for genuine affection, even if it is
vicarious participation in love, as here.
This is the beginning of all kinds of trouble. In production you will see that these
arrangements get overheard, miscommunicated and misinterpreted.
Act I, Scene 2
It’s a
wonder that
Leonato
at line 18 says to the news of a royal proposal, “We will hold it as a dream
till it/ appear itself.” The governor may have a friendly relationship with the
king, but the idea that the monarch of the mighty
Act I, Scene 3
The
miscommunications become even more complicated because someone else overhears
the conversation between Pedro and Claudio, misinterprets it, and comes to tell
Don John. What seems to motivate Don
John in his actions? [Act I, Scene 3]
Don
John’s underlying motivation is that he is a melancholic type, a basic
personality that is depressed much of the time.
In case the audience missed it in John’s brief appearance in the first
scene, Shakespeare has him repeat the key information at line 12:
I cannot
hide what I am. I must be sad when I have
cause, and smile at no man’s jests; eat
when I have
stomach, and wait for no man’s leisure;
sleep when
I am drowsy, and tend on no man’s
business; laugh
when I am merry, and claw no man in my
humor.
This
description, especially the first three lines, makes clear that John is a melancholic. He does not try to hide or explain his sorrow
and lack of a sense of humor. Now the
Elizabethans believed that humans contained four dominant chemical substances,
called “humors,” which in combination determined your basic personality. The
concept of having an overabundance of a particular “humor” was one of the
principal reasons for the medical practice of bloodletting, to try and regain a
chemical balance. The other three basic
humors were phlegmatic, someone who
was unusually quiet and emotionless; sanguine,
someone who was bright and outgoing; and choleric,
someone who was always irritable and angry.
A melancholic personality might offer reasons for his inner depression,
but the truth was it was his natural condition.
John certainly has good reasons for his anti-social mood. At line 19
John’s companion explains the constraints on John:
You
have of late stood out against your
brother, and he
hath ta’en you newly into his grace,
where it is
impossible you should take true root but
by the fair
weather that you make yourself. It is needful that
you frame [bring about] the season for
your own harvest.
Conrade
explains that John’s political and military opposition to Pedro have landed him
in this situation where he is being watched.
He has to be careful what he says and does until he is able to grow back
into the king’s good graces. It may be
depressing, but it is his only course. John
does not deny his tight situation, but he is not in the least apologetic. If Conrade says he must grow like a plant, he
says, at line 25, “I had rather be a canker [a thorny rogue plant] in a hedge
than/ a rose in his grace.” To make his point even more emphatically he adds at
line 28 “In this, though I cannot be said to/ be a flattering honest man, it
must not be denied/ but I am a plain-dealing villain.” This kind of self-declaration of villainy is
common among Shakespeare’s great bad guys.
Even the illiterate groundling who might have trouble with the
complicated details of the plot would understand this open statement of evil
intentions. John waxes even more poetic
about his reasons for melancholic wrong-doing at line 30: “I am trusted with a
muzzle “as if he were an ill-tempered dog, “and enfranchised with a clog,” with
a weight tied to his leg; “therefore I have decreed not to sing in my
cage.” John will not be rehabilitated by
his time spent on restriction. He may be
living comfortably in the court, but only under close scrutiny. As he says at line 32: “If I had my/ mouth, I
would bite; if I had my liberty, I would/do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am/ and
seek not to alter me.”
When
John’s second companion, Borachio, enters, he offers John some gossip to try
and cheer him up, news of an impending marriage. We see that John shares Benedick’s view of
the institution at line 40: “What is he for a fool that betroths himself/ to
unquietness?” The other thing about John is that he is looking for any chance
to wreak revenge, so he eagerly asks Borachio if they can use it “to build
mischief.” (By the way, “Borachio” means
“drunkard” in Italian, which will become significant.) When he learns that
Claudio seeks Hero’s hand, John is eager for pay-back at line 63: “That young
start-up [upstart] hath/ all the glory of my overthrow. If I can cross him/ any
way, I bless myself every way.” As for Hero, he dismisses her at line 54 as “A
very forward March-chick,” as if she is a hot shot, literally, a chicken born
early in the season. What is also
important in this scene is what Borachio misheard about the plan at line 60:
“the Prince should woo Hero for himself, and/ having obtained her, give her to
Count Claudio.” Pedro had, of course,
proposed to disguise himself as Claudio, but Borachio hears a rather cynical
plan where Pedro would simply overwhelm her, as the monarch, and then turn
around and give her to his friend.
Act II, Scene 1
At
Leonato’s that evening there is a discussion before the arrival of the guests,
a discussion dominated by Beatrice, which isn’t surprising, given her
intelligence and willingness to express an opinion on just about any
subject. What is her position in the
household? What does she think of
Benedick in relation to other men? What is her advice to her cousin? How do
Leonato and Antonio feel about Beatrice’s advice to Hero? [Act II, scene 1, lines 1 – 84]
Beatrice
has undoubtedly lost her parents; that’s why she is living in her uncle’s
house. She’s there because of Leonato’s
kindness, and he is serving as her foster father. She could be tossed out of the house at any
time; when you realize her rather precarious position, it makes some of her
more outspoken remarks all the more foolhardy or courageous. This is a woman who stands up and breathes
defiance to a whole social system dominated by men.
It’s
interesting that Beatrice puts Don John at one extreme of mankind and Benedick at
the other: Don John gives her heartburn and says nothing while Benedick is
“evermore tattling” [line 10]. Although
she has no intention of marrying, she envisions that a perfect man would be
someone right in the middle between the two extremes.
Throughout
the passage the men try to use the standard threat fathers and guardians used
on young women in those days: if you don’t change your behavior and curb your disrespectful
tongue, you’ll never get a husband. At
line 18 Leonato warns, “thou wilt never get thee/ a husband if thou be so
shrewd [sharp] of thy tongue,” and Antonio adds, “In faith, she’s too curst”
[shrewish]. In response the clever
Beatrice plays the “cuckold card” but in an unusual way at line 21: “Too curst
is more than curst. I shall lessen/
God’s sending that way, for it is said, ‘God sends a curst cow short horns’;
but to a cow too curst he/ sends none.” At first we take “horns” here as the
usual cuckold symbol, but then it seems as if she has in mind “horns” as “male
projections” or penises. Being “too
curst” means getting no sex, which Leonato articulates at line 25, and Beatrice
agrees: “Just [exactly], if he send me no husband, for the/ which blessing I am
at him upon my knees every/ morning and evening.” Here is a woman who says she
rejects marriage, a very daring statement in the context of that time.
Beatrice
goes on to say, “Lord, I could not endure a/ husband with a beard on his
face. I had rather lie/ in the woolen”
[between scratchy blankets]. (Most
Elizabethan men wore beards.) When
Leonato falls for the bait and says, “You may light on a husband that hath no
beard,” she excludes the non-hairy men as well as line 34:
What should I do with him [unbearded
husband]? Dress him in
my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman?
He that hath a beard is more than a
youth,
and he that hath no beard is less than a
man; and
he that is more than a youth is not for
me; and he
that is less than a man, I am not for
him. Therefore
I will ever take sixpence in earnest of
the berrord
and lead his apes into hell.
Beatrice
plays a kind of logical game here, turning the existence of male facial hair
into a “Catch-22” in order to explain her rejection of all men: they are either
too manly for her or not manly enough.
The last sentence refers to an interesting bit of folklore, which your
notes explain. Again the key is
Beatrice’s defiance in the face of all that social pressure. (And believe me
there was a lot of pressure when the
punishment for unmarried women was supposedly to lead apes to Hell in a kind of
comic take-off on giving birth to children.)
Beatrice invents her own conclusion to the myth at line 43, telling
Leonato she will only go to the gates of Hell:
and there will the
devil
meet me like an old cuckold with horns on
his head,
and say, “Get you to heaven, Beatrice,
get you to
heaven.
Here’s no place for you maids.”
So deliver
I up my apes, and away to Saint
Peter. For the
heavens, he shows me where the bachelors
sit,
and there live we merry as the day is
long.
Notice
that Beatrice once again plays the “cuckold card,” making the devil himself
into a figure of mockery while she plans to spend eternity in some kind of
sexless dating game.
Ultimately,
Leonato and Antonio can’t do anything about Beatrice’s independence of
attitude; the key is Hero and making sure she accepts Don Pedro’s proposal if
it comes, that is, she obeys her father’s will.
Beatrice, at line 52, amplifies on the men’s directive to Hero:
Yes, faith. It is my cousin’s duty to
make
cursy [curtsy of obedience] and say,
“Father, as it please you.” But yet
for all that, cousin, let him be a
handsome fellow,
or else make another cursy, and say,
“Father, as
it please me.”
Her
advice here is for Hero to behave as she would behave. No one is going to force her to marry someone
she doesn’t want to marry. As the sole
heir to the family title and fortune, Hero must take a husband and, if
possible, produce a son, but she can exercise her choice within the limits
imposed by her situation. This is
subversive stuff for the patriarchal society of
Not till God make men of some other metal
[material]
than earth. Would it not grieve a woman
to be
overmastered with a piece of valiant
dust? To make
an account of her life to a clod of
wayward marl [dirt]?
No, uncle, I’ll none. Adam’s sons are my brethren,
and truly I hold it a sin to match in my
kindred.
Once
again, as she did at line 35, Beatrice uses a kind of semantic game to mock the
idea of traditional marriage. The
account of creation in Genesis had declared that God made man from the
dust of the earth, and Beatrice here takes it literally. Having a husband would mean having a clod
control your life. Then she deftly takes
the idea of all humankind being “brethren,” in a spiritual sense, in order to
argue that marrying a man would be a kind of incest.
At line
65 Leonato repeats his warning to his daughter to answer as he has instructed
her if Pedro proposes. Beatrice, still
trying to stir up trouble, gives her a cousin a kind of comic overview of the
courtship process at line 68:
The fault will be in the music, cousin,
if you
be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too
important [insistent], tell him there is
measure [meter, moderation] in
everything, and so dance out the
answer. For, hear me,
Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is
as a
Scotch jig, a measure, and a
cinquepace. The first
suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig
(and full as
fantastical); the wedding, mannerly
modest, as a
measure [formal dance], full of state and
ancientry [dignity]; and then comes
Repentance and with his bad legs falls
into the
cinquepace [a capering dance] faster and
faster, till he sink into his
grave.
Despite
the pressure on Hero to obey to her father’s wishes and Pedro’s suit, Beatrice
tells her she still has some control. If
she has no choice but to accede, at least she can make the prince wait for his
answer. Beatrice then describes the marriage
process using an imaginative conceit. A conceit is an elaborate comparison between
two very different things, in this case the marriage business and different
kinds of dances, which will draw several parallels. This conceit would be much
funnier for us if we were familiar with the three dances involved and their
very different kinds of music, but we can see Beatrice’s customary disdain for
the institution of marriage as she shows the whole process leading to regret
and repentance. (Notice the pun in the final sentence where the poor victim of
matrimony, dancing a cin-quepace, will sink into his grave. Leonato compliments his niece on her
perception about human nature, and she, at line 81, acknowledges his praise: “I
have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.” Beatrice’s witty
comment has several different levels of meaning. First she is deprecating her supposed insight
about marriage, saying, “It’s hard to miss the outcome of the marriage process;
it’s about as obvious as a church, the largest building in a village.” She is also saying that her uncle’s intent is
to get his daughter to the church to be married as soon as possible. At a third level, Beatrice is saying her
uncle’s intent in rushing his daughter into a marriage she may not want has
more to do with his ambition than with her well-being.
The
members of Don Pedro’s party enter, some wearing masks, some not, and begin to
dance with the women. Why are some of
the men in masks, and how does that seem to affect their interactions with the
women? [Act II, scene 1, lines 85 – 153]
In this
sequence it helps your understanding if you envision the characters pairing off
for the dance and then each couple coming to the center of the stage where they
share their private conversation with the audience. The gentlemen were expected to be engaging
and ardent with members of the opposite sex.
This behavior was encouraged by the wearing of masks. The mask lent an air of mystery and
anonymity which could allow the gentleman to engage in behavior that might
otherwise damage his reputation. The
women were supposed to be coy and flirtatious, resisting the gentleman’s
advances while still encouraging him, all the while making sure their own
reputations remained above reproach.
Don Pedro
makes a move on Hero at line 85. Notice
Hero’s combination of coy resistance and come-on. It’s one of the few sustained and spirited
conversations she has in the whole play:
Don
Pedro: Lady, will you walk about with your
friend?
Hero:
So you walk softly and look sweetly and say
nothing, I am yours for the walk,
and especially
when I walk away.
Don
Pedro: With me in your company?
Hero:
I may say so when I please.
Don
Pedro: And when please you to say so?
Hero:
When I like your favor, for God defend [forbid] the
lute should be like the case!
Dan
Pedro: My visor [mask] is Philemon’s roof; within the
house is Jove.
Hero:
Why then, your visor should be thatched.
Don
Pedro: Speak low if you speak love.
Pedro’s
initial question, referring to himself as “friend,” assumes that he could be
Hero’s lover if they “walk” or dance together; Hero’s response accepts the
invitation, on condition that he “say nothing,” i.e. not try to press his suit
of love, after which she will “walk away.” When he insists on an answer, she
puts him off, not denying him, but making her acceptance contingent on his
“favor” or appearance. Apparently he has
an ugly mask, which she compares to a case, unattractive, for a lute,
beautiful. Pedro reassures her by
comparing his appearance to the god Jove housed within a peasant’s hut, a story
which your notes explain. Hero’s
response at line 97 shows that she is educated enough to know the story and
cleverly turns it on Pedro, telling him that if he wishes his mask to be
consistent with Philemon’s hut, it needs to have a thatched roof, as most
peasant dwellings in England had at that time.
Pedro sweeps her off to dance with a great line, “Speak low if you speak
love,” that invites more intimate and private conversation. (The line was used as the title of one of the
great popular songs of the 1930’s, “Speak Low When You Speak Love,” with lyrics
by the poet Ogden Nash.)
Next in
the spotlight is Margaret, Hero’s attendant, a gentlewoman who works for a
wealthy family. She is sharp-witted and
can be pretty bawdy in her speech; we will see her as an unwitting pawn in the
deception of Claudio later in the play.
Here she is dancing with a partner.
Your Signet edition, based on the quarto edition, says it’s Benedick,
but most scholars believe it should be Balthasar, a gentleman of Leonato’s
household, who figures in later scenes.
I believe that makes more sense dramatically, in light of Benedick’s
character and what happens later in the sequence. Balthasar, like Don Pedro with Hero, comes on
to Margaret, who puts him off by saying he shouldn’t like her because she has
many bad habits, such as saying her prayers aloud. When he says, at line 104,
“I love you the better. The hearers may
cry amen,” she prays, “God match me with a good dancer!” Balthasar quickly shouts, “Amen!” Margaret then adds, “And God keep him out of
my sight when/ the dance is done. Answer, clerk.” She is referring to the
person in the Anglican Church service, called a clerk, who gave the response to
the minister. Balthasar has been trapped
by his own eagerness and acknowledges defeat, saying at line 110, “No more
words. The clerk is answered.” She has
put him down in a witty manner.
The third
couple is Antonio, Leonato’s brother, an older gentleman, dancing with Ursula,
another gentlewoman who serves Hero.
Ursula has recognized Antonio by the “waggling of your head,” the
shaking associated with palsy. When the
masked Antonio claims that he is pretending to be the old man, she mentions his
“dry hand up and down,” she is listing another symptom of old age the
Elizabethans recognized. Antonio denies
his identity for the second time, and now at line 120 she tries a different
tack:
Come, come, do you think I do not know
you
by your excellent wit? Can virtue hide
itself? Go to,
mum. You are he. Graces will appear, and there’s
an end.
She
praises his “wit,” his quickness of mind, to offset the harshness of her
earlier descriptions. Antonio’s
“virtues” and his “graces” become the clues that give his identity away to the
kind gentlewoman, who concludes with a definite confirmation of her earlier
guess.
That
brings us to the main event, Beatrice and Benedick’s bout for the championship
of the wit world. Benedick has used his disguise not to flirt but to insult
Beatrice. He obviously has told her,
just before we meet them, that some man told him she was “disdainful.” Remember
the reference to “Lady Disdain” back when they first met in the opening
scene? “Disdain” was the strongest kind
of condemnation you could make of a gentlewoman. He has added at line 129 that she had gotten
all her wit “out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales.’” This is especially hurtful to
Beatrice; it would be telling a girl you just met at a party that you recognized
several of the jokes she just told as coming from Hustler magazine. It
affronts her taste and intelligence.
Beatrice guesses that the stranger has heard this insult from Benedick,
and she asks if he has never met him.
When Benedick pleads that he doesn’t know the gentleman, Beatrice retaliates
at line 136:
Why, he is the Prince’s jester, a very
dull
fool.
Only his gift is in devising impossible
slanders.
None but libertines delight in him, and the
commendation is not in his wit, but in
his villainy;
for he both pleases men and angers them,
and then
they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in
the fleet; I would he had boarded me.
This is a
devastating indictment of Benedick.
First, to call him the Prince’s jester is to identify him with the
lowest social rank found at court. It
denigrates what Benedick undoubtedly believes is his intelligent and sensitive
service to Pedro into a joke.
Furthermore, the wit he is so proud of becomes in Beatrice’s description
simply low class insults and lies. His
“humor” is so bad serious gentlemen are ashamed when they laugh at his words,
so they laugh at him, not his comic genius, and then they beat him, the
ultimate insult to a gentleman. Finally,
she knows he is at the dance, as if all the dancers were ships in a fleet, and
wishes that he had “boarded” her, i.e. tried to verbally attack him. Of course, this attack has been so insulting
that Benedick cannot now drop his disguise and reveal himself; it would be too
embarrassing. Your notes give you a
second, very ingenious interpretation for “fleet,” but I think the ship conceit
is what Shakespeare had in mind. Having put
himself at a disadvantage by his initial attack on her, Benedick has to remain
silent as Beatrice gets a couple of more good shots in. Whether or not Beatrice knows that it is
Benedick behind the mask is left to the actress and director staging the play:
it makes for a nice comic touch if she doesn’t know, and he has to just take
her insults; in some ways it’s even funnier if she suspects that she’s talking
to Benedick, knowing that he can’t respond to her attacks.
One of
the things that is apparent throughout the play is that these characters practice deception all the time, in small,
insignificant events like the dance as well as big important things, like a
broken marriage. Most of them, however,
seldom consider whether or not they are victims of deception. In the next
sequence we’ll see this pattern of deception, both innocent and serious,
leading to all kinds of complications.
Notice
how many different deceptions take place in the first 26 lines. [Act II, scene 2, lines 154 – 233]
First,
Don John misinterprets Pedro’s interest in Hero and believes he is in love and
has gone off with Leonato to talk about marriage. Pedro’ deception works, but not as he had intended. Secondly, John and Borachio recognize
Claudio, despite his mask, but when John speaks to him, he pretends he is
speaking to Benedick. No particular
reason is offered for this deception; it’s just normal for these people. The third deception is when Claudio, rather
than correcting John’s mistake, pretends that he is Benedick in order to find
out what John has to say. Again, there is no reason offer for this deception.
It’s just the way these guys customarily behave. At line 161 John asks Benedick
(Claudio) to dissuade Pedro from marrying Hero since she is so far beneath him
in social rank. Having done their
slander, John and Borachio depart, leaving a devastated Claudio. At line 170 he laments, shifting from prose
to verse to show its seriousness:
Thus answer I in name of Benedick
But hear these ill news with the ears of
Claudio.
‘Tis certain so. The Prince woos for himself.
Friendship is constant in all other
things
Save in the office [business] and affairs
of love.
Therefore all hearts in love use their
own tongues:
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into
blood [passion].
This is an accident of hourly proof,
Which I mistrusted not. Farewell therefore Hero!
So Don
John’s original plan, to cause Claudio pain, has worked, in large part because
of Claudio’s own connivance. Claudio has
learned a valuable lesson, has been disillusioned and has grown up a little.
When he
enters at line 181, Benedick continues the misperception, asking his friend if
he can accompany him to the next willow tree in order to make a garland out of
the leaves:
What fashion will you wear
the
garland of? About your neck, like a usurer’s chain?
Or under your arm, like a lieutenant’s
scarf? You
must wear it one way, for the Prince hath
got your
Hero.
As your
notes explain the willow was associated with unrequited love, but rather than
commiserating with his friend over his loss and apparent betrayal at the hands
of the prince, Benedick makes a joke of it.
He assumes Claudio will make a public display of his situation, wearing
his garland like the moneylender carries the key to his cashbox around his neck
or in the then current fad of fashionable soldiers. Claudio just wants to get away and dismisses
the apparent actions of Pedro and Hero with “I wish him joy of her,” like a
good sport with a broken heart. The
insensitive Benedick won’t let it drop, and at line 192 he complains about
Claudio’s sentiment: “Why, that’s spoken like an honest drovier. / So they sell
bullocks. But did you think the Prince/ would have served you thus?” Clearly
Claudio doesn’t want to talk about it, and when he finally runs off, Benedick
wonders why his friend is angry with him at line 196. When his friends play an elaborate practical
joke on Benedick, we do not feel much sympathy for him, given how he has
treated them.
Once
alone on stage Benedick has a few words of sympathy for Claudio but then
reveals at lines 200 – 208 what really bothers him – Beatrice’s earlier attack
on him. Two aspects of that attack clearly bother him: 1.) Beatrice’s
characterization of him as the “Prince’s fool” or jester; 2.) Beatrice
assertion that everyone else sees Benedick as she does. Benedick denies that anyone considers him a
jester, a social position far below his exalted rank, although he does admit to
being merry. As for Beatrice saying that
others see him as she does, Benedick counters at line 205:”It is the base
(though bitter) disposition/ of Beatrice that puts the world into her person/
and so gives me out. Well, I’ll be revenged as I may.” If there is a
misperception about him the problem is with her, because she is so bitter, a
damaging charge for women. Despite his
protests in the “war of wits” on the dance floor, she came out the winner.
Pedro
enters and soon clears up the misperception about his intentions toward
Hero. No one rushes to investigate who
was behind this comic confusion. If they
had, Don John’s fine hand might have been discovered earlier. Nor does Claudio apparently learn anything
from the experience that will make him less quick to believe second-hand
reports. He will soon make the same
mistake again, trusting Don John, with potentially tragic consequences.
At line
235 Don Pedro first brings up the mutual insults by saying, “The Lady Beatrice
hath a quarrel to you. / The gentleman that danced with her told her she/ is
much wronged by you.” That sets Benedick
off in an outburst of outrage which builds in intensity over the next 35 lines
until it becomes hyperbole, exaggeration
done for comic or dramatic effect. In
this sequence what does Benedick exaggerate?
What important information does Beatrice reveal about her past
relationship with Benedick? What surprising proposal does Don Pedro make? [Act II, scene 1, lines 233 -- 384]
Benedick
begins his hyperbole of outrage at line 237 complaining of Beatrice’s insults:
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 told 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
[incredible dexterity] upon me
that I stood like a man at the mark
[target], with a whole
army shooting at me.
Benedick
begins by describing in six ways the power of her insults and the way they made
him feel. Imagine how much endurance an
ordinary block of wood might have. An
oak tree with barely any life at all would have reacted to her insults. Benedick’s mask itself came to life to answer
her. Of course, Benedick does have to
tell Pedro that he was the mysterious gentleman who danced with Beatrice so he
can report that terrible insult about being the Prince’s jester. At the time of year when the ice and snow
began to thaw, the roads of Elizabethan England were largely impassable and
social life was very dull. Beatrice’s
ability to insult is so overwhelming Benedick felt like a lone soldier with an
entire army shooting at him. In the
exchange of wits with Beatrice, she always wins, but Benedick makes up for it
with the flair and descriptive power of his language.
Next
Benedick describes the terrible power of her bitter and scolding personality,
beginning at line 245:
She speaks poniards, and
every word stabs. If her breath were as
terrible as
her terminations [terminology], there
were no living near her;
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 her 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 on purpose, because they
would
go thither; so indeed all disquiet,
horror, and
perturbation follow her.
Benedick
uses six highly imaginative hyperboles to skewer Beatrice. After the first four, he concludes, “Come,
talk not of her,” as though Pedro were doing all the talking; Benedick then
proceeds to talk about her some more. He
begins comparing her language to the sharp spear-like weapon of that time, the
poniard. The terms she uses to describe him, if they were infectious agents,
would spread disease throughout the universe.
His third insult, “I would not marry her….” is revealing; people in the
plays often end up doing what they vow they would never do. Benedick vows he would never consider such a
move, even if she had all of the world God had given to Adam in the Garden of
Eden. The fourth insult is my favorite. In one of the many myths about Hercules, the
Arnold Schwarzenegger of ancient Greece, the strong man is held captive and
forced to work as a “girlie man,” turning the spit which held the roasting meat
over the fire. Beatrice would be capable
of that kind of intimidation, even to forcing Hercules to use his famous club
for firewood. After his request not to
talk of her, which only seems to spur him on, Benedick goes on for another
seven lines and gets off two more good zingers.
The first, at line 253, identifies Beatrice as the Greek goddess Ate, a
beautiful woman in charge of turmoil and destruction, with the added sarcastic
touch that she dresses well. The last
insult, the most elaborate of this whole speech, declares her to be possessed
by a demon that can be conjured out of her. In fact, while she is on earth,
Hell is so peaceful people sin on purpose to go there as to a religious
sanctuary.
At line
260 Beatrice enters, and Benedick immediately seeks to leave, asking Don Pedro
to send him on any impossible mission in another series of comic hyperboles:
Will your Grace command me any service to
the world’s end? I will go on the
slightest errand
now to the Antipodes [other side of the
world] that you can devise to send
me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now
from the
furthest inch of Asia; bring you the
length of Prester
John’s foot; fetch 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?
Benedick’s
exaggerations make it clear he is just looking for an excuse to avoid talking
with Beatrice. At a time when going
around the world might take more than a year, Benedick’s comic volunteering
becomes even more outrageous. The use of
toothpicks, or “toothpickers,” had just started and was still considered
exotic. “Prester John” was a mythical
Christian king who supposedly lived in darkest Africa, probably a reference to
the ruler of the Coptic Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. “Cham” was one of the Mongol emperors of
China, another very exotic figure. The
“Pygmies” were a very strange people who had just recently come to the
attention of Europeans. All these
strange people and destinations have two things in common: they are a long way off; and the task he proposes
to do on each visit is hardly worth the effort, emphasizing his message that he
wants to avoid Beatrice at all cost, as he makes clear at line 271 as she
enters: “O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not! I cannot/ endure my Lady
Tongue.”
For her
part Beatrice offers another hint at her past relations with Benedick at line
275 when Pedro tells her, comically, that she has lost Benedick’s heart:
Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile,
and I
gave him use [interest] 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.
What
Beatrice seems to be saying is that once before he “lent” her his heart, that
is proclaimed his love, and she returned that love in double measure. However, his love proved false, like crooked
dice, and she did indeed lose his heart.
Now she offers no further explanation of what happened, but an unhappy
affair in which Beatrice felt she had been cheated would explain her “bitter”
attitude toward men in general and Benedick in particular. It would also explain why she is more
reluctant than he to declare her love for him.
Don Pedro, commenting on the competition of wits between the two,
observes at line 280,”You have put him down, lady; you have/ put him
down.” Her response at line 282 is one
of the pieces of bawdy which gives us an insight into the concerns of single
women in those days: “So I would not he should do me, my lord, / lest I should
prove the mother of fools.” Now Beatrice
may have “put down” Benedick intellectually, but she did so to keep him from
“putting her down” sexually. If she
allowed such a union with Benedick, she might become pregnant and give birth to
a fool, because of Benedick’s supposed lack of intelligence. But “fool” also meant an illegitimate child,
with the implication that Benedick is the type of man who would get a girl
pregnant and then refuse to marry her.
Beatrice
has brought the angry Claudio with her, and Pedro quickly clears up the
misunderstanding and reunites the two lovers.
Their first declaration of love is almost a tongue-tied dumb show. Claudio has a pretty conventional statement
of love at line 303, explaining his lack of words: “Silence is the perfectest
herald of joy. I were/ but little happy
if I could say how much.” Clearly
Claudio is no match for either Benedick or Beatrice in verbal skills, and poor
Hero can’t say anything except whisper in Claudio’s ear and give him a kiss. As she and Pedro watch the fumbling efforts
of the two conventional lovers, Beatrice makes a strange admission at line 314:
“Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every/one to the world but I, and I am
sunburnt. I may/ sit in the corner and
cry ‘Heigh-ho for a husband!’” The
bright, witty woman who has scoffed at love and marriage, “alliance,” suddenly
reveals, as she watches her younger cousin, that she feels left out, that she
has no one but must sit in the corner, alone. She feels ugly as if she has
violated the standards of beauty of her class by being tanned by the sun, the
mark of a lower class woman who had to work outdoors. It reveals a
vulnerability beneath the hard exterior.
Don Pedro
responds almost without thought at line 317:
“Lady Beatrice, I will get you one,” to which she responds:
I would rather have one of your father’s
getting.
Hath your Grace ne’er a brother like you?
Your father got [begot] excellent
husbands, if a maid could
come by them.
Now
Beatrice is a witty and articulate person, but there is nothing indirect or
hidden about this statement. It is an
obvious flirtation, an invitation to pursue a romantic interchange with the
king. Don Pedro appears to answer again
without hesitation at line 321: “Will you have me, lady?” The question is intriguing. Is he seriously proposing to Beatrice? Many modern productions of the play do play
it seriously, showing Pedro as a lonely man who longs for the love of a
beautiful, intelligent woman. That might
explain why he is so eager to do Claudio’s wooing for him, so he can enjoy the
game of love at least vicariously. In
Act II, scene 3, at line 168 Pedro will say of Beatrice’s supposed love foe
Benedick, “I would she had bestowed this dotage [affection] on / Me. I would have daffed all other respects [put
aside all other considerations] and/ made her half myself” [made her my
partner, i.e. married her]. The
suggestion that Don Pedro is really in love with Beatrice provides an
additional interesting tension to the play.
As much
as this idea is attractive to modern audiences, theatergoers in Shakespeare’s
time would hardly have taken this development seriously. First, it is uttered in prose. If Don Pedro were really in earnest in
proposing marriage, he would have done it in private and using the appropriate poetic
declarations of love. Secondly, the idea
of the monarch of a mighty empire marrying the impoverished niece of a local
civil servant is just not plausible. If
that is the case, then Beatrice, uncertain if she has said too much, quickly
but graciously backs down and makes a comic excuse at line 323:
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.
She
compares the idea of wedding Don Pedro to wearing overly fancy clothes everyday
to try and defuse any offense she may have given. Pedro is graciously in
return, telling her at line 327: “Your silence most offends me, and to be/
merry best becomes you, for out o’ question you/ were born in a merry hour.” If
he was serious about the proposal, he seems here to be saying “No harm, no
foul.” Beatrice, picking up on the idea
of her being born to be only humorous, offers an interesting retort at line
330: “No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but/ then there was a star danced,
and under that was/ I born.” It is a
beautiful sentiment which the great stage actress, Gertrude Lawrence, took as
the title of her autobiography, A Star Danced.
In the
rest of the scene Pedro comes up with the idea of another comic deception, bringing
Beatrice and Benedick to fall in love.
At line 360 he calls this “one of Hercules’ labors,” implying that it
will be a monumental task. Leonato, anticipating the comic consequences at line
348, predicts, “if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves
mad.” Do you get the sense that Pedro
gets a kick out of manipulating other people’s lives?
Act II, Scene 2
Don John
is upset that his efforts at the party have not paid off in causing Claudio any
discomfort. His henchman Borachio now
reveals another plan to use his affair with Hero’s waiting woman, Margaret, to
ruin Claudio’s marriage. As he says at
line 28 his plot will be “enough to misuse the Prince, to vex/ Claudio, to undo
Hero, and to kill Leonato.” So both Don
John and Borachio understand that their little practical joke will have
potentially life-threatening consequences.
More importantly this serious plot will proceed simultaneously with the
comic plot against Beatrice and Benedick.[Act
II, scene 2]
Act II, Scene 3
The day
following the party Benedick reconsiders his life in light of his friend’s
decision to marry. After a lengthy
attack on Claudio’s “mistake” and the changes it has wrought in his character, Benedick
will weigh the possibility of his changing his own mind about marriage. Is he closed to the possibility? [Act
II, scene 3, lines 1 – 35]
The first
15 lines of his soliloquy (a speech addressed directly to the audience) are
taken up with cataloguing the changes in his friend Claudio. Once again we see Benedick’s gift for comic
hyperbole or exaggeration. In the
opening sequence beginning at line 7, he treats the situation as if it were
simply a character flaw on Claudio’s part:
I do much wonder
that one man, seeing how much another man
is a
fool when he dedicates his behaviors to
love, will,
after he hath laughed at such shallow
follies in
others, become the argument of his own
scorn by
falling in love; and such a man is
Claudio.
Benedick
apparently has divided men into two teams – those who fall in love and those
who remain true to the cause and resist falling in love. Benedick has assumed his friend was with him
on the anti-team, and now he has suddenly gone over to the enemy, despite all
the scorn and derision the two men have heaped on fools in love. One might suspect that most of the scorn came
from Benedick, and he just assumed Claudio concurred. Benedick continues by listing three ways his
friend has changed. At line 14 his
musical tastes have shifted from the “drum and fife,” the instruments
associated with warfare, to the “tabor and the pipe,” used for dances and domestic
musical entertainments. At line 15 we
learn that he used to walk “ten mile afoot to see a good armor.” Now he prefers
to “lie ten nights awake” while he figures out what his new doublet will look
like. Finally, at line 18 Benedick tells
us,
He was wont to speak plain and
to the purpose, like an honest man and a
soldier;
and now is he turned orthography (overly
fancy language); his words are
a very fantastical banquet – just so many
strange
dishes.
Benedick
apparently believes that Claudio’s nearly tongue-tied declaration of love for
Hero is an overabundance of fancy words, compared with his own “restrained and
measured” use of language.
And now
at line 22 Benedick considers whether he could undergo a similar change: “May I
be so converted and see with these/ eyes? I cannot tell; I think not.” He goes on at line 26 to list the qualities
that a woman would have to have to “convert” Benedick:
One woman is fair,
yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am
well; another
virtuous, yet I am well. But till all graces be in one
woman, one woman shall not come in my
grace.
Rich she shall be, that’s certain; wise,
or I’ll none;
virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen her; fair,
or I’ll never
look on her; mild, or come not near me;
noble, or
not I for an angel; of good discourse, an
excellent
musician, and her hair shall be of what
color it
pleases God.
In this
passage I do believe that Benedick is being serious, for him. He begins by assuring us that until “all
graces” are in one woman, he will not lower his guard against the gender. What are the “graces” he requires? It’s no surprise that wealth is first on the
list; then she must be wise, virtuous,
fair (physically attractive), mild in temperament, noble in her social
background (with an elaborate pun of “nobles” and “angels” for types of coins,
which your notes explain), with the ability to speak and play music well. This is like a computer dating service, which
is about to spit out the answer, “No Match Found!” Then at the very end, to prove to us and
himself that he can be flexible in his standards, he adds that her hair can be
of any color it pleases God. This last
concession is one of the reasons I think this list is a serious effort on
Benedick’s part to answer the question honestly about marriage possibilities.
When he
notices the approach of Don Pedro and Claudio (“Monsieur Love,” Benedick
sneers!), does he go out and greet them man-to-man? Of course not, this is Much Ado About
Nothing, where it is easier to deceive than be direct. The same kinds of behaviors that caused the
problems the night before at the party, hiding identities and eavesdropping,
will continue here. No one has learned
anything! Benedick goes into hiding in
order to listen in on his friends’ conversation. The Prince and Claudio talk about the
upcoming marriage and arrange for Balthasar, an entertainer, to come in and
sing, which he does at line 62, apparently accompanying himself on some kind of
a stringed instrument, like a lute.
Benedick doesn’t think much of Balthasar’s music, observing at line 59,
“Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should/ hale souls out of men’s
bodies? Well, a horn for my/ money, when
all’s done.” The strings were apparently
made from sheep intestines, and Benedick prefers his love’s songs played on a
horn, with the reminder that love will only lead to cuckoldry. The song, adapted from a popular song of
Shakespeare’s age, is an Elizabethan country-western with emphasis on how men
deceive women. Claudio and Pedro are
suitably impressed by the song, but Benedick at line 80 differs in his contrary
judgment:
And [If] he had been a dog that should
have howled thus, they would have hanged
him; and
I pray God his bad voice bode no
mischief. I had as
live [lief] have heard the night raven,
come what plague
could have come after it.
Benedick’s
dislike of the song probably has more to do with the subject matter than the
performance. Balthasar’s singing is worthy
of a hanging, and Benedick comically pretends that his bad voice is like the
call of the raven at night, considered to be a sign of the outbreak of the
plague.
This next
sequence is the funniest in this play and one of the very best examples of
Shakespeare’s gulling scenes,
“gulling” meaning “fooling,” related to the word “gullible.” At what point does Benedick fall for the
trick? What convinces him that it is not
a deception? [Act II, scene 3, line 91 –
216]
This is
amusing on the page, but when you see it performed it is hilarious as the
actors add lots of stage business when Benedick hears that Beatrice is in love
with him and almost reveals himself in his surprise. There is one simple aspect of scenes like
this that makes them even funnier: we see a character making a fool of himself,
and then we see other characters watching him in the process and enjoy the
original humor a second time in their reaction.
This simple device of witnesses to the comedy seems to increase the
level of humor.
Benedick’s
first reaction to the news at line 100 is simply shock. Then at line 105 Don Pedro considers the
possibility that she is counterfeiting her emotions, but Leonato assures him
that the emotion is genuine. In the
gulling exchange it falls to Leonato to come up with the evidence of Beatrice’s
passion. At line 110 Pedro asks the old
man “Why, what effects of passion shows she?” and Leonato for a few moments
can’t think of anything to say. He hems
and haws and then turns to Claudio and announces, “She will sit you, you/ heard
my daughter tell you how,” trying to pass the ball off to the younger man. They continue to grope for believable
evidence to convince Benedick, and at line 121 we see why this effort on
Leonato’s part is so important. Benedick
tells us, “I should think this a gull, but that/ the white-bearded fellow
speaks it. Knavery cannot/ sure, hide
himself in such reverence [dignified old age].”
Benedick knows his friends are capable of a practical joke; Leonato is
the key to making the gulling believable.
As the boys explain it, Beatrice’s dilemma is that she cannot reveal her
true feelings because of her past hostility toward Benedick. Claudio, at line 130, reveals, “So your
daughter says, ‘Shall I,’ says she, ‘that have so oft encount’red him with/
scorn, write to him that I love him?’” This detail is enough to finally give
Leonato an idea of what to use as evidence of Beatrice’s love – she writes of
it! At line 133 he explains:
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.
This
image of Beatrice, half-clothed, unable to sleep and wrestling with her
emotions, seems to make the story more believable. It is enough to encourage Claudio to take a
chance and “remind” Leonato of a story, “a pretty jest,” which the old man has
to make up on the spot and does at line 139: “O, when she had writ it, and was reading
it/ over, she found ‘Benedick’ and ‘Beatrice’ between/ the sheet.” That’s good
for about half a laugh, but what is very effective throughout the gulling is
the image of Beatrice’s emotional suffering; it seems to affect Benedick
greatly. In fact Beatrice “suffers” so much in their story that at line 174
Claudio tells us
Hero thinks surely she will die; for she
says
she will die if he love her not, and she
will die ere
she make her love known, and she will
die, if he
woo her, rather than she will bate
[cease] one breath of
her accustomed crossness.
This
passage emphasizes the seriousness of Beatrice’s emotional crisis. It also prepares Benedick for Beatrice’s
continued scorn in his presence; the more she insults him, the more he will
believe she is striving to hide her true feelings. There is a third layer of meaning, because “to die” was Elizabethan slang for “reaching
sexual climax.” Claudio probably has that meaning in mind as he creates
this picture of a distraught but sexually aroused Beatrice. Benedick will use the word in its erotic
sense in one of the few romantic passages he addresses to Beatrice in Act V,
scene 2.
Don Pedro
adds a very nice touch at line 169 when he tells his companions, and the hidden
Benedick, “I would she had bestowed this dotage [process of “doting” on
someone] on/ me; I would have daffed all other respects [considerations] and/
made her half myself.” When the monarch says he would have married the girl,
especially if Benedick had heard about that ambiguous marriage proposal at the
party, she certainly will appear more attractive in the eyes of the
courtier. The boys take the occasion to
“diss” their friend, saying that he as a “contemptible spirit,” [line 181] that
is, he is contemptuous. When Claudio
defends Benedick and says he is wise, Pedro dismisses it with “he doth indeed
show some sparks that are like wit” [line 185].
They really have fun at Benedick’s expense, asserting that he is
valiant, causing both Pedro and Leonato to say that Benedick weasels out of any
situation where he might have to fight to defend his honor. Pedro concludes at
line 204 saying, “I love Benedick well, / and I could wish he would modestly
examine himself/ to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.” When they are out of earshot the conspirators
laugh at the deception, and Pedro wishes they could see the first encounter of
the two gulled lovers, which he believes will be “merely a dumb show,” that is
they will be incapable of saying anything to each other. As a preliminary joke, they decide to send
Beatrice out right now to call Benedick into supper.
In this
next sequence Benedick’s whole world has turned upside down. He looks at things totally differently. Notice how he has to twist and turn to now
justify what he previously scorned.
Benedick becomes an ardent advocate for family values. It’s a transformation that is fun to
watch. When Beatrice comes out, do you
think she glimpses anything different about Benedick? How does he convince himself that she is in
love with him when he now sees her? [Act II, scene 3, line 217 – 260]
Right at
the beginning of this final passage at line 220 Benedick makes his decision,
“Love me? Why,/ it must be requited.” If
Beatrice loves him, he has no choice but to return the love. He has been powerfully affected by the
criticism he has received from his friends:
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. I did never think to
marry; I must not seem proud. Happy are they that
hear their detractions and can put them
to mending.
Benedick
reassesses his customary attitudes and wisecracks. Now, the important thing is to avoid
appearing proud. Nor will he need any
positive response from Beatrice who will continue to hide her emotions. He welcomes the critique that he received
from his friends and sets about to improve himself. Benedick acknowledges the praise Beatrice has
received: she is fair (in fact he said as much back in Act, scene 1, line 184).
She is virtuous, despite his slanders against all women as potential
adulteresses. As for her wisdom, which
is only qualified by her folly in falling for him, he declares at line 230, “it
is/ no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her/ folly; for I will be
horribly in love with her.”
Now, at
last, he realizes that he may be mocked because of his past attacks on women,
love and marriage. Listen to Benedick’s
ingenious justification of his change of mind and heart:
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 [sayings] and these
paper bullets of the brain awe a man from
the
career [course] of his humor? No, the
world must be
peopled.
When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not
think I should live till I were married.
Do you
think a few insensitive people might remind Benedick of his previous comments
on the subject? Maybe one or two? So his first justification: your appetites
change with age. That sounds perfectly
normal. Second justification (and my personal
favorite): “The world must be
peopled!” It’s a dirty job, but someone
has got to do it. Benedick should get a
medal for his selflessness. Third
justification, in case anyone remembers when he declared emphatically that he
would never marry? He just didn’t
realize that he would live long enough to get married.
Beatrice
enters. He sees “some marks of love in
her.” Do you detect any such marks in
the short exchange she has with Benedick?
Beat:
Against my will I am sent to bid you come
in to dinner.
Bene:
Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
Beat:
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.
Bene:
You take pleasure then in the message?
Beat:
Yes, just so much as you may take upon a
knife’s point, and choke a daw
[crow] withal. You have no
stomach, signior? Fare you well.
In is
quite clear that Beatrice is really angry to be sent out to say anything at all
to Benedick. Her message and meaning are
as crisp and clear as possible. She
resents being thanked and obviously takes
very little pleasure in delivering the message. (Trust me, it doesn’t take much
to choke a daw.) Her last question is
really double-edged: she expected the usual barrage of insults from him, and
when she didn’t get them, she mocks him for having “no stomach” for their
traditional game of verbal smash-mouth.
And yet
out of this unambiguous verbal put-down, which has at least four very clear
insults, Benedick finds the “marks of love” he was looking for. It does require him to look for a double meaning,
as he deconstructs and analyzes the “real” message of “I took no more pains
than you took pains to thank me.”
Benedick convinces himself what she is really saying is she was pleased
to deliver the message. At line 258 he
declares “If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; / if I do not love her,
I am a Jew. I will go and get her
picture,” First, he sees himself in a superior position, the one in the
relationship who takes pity on the poor, suffering woman who has fallen in love
with him. When he declares that if he
does not love her, he will be a Jew, Shakespeare reveals the institutional
anti-Semitism of his age. The phrase was
fairly common as a way of asserting that you were going to do something; it was
like “crossing your heart.” In modern
productions it is often cut or changed.
Benedick’s last statement is proof positive that he is in love. The ardent lover had to have his beloved’s
picture to demonstrate his passion.
Act III, Scene 1
This is
the parallel “gulling” of Beatrice. How
is the form of the language different from that used with Benedick? Why is it different? What are the elements this scene has in
common with the gulling of Benedick? [Act
III, scene 1]
The
dynamics of this scene are based on the all-too-human desire to know what other
people think of us. When Beatrice hears
that Hero and Ursula are talking about her, she can’t wait to come and
eavesdrop. Hero tells Margaret to send
her to the “pleached bower,” a secluded arbor in the garden. She describes this nook at lines 8 – 11 in
graphic detail, which your notes explain is actually a reference to the
abortive rebellion led by the Earl of Essex, one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorites,
who repaid her generosity by trying to overthrow her. In 1600 when the play was written this was a
politically correct remark to make, even though Shakespeare’s own patron, the
Earl of Southampton, was one of Essex’s rebels.
As they observe her sneak up on them to hear their conversation, both
Hero and Ursula use animal images. At
line 24 Hero compares Beatrice to a lapwing, which “runs close to the ground,”
very similar to the Western killdeer.
Ursula compares Beatrice being gulled to watching a fish taking the
baited hook at line 26. At line 35 Hero
describes Beatrice’s independent spirits as being “as coy and wild/ As haggards
of the rock.” Wild hawks and falcons were
caught and trained to be hunters in falconry.
Some birds could not be trained and retained their wild ways, refusing
to return to the falconer; such birds were called “haggard,” It’s an appropriate term for Beatrice who is
so much at odds with her own society.
The
principal difference in the form of the language in this scene compared with
the previous gulling scene is that this one is in verse rather than prose. One reason may be that the content here seems
more formal than the rough humor of the previous scene. Hero and Ursula are more serious and
romantically inclined. In the previous
scene Benedick often interrupted with his comic reactions; here Beatrice
doesn’t say anything until the very end of the scene. I think the major reason
for the shift from prose to verse is to set it off, to break up the gulling
process. If we had had another 115 lines
of prose deception it would have been too long.
Of course, we need to see this as an exception to the general rule that
those who speak truth, speak in verse.
There are
a number of common elements between the two scenes:
1.) Benedick was accused of being
scornful; Hero says Beatrice is disdainful;
2.) Beatrice was advised to fight against
her love; Hero says Benedick must “wrestle
with his affection”;
3.) Pedro, Claudio and Leonato praised
Beatrice; Hero and Ursula agree that Benedick
“Goes foremost in report through Italy.”
4.) Beatrice is called “self-endeared,”
full of herself, at line 56; Benedick was shown
to be totally self-absorbed when he dismisses Claudio’s suffering in favor of his own hurt feelings at
Beatrice’s insults.
5.) Beatrice is accused of destroying men
for pleasure, “spelling them backwards” [line
61]; Benedick is accused of taking pleasure in others’ pains.
6.) Claudio says Beatrice must “wear out”
her passion rather than to risk being emotionally
damaged by Benedick’s cruelty; Hero says she will go to Benedick and will make up a false slander about
Beatrice’s character to help
him escape her cruel remarks. This is really an extreme move.
The last section
of the scene poses a real puzzle. It
consists of an elaborate rhymed verse, ending with a couplet. This formal poetic expression is completely
unlike the way Beatrice speaks anywhere else in the play. Why does Beatrice’s declaration of love take
this form? What dramatic purpose does it
serve or what does it reveal about her character?
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.
Earlier
in the play Beatrice had announced that she would rather hear her dog bark at a
crow than hear a man swear he loved her.
Now, by herself and after learning that a man did indeed love her, we
see that underneath the tough exterior, Beatrice does care whether or not she
is loved. This flowery,
emotionally-charged expression reveals another side of Beatrice, one that
welcomes Benedick’s supposed passion. Most of all, she is powerfully affected
by what others have said about her personal short-comings. Clearly she will welcome Benedick’s advances,
believing he deserves to be loved based upon her own emotions rather than on
just what others say, “reportingly.”
Act III, Scene 2
This
scene falls into two parts: the first, the continuation of the comic deception
of Benedick and the second, the serious deception of Claudio. In the first part there is a major
change. In the previous scenes Benedick
had been the dominant comic force, making most of the jokes, using his wit to
banter with his friends. How has
Benedick changed in appearance and behavior since we last saw him? What explanation do his friends offer for
this change? [Act III, scene 2, lines 1 – 75]
We see
here an example of the level of devotion expected of a courtier, a gentleman,
usually of noble birth, who served the ruler at court. Don Pedro plans to return across the sea to
Aragon right after Claudio’s wedding, and Claudio gallantly offers to accompany
his lord on the trip. At line 5 Pedro
excuses the bridegroom and says he will amuse himself with Benedick, who, “from
the crown of his head to the sole of his foot ….is all mirth.” At line 12 he describes the witty misogynist:
“He hath a heart as sound as a bell; and his tongue/ is the clapper, for what
his heart thinks, his tongue/ speaks.”
However,
Benedick
is almost silent! The character who
dazzled everyone with his wit, insults and hyperbole in the previous scenes has
only four very short remarks in the first 65 lines. He explains his change with the assertion
that he has a toothache, a convenient excuse for keeping quiet. His friends offer all kinds of “helpful”
advice. At lines 21 – 24 you have the
rather gruesome pun on hanging and drawing which your notes explain. Claudio thinks the change in Benedick is that
he is in love, but Pedro disputes that assertion at lines 30 – 38 where he relates
being in love with “fancy” expressed in an outrageous mix of fashions from different countries. (One of
Shakespeare’s frequent satiric jabs is based on this apparent lack of English
fashion sense.) Pedro and Claudio do
proceed to list all the other signs that Benedick has changed:
1.) He brushes his hat in the morning,
that is cares about his appearance [line 40].
2.) He has been to see the barber; in
fact, he has had his beard shaved off, and Claudio
tells us humorously that his whiskers have been used as packing in tennis balls. Tennis was a very popular game, and human
hair was used
in the balls [lines 42 – 47]
3.) He uses civet, a musky scent [line
48].
4.) He seems “melancholy,” depressed, as
result of being in love [line 52].
5.) He washes his face for a change in a
time when most people did not wash very often
[line 53].
6.) He “paints himself,” uses cosmetics
[line 54].
7.) Finally, they assert that his
“jesting spirit” has now crept into the strings of a lute, a musical instrument associated with lovers [line
56].
All these
“old signs,” they conclude, prove he is in love. They enjoy teasing Benedick, knowing well the
effect their deception must have had on him.
Claudio comes close to revealing the secret at line 60 when he says,
Claudio:
Nay, but I know who loves him.
Pedro: That would I know too. I warrant, one
that knows him not.
Claudio:
Yes, and his ill conditions; and in despite
of all, dies for him.
Pedro:
She shall be buried with her face
upwards.
Here
Benedick’s friends play on the pun of “die” as a slang term for reaching sexual
climax and her body position in “death,” face upward, presumably under
him. When Benedick takes Leonato aside
at line 67, Pedro guesses that it is to ask Beatrice’s uncle for permission to
seek Beatrice’s hand in marriage. Pedro
and Claudio have an unusual conceit to describe what will happen when the two
deceived lovers finally approach one another: “the two bears will not bite one
another when they meet” [line 75]. One
of the popular forms of entertainment in those days was the wild animal act,
usually a bear, which was very aggressive and scary. Normally you had to be careful to keep bears
separated, but now the two aggressive and snarling human bears have been pacified
by deception and won’t bite each other anymore.
At this
point the entire play pivots 180 degrees and we get the springing of the
serious practical joke with potentially tragic consequences. Don John enters and tells Claudio and Pedro
about Hero’s “disloyalty.” Notice how
John makes Hero’s alleged sin even worse by his choice of words. How do you think this message might affect a
young, inexperienced Claudio? [Act III,
scene 2, lines 76 – 130]
After
some brief pleasantries and a short introduction, John drops his bombshell at
line 98: “I came hither to tell you, and, circum-/ tances short’ned (for she
has been too long a-talk-/ing of), the lady is disloyal.” When we first met him in the play John had
said of himself that he was a man of few words, but this is short to the point
of being brutal. When, in amazement,
Claudio asks, “Who? Hero?” John brusquely answers, “Even she – Leonato’s Hero,
your Hero,/ every man’s Hero,” with the suggestion that she has had a lot of
lovers. When Claudio still wonders at
this extraordinary charge, he asks at line 104 simply “Disloyal?” John blackens
her reputation even further by answering, “The word is too good to paint out
her wick-/edness. I could say she were
worse. Think you of/ a worse title, and
I will fit her to it.” That is, whatever
evil label you would want to stick on her, I will provide you with proof that
it fits her behavior. John says at line
90 that he is telling this awful secret out of loyalty to Pedro and to prove
his love for Claudio. Beware of people
who tell you terrible things “out of love!”
The key
question to ask here is why Claudio declares at line 118, “If I see anything
tonight why I should not/ marry her tomorrow, in the congregation where I/
should wed, there will I shame her.”
This decision to publicly humiliate his bride might be understandable
with a very young man who feels terribly hurt and betrayed. But how are we to explain the reaction of Don
Pedro, older and presumably more emotionally mature? At line 121 Pedro adds, “And, as I wooed for
thee to obtain her, I/ will join with thee to disgrace her.” So even before they have proof of the charge
against Hero, and at a time when they should be highly suspicious, both men are
ready to devastate her life. In part, I believe, this is another example of how
in this tight-knit society people think they know each other and never examine
the motives of others. It also reminds
us how powerful this fear of cuckoldry could be!
Act III, Scene 3
This
scene introduces the last major characters in the play: Dogberry, his partner
Verges and a group of volunteer policemen called the Watch. It is this unlikely group that will thwart
Don John’s evil plot. To understand who
Dogberry is you need to know something about the state of law enforcement in
Shakespeare’s time. For a number of
social and political reasons there was no effective policing institution in
Elizabethan society. (In fact it would
not be until the middle of the 19th Century that London would
develop an effective public police force.
The man largely responsible for creating the Metropolitan Police was Sir
Robert Peele, nicknamed Bobbie, so that to this day police men and women are
known as “bobbies.”) In Shakespeare’s
day people in cities relied upon volunteers, sort of like the Neighborhood
Watch in our day – men riding around in Jeep Cherokees with
walkie-talkies! It was not a very
effective way of stopping crime.
Dogberry is a constable, the headman of such a volunteer force called
the Watch. He is assisted by a friend
named Verges. We join these two ace
detectives as they give instructions to the volunteers who are working this
particular evening. As you listen to
Dogberry’s instructions to the members of the Watch, what seems to be his
primary concern? Dogberry is often
linguistically challenged by words of more than one syllable, using words
incorrectly or in some cases making up words that do not exist in the real
world. We call these verbal mistakes malapropisms. Can you identify eight such malapropisms in
the first 95 lines of the scene? [Act III, scene 3, lines 1 – 95]
Dogberry
is a lot like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a little man of
limited intelligence who, in his own mind and his fellows, is a genius. Dogberry may be clueless, but he has
unbounded self-confidence within the little social niche he has carved out for
himself. As you might guess, not too
many people were eager to be in charge of the volunteer policemen, so Dogberry
gladly does it. He and Verges misuse
“big” words, commit “malapropisms,” because they are out of their depth
intellectually, but they suffer no embarrassment because those around them
usually don’t know any better themselves.
They think Dogberry is the Man!
Let’s
look at the eight malapropisms the
fearless crime-fighters commit: “Yea, or
else it were pity but they should suffer/ salvation,
body and soul” [instead of damnation
at line 2]; Dogberry hopes the Watch has no “allegiance” [instead of disloyalty
at line 5]; at line 9 one of the volunteers, George Seacole, has been thought
to be the “most desartless man,” a
wonderful word Dogberry makes up on the spot; at line 23 Seacole is “thought to
be the most senseless and fit man”
[for sensible]; at line 25 we have two
malapropisms – “you shall comprehend
all vagrom men” [in place of apprehend all vagrant men]; the men are warned that “to babble and to talk is
most tolerable” [ instead of intolerable at line 37]; and finally my
personal favorite at line 95, the admonition “Be vigitant” [in place of vigilant].
It is
more than just individual words which cause problems for the boys. At line 14 Dogberry explains why Seacole, who
is literate, has been selected to be in charge of the Watch that evening: “To
be a well-favored/ man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read/ comes by
nature.” What he’s saying, in his customary mixed-up manner, is that we get our
good lucks by achievement during our lifetimes, but we are born with the
ability to write and read. George
Seacole is the only member of the Watch identified by name. To this day in the old section of London
there is a “Seacoal Lane,” named for the high quality coal shipped down from
Newcastle for use in homes in the capital over the centuries. Both Dogberry and Verges are illiterate, as
we will discover in the next act, so Seacole may be superior by virtue of his
name and his abilities. But Dogberry at line 22 dismisses his literacy as
“vanity.” Some of Dogberry’s
instructions have unintended comic overtones.
At line 34 they are told they “are to meddle with none but/ the Prince’s
subjects.” This may not be exactly what
the job description says. Even more
hilarious at line 26 they are to “bid any man stand in the Prince’s name.” Dogberry means they can stop people for questioning,
but in the sexually-charged world of this comedy it comes out as ordering men
to get erections. The characters don’t
realize this double meaning, but the audience gets it. Another comic muddle is the argument Dogberry
and Verges have at lines 76 – 81. Dogberry, to impress the guys going off on
their first patrol, tells them they have the authority to stop even the Prince
in the night and question him. When
Verges doubts that, Dogberry quickly challenges him to a bet at line 79: “Five
shillings to one on’t, with any man/ that knows the statue, he may stay him!
Marry,/ not without the Prince be willing.”
Don’t mess with Dogberry! He
knows the law, but, of course, the Prince has to go along with it.
For
someone with an inflated sense of his own importance, Dogberry has a curious
philosophy of law enforcement. His basic
position is “Do nothing that will upset anyone, especially lawbreakers.” He is asked about four possible crimes or
policing activities and offers the Watch his preferred course of action. At
line 29, if someone will not stand or halt at the direction of the cops,
Dogberry says, “Why then, take no note of him, but let him/ go, and presently
call the rest of the watch together/ and thank God you are rid of a
knave.” Another duty is to call at all
the alehouses and tell the drunks to go home.
At line 47 he explains what to do if they won’t obey that order: “Why,
then, let them alone till they are sober./ If they make you not then the better
answer, you/ may say they are not the men you took them for.” If the Watch
catches a thief they can detain him, but Dogberry thinks, at line 59, “The most/
peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is to/ let him show himself what
he is, and steal out of/ your company.”
Finally if a crying child does not awaken the nurse in the night, the
Watch should not interfere at line 70: “Why, then, depart in peace and let the
child/ wake her with crying.” Cautioned
not to babble or talk in the streets, the Watch quickly realize what their job
should be: “We will rather sleep than talk; we know what/ belongs to a watch”
[line 38]. Dogberry applauds that as one
way to stay out of trouble but warns them not to allow their weapons [“bills”]
to be stolen. Then, just before he makes
his final exit, Dogberry does caution them to pay attention to Leonato’s house
where the wedding preparations are going on.
Behind
this comic exchange there is a serious social issue. London in particular was a pretty lawless
place where people’s property and their lives could be at risk. In large part this criminal atmosphere was
the result of the ineptitude of the police authorities and failure of the
volunteer Watch. In this play and
Shakespeare’s later comedy Measure for Measure we see the results of
crime allowed to flourish because the society lacked the will and the means to
solve its problem.
In the
next sequence, how much of his crime does Borachio reveal to Conrade? What do the members of the Watch think they
hear? What is the connection between the
crime and Borachio’s musing on the nature of fashion? [Act
III, scene 3, lines 96 – 181]
As soon
as the Watch settle down for a nap, Borachio and Conrade stumble onto the scene
and proceed to reveal details of the deception of Claudio and Don Pedro.
Borachio, probably drunk as his name in Italian implies, tells how he staged a
love scene with Margaret at Hero’s window, calling her Hero. The deception is aided by the fact that the
night is dark, the eavesdroppers are some distance removed, and Borachio later
“confesses” that he has been carrying on an affair with Hero for some
time. In the elaborate introduction to
this criminal revelation, Borachio compares the disguise of truth with the way
men hide their essential natures by the fashion of their clothes. Like many drunks telling stories, he wanders
far from the point, and at line 131 gives us a colorful description of fashion
as it masks the man:
Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed
thief
this fashion is? How giddily ‘a turns
about all the
hotbloods between fourteen and
five-and-twenty?
Sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh’s
soldiers
in the reechy [dirty] painting, sometime
like god Bel’s
priests in the old church window,
sometime like
the shaven Hercules in the smirched
worm-eaten
tapestry, where his codpiece seems as
massy as his club?
In
Borachio’s colorful rendition fashion is a “deformed thief,” because it
perverts reality and robs young men of their identity as they become slaves to
it. He then cites three examples of
extreme images of men that were apparently familiar to Shakespeare’s
audience. Although Shakespeare wrote in
the Renaissance when some of the world’s greatest art was created, those
paintings and sculptures were not generally available for public view. Instead we have a reference to some
outlandish soldiers from ancient Egypt that appeared in some kinds of mass
produced paintings that probably hung in alehouses where they were discolored
by smoke and dust – the Elizabethan equivalent of the dogs playing poker
picture of popular culture. The second
reference is to a picture apparently found in the stained glass window of a
church based on a story from The Book of Daniel about a group of priests
exposed as idolators. The third example
of public art is a mass-produced tapestry which shows Hercules dressed in the
fashion of Shakespeare’s day with a “codpiece,” an ornamental pouch that men
wore on the crotch of their pants, a form of sexual advertising. In Borachio’s
description the state of visual art for the masses in Shakespeare’s day is in
pretty bad shape.
It’s
funny that the bad guys spill the beans right next to the cops; the humor is
increased because the cops have no idea what they just heard. If it weren’t for the fact that Borachio
keeps referring to Don John as a “villain,” the Watch might never have known a crime
took place. One of the Watch recognizes
“Deformed” as a thief who pretends to be a gentleman and, in the fashion of the
time, wears a lovelock at his ear. This
clue of the lovelock will undergo a strange transformation in the telling. When the cops jump out of the shadows and put
the bad guys under arrest, they charge them with “lechery” at line 169 and
demand that they produce the thief Deformed.
Realizing that they have been caught by a bunch of incompetents, Conrade
at line 176 says, “Masters, never speak; we charge you let us/ obey you to go
with us,” implying that the criminals are taking the police into custody. Borachio also has a pun which mocks the Watch
at line 178 that your notes explain. The
breaking of this case is a sheer accident!
Act III, Scene 4
In this
scene Hero and Margaret prepare for the wedding and tease Beatrice when she
enters. This teasing parallels the
teasing that Don Pedro and Claudio did of Benedick back in Act III, scene
2. In that scene Benedick attributed his
subdued behavior to a toothache. To what
does Beatrice attribute her sudden change in personality? In previous scenes Beatrice was the life of
the party. In this scene who supplies
the comic spark? Notice as the girls
tease one another the frequent subtle hints and sexual innuendos. [Act
III, scene 4, line 1 – 96]
Hero is
excited and apprehensive on her wedding day, while Beatrice is at a
disadvantage, having been so thoroughly deceived about Benedick’s
affections. It is Margaret who is the
comedian in the scene, teasing first Hero and then Beatrice. Of course we sense a tension behind the humor
since Margaret was an accomplice, witting or unwitting, in the deception of
Claudio the night before. At line 18
Margaret offers a detailed description of the wedding gown of the Duchess of
Milan, a very elaborate outfit. In
Shakespeare’s theater costumes were often the most valuable asset, costing more
than the props, equipment or even the building.
Audiences wanted very impressive clothing in the theater, and the
company often bought discarded clothes from the court or noble houses.
At line
25 Hero shares that she is excited but apprehensive at the prospect of her
wedding, saying that her “heart is exceeding heavy.” Margaret takes this understandably concern
and turns it into a sexual joke: “’Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a
man.” Yes, Hero will soon know the effects of intercourse as Margaret
apparently already does. What’s
interesting here is Hero’s reaction at line 28 as she blushes at the mere
suggestion. It’s a small thing but Shakespeare’s
way to assuring us that when the accusations are made about Hero they are
without foundation. Margaret tries to
soften the joke by saying that the weight will be from her husband and not just
any man so that the suggestion was an honorable one.
Beatrice
enters at line 38 and announces she is so sick, she is “out of all tune.” Margaret quips that Beatrice should lead them
all in a rendition of the popular song “Light o’ Love.” It was a song favored
by girls and therefore sung without a bass part, or “burden,” referring back to
the pun about the weight of a man.
Beatrice retorts at line 45 that Margaret plays “light of love” with her
heels, that is, she is frequently on her back with her heels in the air. If her husband has enough stables, Margaret
will supply him with many “barns,” with a pun on “bairns” or babies. Margaret’s rejoinder is that Beatrice’s construction
is “illegitimate,” suggesting that the bairns will not necessarily belong to
her husband when she marries. At line 55 Margaret raises the possibility that
Beatrice has abandoned the anti-marriage crusade: “Well, and you be not turned
Turk, there’s/ no more sailing by the star.” “Turned Turk” here means become a
renegade, and when Beatrice wonders what she is talking about, Margaret coyly
answers at line 58, “Nothing I; but God send everyone their/ heart’s
desire!” She has already hinted that
what Beatrice really desires may be a husband.
When Hero asks her cousin to smell the perfumed gloves Claudio has sent
her (helpful hint for that special gift!), Beatrice begs off, saying that she
is stuffed because of her cold and unable to smell. This gives Margaret another opportunity for a
sexual joke at line 63: “A maid [virgin], and stuffed [pregnant]! There’s
goodly catching/ of cold.” Beatrice asks
Margaret at line 65, “How long/ have you professed apprehension,” meaning a
quick wit, and Margaret replies, “Ever since you left it.” She’s not her old sarcastic self. When Beatrice explains her change on spirit
as a result of sickness, Margaret becomes even more outrageous in her teasing,
advising Beatrice to get some “Carduus
Benedictus and lay it to your heart.”
This was an herbal remedy extracted from thistle, but Beatrice bristles
at the name: “Benedictus? Why Benedictus? You have/ some moral [hidden meaning] in this
Benedictus?” Margaret denies any special implication in
her suggestion. She says she is not
hinting that Beatrice is in love or could be in love. However, Benedick also professed that he would
never marry, and “now in despite of his heart he eats his meat without
grudging,” that is, he behaves as a normal person who is capable of love. She concludes at line 87, “And/ how you may
be converted I know not; but/ methinks you look with your eyes as other women
do.” It is a telling comment about Beatrice, who has been rather superior in
her attitude about human emotions and longing.
Margaret tweaks her about her feelings, which she can scarcely
hide. The scene ends with the arrival of
the bridegroom to take Hero to the church.
Act III, Scene 5
Dogberry
and his partner Verges show up at absolutely the worst time for Leonato, who is
the local judge, to interrogate the villains.
Leonato has to give his daughter away at her wedding. They have the potential for revealing the
deception before it has time to take effect.
What are some of the obstacles to clear and complete communications in
this scene? What is Dogberry’s primary
aim in this scene, judging by the amount of language he expends explaining
it? [Act
III, scene 5]
The
obstacles to clear and complete communications are numerous in the scene, as
Dogberry tries to impress the governor with his vocabulary. We are used to his malapropisms, but there
are some here that are wonderful. From
the beginning at line 2 where he tells Leonato, “I would have some confidence [conference]/ with you that decerns [concerns] you nearly,” Dogberry
is a constant challenge to comprehension.
When he finally gets around to telling Leonato the purpose of their
visit at line 43, the language still masks the urgency of the situation: “Our
watch, sir, have indeed/ comprehended two auspicious persons, and we would/
have them this morning examined before your worship.”
But
before we can get to even this mangled message, which hardly conveys to Leonato
the urgency of the situation, we have to
deal with Dogberry’s obsessive concern that everyone realize he is in
charge. At line 7 Verges makes the
mistake of agreeing with Dogberry’s acknowledgement that it is a busy time for
Leonato. Dogberry is quick to point out
at line 9 that Verges is not entitled to say anything:
Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off
the
matter – an old man, sir, and his wits
are not so
blunt as, God help, I would desire they
were; but , in
faith, honest as the skin between his
brows.
“Goodman”
was a title indicting that Verges owned property in the community, but
Dogberry, in the most patronizing manner possible, points out he is getting
older and “his wits are not so blunt as,” they ought to be. Now you may wish your wits were “sharp,” but
in the Dogberrian world we strive for blunt wits. I have no idea why the skin between his brows
should be more honest than any other, or, indeed, where it is located.
When
Verges has the bad taste to chime in again at line 13, affirming that he is as
honest as any other man who is as old and no “honester,” Dogberry puts him
down: “Comparisons are odorous,” (That’s where that smell came from!) and urges
Verges to “Palabras,” which is Spanish for “few words,” but which clearly means
“Shut up!” in this context. It has taken
the cops 16 lines to say absolutely nothing, so an exasperated Leonato tells
them they are “tedious.” This sets off
one of Dogberry’s greatness comic riffs at line 18, because no one has ever
before complimented him about being tedious:
It pleases your worship to say so, but we
are the poor Duke’s officers; but truly,
for mine
own part, if I were as tedious as a king,
I could find
in my heart to bestow it all of your
worship.
Leonato
probably thinks he’s already gotten all the tediousness he can use.
At line
29 Verges again speaks out of turn when he tells Leonato they have arrested two
arrant knaves. At least he gets the
words right, but Dogberry is off again on his toot to make sure Leonato doesn’t
mistake Verges for the lead investigator.
At line 32 he assures the magistrate
A good old man, sir; he will still be
talking. As
they say, “When the age is in, the wit is
out.” God
help us! It is a world to see! Well said,
i’ faith,
neighbor Verges. Well, God’s a good man. And
two men ride of a horse, one must ride
behind. An
honest soul, i’ faith, sir, by my troth
he is, as ever
broke bread; but God is to be worshipped;
all men
are not alike, alas, good neighbor!
This is
such a wonderful mixture as he patronizes Verges, calling him “neighbor” and an
“honest soul,” and then turning around and talking about him as if he weren’t
even there, making rude comments about his wits and the wonderful little moral
of the two men on a horse. All this, plus
throwing in references to God to make it sound as if there were some kind of
acknowledgement of a divinely sanctioned discrimination against
buttinskies! When Leonato tells the boys
he is in a hurry and that they should conduct the examination of the criminals
themselves, it inspires Dogberry to new creative heights as he assures the
judge at line 50, “It shall be suffigance,” which I think may have something to
do with “sufficiency.” For two lowly beat cops this is an amazing
opportunity. It would be as if the
detectives on Law and Order were invited into the D.A.’s office to help
prepare the case. As Dogberry says, they
are to “examination” the crooks, creatively turning a bland noun into a very
active verb. He will “drive some of them
to a non-come,” which your notes explain is a Latin phrase which has nothing to
do with Dogberry’s intended meaning.
However, they cannot proceed with their “examination” without the
presence of someone who can read and write – such is power of the written word
for folks who are illiterate. Anyone can
have a record of a “communication”; leave it to Dogberry to have, at line 61,
an “excommunication.”
Act IV, Scene 1
This
scene is the wedding from Hell. As he
promised, Claudio rejects and humiliates Hero, and Benedick and Beatrice will
finally reveal their love to each other.
The comic and potentially tragic plot lines collide violently. Once again we are struck by Claudio’s
decision, and Don Pedro’s concurrence, to make the confrontation so public. Do
we learn any more of their motives? What
is surprising about Leonato’s reaction to the crisis in his daughter’s
life? [Act IV, scene 1, lines 1 – 253]
Claudio’s condemnation of Hero has a real anger and
vehemence behind it. We can see a very
young and naïve man trying to cope with his first disappointment. Don Pedro is a little more difficult to
figure. Perhaps he feels he has to
support Claudio; maybe he believes his honor has been besmirched because he won
Hero’s love for Claudio; it could be he is just cruel and unthinking when he
deals with women who have dishonored their reputations. We gain a little more insight into their
motives when we see Claudio and Pedro in Act V, but ultimately the full
explanation of motivations may rely upon the performance of the actors in these
roles. I also asked what was surprising
about Leonato’s reaction. It is unusual
that a father whose only daughter is accused of sexual misbehavior would wish
that she were dead and then try actively to insure that she does not
survive. After initially questioning the
charges against his daughter, he ends up siding with Claudio and Pedro and
assuming Hero is guilty.
The scene starts in a light-hearted manner, in prose. They make jokes about whether Claudio came to
wed or to be wed by the friar. Leonato
seems in a rush to get the ceremony done, telling the friar at line 1 to use
the shorter version and then at line 17 answering that Claudio knows of no
“impediments” to the marriage. Claudio
is cagey about his intentions, but when Leonato answers for him, he suddenly
grows serious, the language shifts from prose to verse, and the groom lays a
logical “trap” for his prospective father-in-law. At line 26 he asks Leonato what he can give
him in return for the gift of his daughter and Don Pedro answers that the only
thing of equal value would be Hero herself.
At line 31 he tells Leonato “Give not this rotten orange to your
friend.” As Hero blushes, Claudio declares that even her maidenly blushes are
phony.
Leonato’s first reaction is to blame Claudio if his
daughter has lost her virginity. He
assures everyone at line 52, that he behaved “as a brother to his sister,
showed/ Bashful sincerity and comely love.”
He goes on to say that Hero is like an animal in her sexual appetite at
line 58: “But you are more intemperate in your blood [sexual desire]/ Than
Venus, or those pamp’red animals/ That rage in savage sensuality.” (Did you
ever see the horny monkeys in the zoo?)
This may seem to you to be an overstatement based on one supposed
encounter glimpsed briefly in the dark. Even Don Pedro is called upon to add
his judgment and at line 64 calls her “a common stale,” or prostitute. At this point at line 67 Benedick makes a
statement of the obvious: “This looks not like a nuptial.”
Claudio now charges Hero specifically with an act of
betrayal at line 82: “What man was he talked with you yesternight,/ Out of your
window betwixt twelve and one?” Hero denies hotly that she talked with anyone,
and Don Pedro calls her a liar, explaining that he, Claudio and Don John saw
her
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber window
Who hath
indeed, most like a liberal [promiscuous] villain,
Confessed the
vile encounters they have had
A thousand
times in secret.
It is clear that the thing which convinced the men of
Hero’s crime is the “confession” by Borachio.
It is not until this point that anyone thinks to ask her if she is
guilty. Her denial does no good. Even Don John, at line 94, offers his opinion
of her sins:
Fie, fie! They
are not to be named, my lord –
Not to be
spoke of;
There is not
chastity enough in language
Without
offense to utter them. Thus, pretty
lady,
I am sorry for
thy much misgovernment.
What Hero has committed goes beyond the ability of
language, at least language used by polite people like Don John, to express
it. His expression of regret for her
“misgovernment” is a wonderful piece of hypocrisy. Notice how in the telling of
this alleged crime, it sounds worse and worse as the men hint at the
details. Claudio at lines 99 – 107
expresses his regret that Hero has failed to live up to the promise of her
beauty; because of her moral failure, he says, he will “lock up the gates of
love” and henceforth will regard beauty as a warning signal of danger.
At this point things fall apart. Leonato, in his despair, asks at line 108
“Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?”
Clearly he believes the charges.
Hero promptly swoons, the appropriate reaction of a proper young lady
under the circumstances! You notice that
throughout the play Beatrice never comes close to swooning. Claudio, Pedro and John hurriedly leave, but
Benedick stays. Given what he had loudly
declared in the first two acts of the play, you would have expected him to be
the first one out the door at this point.
But Benedick has a new allegiance which he shows by being the only
member of the prince’s party to stay behind.
Beatrice is worried that her cousin will die, and she calls out to her
uncle. When Leonato ignore her at line
113, she calls to Benedick, a sign that she too has a new allegiance. Leonato at line 114 declares his belief in
his daughter’s guilt: “O Fate, take not away thy heavy hand!/ Death is the
fairest cover for her shame/ That may be wished for.” Proper young Elizabethan ladies might joke
about love and men, but the loss of chastity was a major catastrophe. Her father wants her dead. In a long speech at lines 119 –142 he comes
back to the question of her appearance: “Wherefore? Why, doth not every earthly
thing/ Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny/ The story that is printed in
her blood?” that is, the fact that she blushes. It is unusual for Shakespeare
to describe the facial expression of a character; he usually left it up to an
actor to convey the emotional reaction.
But here he wanted to make sure that the two or three thousand people crammed
into the Globe Theater knew that Hero was blushing, so he has several different
characters comment on it.
Leonato really gets worked up about his daughter’s
guilt. At line 122 he commands
Do not live,
Hero; do not ope thine eyes;
For, did I
think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy
spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would
on the rearward of reproaches
Strike at thy
life.
He assumes that Hero, as an Elizabethan gentlewomen, will
die of her shame. If she does not, he
would kill her. Talk about moral
absoluteness! He continues his
condemnation in extreme language at line 138:
O,
she is fall’n
Into
a pit of ink, that the whole wide sea
Hath
drops too few to wash her clean again,
And
salt too little which may season give [help preserve]
To
her foul tainted flesh!
Her supposed sin has blemished her
reputation like being dunked in ink, making it too foul to be cleaned by all
the water in the ocean. All the salt in
the ocean cannot save her corrupted flesh from rotting. Wow!
When Benedick and Beatrice both urge him to reserve judgment, Leonato
cites the most compelling evidence for him at line 151: “Would the two princes
lie, and Claudio lie,/ Who loved her so that, speaking of her foulness,/ Washed
it with tears?” We can see how important the fact is that the condemnation came
from Don Pedro and Don John. Once again
he orders her to die at line 153.
It is Friar Francis who finally
examines Hero’s appearance closely and interprets it correctly. At line 157 he tells the wedding guests
I
have marked
A
thousand blushing apparitions
To
start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
In
angel whiteness beat away those blushes,
And
in her eye there hath appeared a fire
To
burn the errors that the prince hold
Against
her maiden truth.
Francis, by looking more closely
at Hero’s expression, is able to see the truth that even her father has
missed. When he points out that she
appears guilty because she has not denied the charges, Hero finally breaks
forth in a passionate statement of her innocence in which she swears she is
innocent and asks to be tortured to death if she is found false. At line 185 it is Benedick who first raises
the possibility that John, “Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies,” may be
behind the plot. It is amazing that it
has taken this long for anyone to question the motives of Don John, the guy who
was behind the recent attempt to overthrow Pedro. After the confusion about Pedro’s actions at
the masked ball, no one thought to launch an investigation into who was behind
all the misinformation.
Now Leonato does a complete
reversal at line 189, saying that if Hero is guilty he still wants her
dead. But if she has been slandered,
then “The proudest of them shall well hear of it,” and goes on to promise
revenge. The Friar, in his long speech
at line 210, urges that they continue the fiction that Hero has died. This will cause remorse in Claudio because it
suggests she was really innocent. It
will give them some time to discover what really happened. It will take Hero
out of public scrutiny. And if it
doesn’t work, at line 240, he says she can hide her “wounded reputation” in a
religious life as a nun. The ultimate escape
for Elizabethan gentlewomen who get into impossible situations, at least in
literature, is to “get thee to a nunnery.”
In this next sequence Benedick and
Beatrice are finally left alone. It is
the romantic highpoint of the play, as they struggle to declare their love for
each other. Who declares love
first? Why? How does the language change? Why? What complicates this moment of love, making
it not what we expected? [Act IV, scene 1, line 254 – 333]
Shakespeare seldom gives us a single big emotional experience in a
straightforward manner. Every emotional high, it
seems, is complicated, none more so that this remarkable scene. We seem to have a conflict brewing which
gives us a multifaceted response. Here
we have these two bright, clever, emotionally needy people who finally overcome
the obstacles of their own making to declare their love for each other, and we
get these complications. Despite the
romantic nature of the scene and its serious content, the language changes from
verse to prose. Why? I’ll let you consider the reasons for that
choice. We do have love, but it is all
wrapped up in this expression of rage.
Benedick approaches his declaration of love through his willingness to
help Hero. He begins by asking Beatrice
if she is still weeping and what he might do to help her cousin at line 260.
Beatrice: Ah, how much might the man
deserve of me
that
would right her!
Benedick: Is there any way to show such
friendship?
Beatrice: A very even [direct] way, but
no such friend.
Benedick: May a man do it?
Beatrice: It is a man’s office, but not
yours.
So even before Benedick declares
his love, Beatrice has stated emphatically that she does not expect him to do
anything to oppose his friend or his ruler.
So this exchange allows Benedick a chance, finally, to declare his love
for her at line 266. But notice how he
tells her: “I do love nothing in the world so well as you./ Is not this
strange?” It’s not your normal way of
telling someone you love them: it’s not “beautiful” or “heavenly” but
“strange.” It is undoubtedly strange for
Benedick to find himself saying these words and to this particular woman. He
may even feel a little self-conscious.
So he has taken the first step,
been the first to risk rejection. How
does Beatrice respond? Very strangely,
at line 268:
As
strange as the thing I know not. It were
as
possible
for me to say loved nothing so well as you.
But
believe me not; and yet I lie not. I
confess noth-
ing
, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my
cousin.
Beatrice is much more reluctant to
admit her love. She skirts around the
declaration, but she is not being coy.
First, she has been hurt before, we know, and this might make her wary
of an emotional commitment. And she
faces an immediate crisis with Hero as she reminds him at the end of this
passage. Beatrice’s ambiguous answer is
enough for Benedick, and at line 272 he declares:
Benedick: By my sword, Beatrice, thou
lovest me.
Beatrice:
Do not swear and eat it.
Benedick: I will swear by it [his sword]
that you love me, and I
will
make him eat it that says I love not you.
Beatrice:
Will you not eat your word?
Benedick: With no sauce that can be
devised to it.
Benedick “swears by my sword”
because a gentleman’s sword was the tangible symbol of his honor. She worries that he will “eat” his word, that
is, he will renege on his oath of love.
Benedick reassures her in the strongest terms possible – that he would
make anyone who doubted his love eat his sword nor will he ever eat his
word. At line 277 he repeats his
declaration: “I protest [vow] I love thee.”
With this assurance Beatrice
finally affirms the love we know she feels and he suspects she is trying to
hide:
Beatrice:
Why then, God forgive me!
Benedick: What offense, sweet Beatrice?
Beatrice:
You have stayed me in a happy
hour [just in time]. I was
about
to protest I loved you.
Benedick: And do it with all thy heart.
Beatrice:
I love you with so much of my heart that none
is
left to protest.
Finally we get the great romantic
moment we have been building toward since the beginning of the play. But we do not get it for long! The bliss of love in this most conflicted of
scenes lasts for exactly one line. In
his exuberance to discover Beatrice shares his emotions, Benedick declares at
line 286
Benedick: Come, bid me do anything for
thee.
Beatrice:
Kill Claudio.
Benedick: Ha! Not for the wide world!
Beatrice:
You kill me to deny it.
Farewell.
Benedick: Tarry, sweet Beatrice.
The two plot lines come crashing
together in those two chilling words Beatrice speaks. We understand why she equates his love and
the killing of Claudio. Even though she
had told him earlier that the job of avenging Hero’s shame was not his
responsibility, his swearing his love has changed the situation: “Love me, kill
my enemy.” And we see why Benedick
answers as emphatically as he does: Claudio is his best friend; besides,
Claudio is an accomplished swordsman, and Benedick has been apparently
reluctant to risk his life. So that’s it,
as Beatrice tries to leave -- the end of the shortest love affair on record!.
He tries to restrain her from
leaving, saying that they will be friends before he lets her go. She retorts at line 296 “You dare easier be
friends with me than fight/ with mine enemy.” When he asks if Claudio really is her enemy,
he gets the full force of her rage. Look
at the exchange between them from line 299 to line 328. Begin by looking at the five places where
Benedick speaks or tries to speak. Up to
this point in the play we have not noticed any inability on Benedick’s part to
articulate his feelings, but here he is reduced to uttering just a few words or
a single syllable in places. Just the
fact that he asks the question of Claudio’s being Beatrice’s enemy opens the
door for her outpouring which sweeps him away.
Look at her first expression of rage at line 299:
Is
‘a not approved in the height [proven completely] a villain, that
hath
slandered, scorned, dishonored my kinswoman?
O
that I were a man! What, bear her in hand [trick her] until
they
come to take hands; and then, with public
accusation,
uncovered [suddenly revealed] slander, unmitigated rancor –
O
God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in
the
market place!
We are used to gentlemen
proclaiming and protecting the honor of themselves and their friends throughout
the plays. Here we see a gentlewoman
equally passionate about the honor of her relative. In Beatrice’s fervent wish, “O that I were a
man” we see the expression of a person oppressed by the limitations on her
gender in a patriarchal society. She
zeroes in on the decision of the men to publicly humiliate Hero at the wedding,
a revelation as Beatrice point out that required great hatred, especially from
Claudio. Her last wish in this passage
is stunning in its ferocity. This is not
a woman that you would want to mess with.
In the next few lines Beatrice repeats the charges against her cousin
with heavy sarcasm, interrupting Benedick three times. Her second long speech at line 313 comes back
to this theme of the injustice of gender in that society:
Princes
and counties! Surely, a princely testimony,
a
goodly count, Count Comfect [“Sugarplum”]; a sweet gallant
surely!
O that I were a man for his sake! Or that
I
had any friend would be a man for my sake! But
manhood
is melted into cursies [obsequious bows], valor into
compliment
[formal etiquette], and men are only turned into tongue, and trim
ones
too. He is now as valiant as Hercules
that only
tells
a lie, and swears it. I cannot be a man
with
wishing;
therefore I will die a woman with grieving.
Now it is not just Claudio who is
the object of her wrath but Don Pedro, the prince, as well. Count Claudio is included in the sarcastic
title of “counties.” The slanderous story against Hero is dismissed as a
“princely testimony,” something that in reality does not reflected well on
Pedro. Claudio is ironically called a
“goodly count,” because that is his title, but the story, or testimony, is also
referred to as if it were a “count” in an indictment. At the beginning of the play Beatrice had
mocked Benedick’s supposed valor by calling him “Signior Mountanto,” a fancy
Italian fencing maneuver. Here she does
the same thing to Claudio, calling him “Count Comfect,” as if he were the
little man on the top of the wedding cake, someone with a pleasant exterior but
no substance. The phrase “a sweet
gallant” repeats this idea of a sarcastic dismissal of Claudio as a serious
human being. Once again she wishes she were a man, but now turns this wish into
an opportunity to flagellate Benedick and gentlemen in general. The honor which men are so concerned about
she declares has been transformed, “melted,” into the external shows of honor
and obedience reflected by the put-down of “cursies” or “curtsies.”
“Compliment” was often used as a disparaging term to refer to the code of
courtly gentlemen when it had become concerned with the external show of
behavior rather than commitment to genuine honor. Such a display of honor might
well be associated with the “tongue” rather than the ”heart,” and tongues which
were “trim,” that is, “nice” in an ironic way.
Heroic standards have been lowered to such an extent that honorable men
are guilty of only telling a lie. She
ends with a fourth powerful statement of her desire to be a man capable of
acting in that society.
Benedick finally relents at line
329 and agrees to do as she wishes:
Enough,
I am engaged. I will challenge him.
I
will kiss your hand, and so I leave you. By this
hand,
Claudio shall render me a dear account.
As
you
hear of me, so think of me. Go comfort
your
cousin. I must say she is dead. And so farewell!
A challenge in those days was a
matter of life-and-death. It takes a lot
to get Benedick to agree to confront Claudio, but we have seen the power of
Beatrice’s rage, balanced by his love for her.
He does a little posturing here: “As you hear of me, think of me.” And so they separate, and the comic plot has
now taken a very serious turn.
Act IV, Scene 2
Things may look dark elsewhere,
but the cavalry is on the way to save the day.
Dogberry and Verges are about to “examination” the two “auspicious
benefactors.” As we might expect the
scene is filled with Dogberry’s customary butchering of the language. What are some of the better examples of his
malapropisms? In this scene what is the
worst crime Conrade and Borachio stand accused of, from Dogberry’s
perspective. [Act IV, scene 2]
There are 10 places in this scene
where Dogberry or Verges misspeak or misunderstand something. See if you can identify them all. I’ll only mention some of the more prominent
examples.
The Sexton is probably someone who
can read and write connected with the local church. He asks for the “malefactors.” If the bad guys are “benefactors,” then Dogberry
and Verges mist be the “malefactors,” and they volunteer. The presence of the Sexton gives us hope that
the truth will finally be revealed, even though Dogberry is in charge of
conducting the interrogation. We’re used
to the process on police shows by which the criminals are broken down. The Master Constable has a different
approach: just keep asking them inane questions until they confess. At line 20
he asserts “Masters, it is proved already/ that you are little better than
false knaves, and it will/ go near to be thought so shortly. How answer you for yourselves?” When Conrade
denies the charge, the keen detective says at line 25, “A marvelous witty
fellow, I assure you, but I/ will go about with him.” He’s a master criminal,
but Dogberry will break him. (Dogberry has already tangled with Conrade at line
12 when he called him “sirrah,” a term used for social inferiors, and Conrade
objected, “I am a gentleman.”)
Dogberry has an unusual sense of syntax in the
written language, the grammatical system by which we arrange words in
English. He doesn’t connect it with the
way he speaks but rather with some moral hierarchy in which what comes first in
a sentence is the most important thing in the statement. At line 16 he asks them if they serve God,
and they both answer that they hope so.
So Dogberry instructs the Sexton: “Write down that they hope they serve
God;/ and write God first, for God defend but that God should/ go before such
villains!” Dogberry also has problems
keeping the names of the crimes straight.
When at line 40 the First Watch reports that Borachio called Don John a
villain, Dogberry announces this is a case of “flat perjury.” Then when the Second Watch reports that Don
John had paid Borachio a thousand ducats to accuse Lady Hero “wrongfully,” that
is the crime of “Flat burglary” at line 49. (“Flat” here just means
“open-and-shut, apparent.”) If these
charges are proven at line 55, they will mean the villains are “condemned into
everlasting redemption.” When the Sexton
has finally heard and understood the nature of the crime, he runs off to show
Leonato the examination and orders that the bad guys be tied up and brought
before the aggrieved father. At line 66
Dogberry directs, “let them be opinioned.” (At line 68 your text is probably
wrong; Verges says something like, “Let
them be in the hands,” and Conrade, the gentleman, objecting to being
manhandled, says, “Off, coxcomb,” a term for a fool.)
When Dogberry hears one of his men
being called a “coxcomb,” he calls for the Sexton to write it down. The Master Constable, like many illiterate
people, has an almost magical faith in the power of the written word; it’s not
real unless someone has written it down. Conrade now turns his anger on
Dogberry. We can understand why he might
be upset. He was not involved in the
crime but just happened to be present when Borachio foolishly confessed to
it. Now he is big trouble, and he lashes
out at the man in charge, calling him “an ass.” Dogberry once again calls for
the Sexton to write down what was just said, and then implores that everyone
remember that he is “an ass,” until they can find someone to write it
down. Dogberry angrily responds to
Conrade: “Dost thou not suspect my place” at line 73, and at line 78 he accuses
him of being “full of piety.” Dogberry’s
long response, which concludes the scene, is filled with the angry
self-justification of a little man who insists that he be taken seriously. He is an officer, a constable, and he owns
his own house. He considers himself
good-looking and rich enough. He has had
losses and has weathered that crisis; he knows the law, and besides, he’s got
two gowns, a claim that not many others can make. Conrade had no reason to call him an ass, but
everyone, including the audience, will always remember that he is.
The important piece of information
that is provided in this scene is that Don John has fled from Messina, thereby
lending support to the charge that there was a criminal plot. Furthermore, now someone who can make a sensible
report, the Sexton, is on the way to the rescue.
ACT V, Scene 1
If the wedding was uncomfortable,
this scene is even more awkward. The
Prince and Claudio are still staying at Leonato’s house. With the death of their host’s daughter you
can imagine there is some tension in the household. We see that Leonato has done another complete
change and now is convinced of his daughter’s innocence. So as his anger builds there is the real
possibility that he will challenge Claudio to a fight. In the opening sequence Leonato’s brother,
Antonio, tries to intercede to keep his brother from doing anything
foolish. Notice what happens in the
dynamics of the interchange with the two old men and the two younger ones. Then Benedick enters and the level of tension
increases as he moves to challenge Claudio.
What makes it so difficult for Benedick to challenge his former
friend? Finally throughout this entire
sequence, how sorry are Claudio and Pedro for the situation? [Act V, scene 1, line 1 –199]
In the opening lines of this scene
Antonio is afraid that Leonato in his grief and anger will do something that
will hurt him further. Leonato’s long
speech at lines 3 –32 is a response on a theme that Shakespeare often explored
in his plays – that it is impossible for people who have not experienced an
emotional crisis to advise others not to feel a certain way. At line 20 he
summarizes this issue:
For
, brother, men
Can
counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which
they themselves not feel; but tasting it,
Their
counsel turns to passion, which before
Would
give perceptial medicine [precepts advising patience] to rage,
Fetter
strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm
ache with air and agony with words.
Perhaps Leonato expresses it best
at line 34: “I will be flesh and blood;/ For there was never yet philosopher/ That
could endure the toothache patiently.”
So Leonato is determined to confront Claudio and give full scope to his
grief and anger because now he is convinced his daughter is innocent. It’s a tricky business to confront his almost
son-in-law. First, he is the host for
their stay in Messina. Secondly, he has
to separate Don Pedro from Claudio, making sure not to insult the monarch. At line 47 Don Pedro tries to avoid a
confrontation, but Leonato at line 53 says to Claudio, “thou dost wrong me,
thou dissembler, thou!” Apparently at that moment Claudio, as a young nobleman
very concerned about his honor, automatically reaches for his sword. Leonato
jumps at the opportunity to fight, and Claudio quickly apologizes at line 55:
“Marry, bestrew my hand/ If it should give your age such cause of fear./ In
faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.” Leonato insists, “Bring it on!” He wants the fight and at line 72 he accuses
Claudio of killing Hero, “framed by thy villainy!” The difference in age does
not deter him. As he tells Don Pedro at
line 74, “I’ll prove it on his body if he dare,/ Despite his nice fence
[skillful swordplay] and his active practice,/ His May of youth and bloom of
lustihood.”
At that point Antonio, who had
been worried earlier about Leonato losing his temper with Claudio, explodes in
rage. At line 80 he shouts at Claudio:
He
shall kill two of us, and men indeed.
But
that’s no matter: let him kill one first.
Win
me and wear me! Let him answer me.
Come,
follow me, boy; come, sir boy; come, follow me.
Sir
boy, I’ll whip you from your foining fence [parrying thrusts]!
Nay,
as I am a gentleman, I will.
Clearly here Antonio is using
“boy” repeatedly as an insult to get Claudio to react. He calls on Claudio to follow him, because
you could not duel in public; it was against the law, so people wishing to
fence to the death would walk out of town to do it. The humor here is that it is Antonio, the
former peacemaker, who loses his temper.
At line 94 he hurls insult upon insult: “Scrambling [brawling],
outfacing [insulting], fashionmongering [overly conscious of fashion] boys,/
that lie and cog [cheat] and flout [insult], deprave and slander.” Antonio really works himself up to a rage,
and it becomes Leonato’s job to calm his brother down. Don Pedro insists that Hero was accused with
solid evidence and he tells them to go away.
They leave, promising revenge, as Benedick enters.
Don Pedro and Claudio have just
had an uncomfortable confrontation with a grief-stricken father and uncle. Most people, regardless of their feelings
about Hero, would feel some sympathy for these old men’s loss. However, Pedro and Claudio treat the whole
episode as a joke. At line 115 Claudio
says, “We had liked to have had our two noses/ snapped off with two old men
without teeth.” Pedro characterizes the
near-fight at line 118: “Had we fought, I doubt [I’m afraid] we should have
been/ too young for them.” Claudio tells Benedick that they have been looking
for him to make them laugh. (Apparently things have been a little bleak ever
since Hero died at the wedding.) He tells Benedick to “use thy wit,” and at
line 125 Benedick reaches down and touches his sword, just as Claudio had done
earlier in the scene, and says, “It is in my scabbard. Shall I draw it?” Benedick, we know, is deadly serious. He wants to challenge Claudio to a duel. Both
Pedro and Claudio will refuse throughout the rest of the scene to take him
seriously. At line 142 Benedick asks
Claudio, “Shall I speak a word in your ear?” and Claudio replies, “God bless me
from a challenge!” which is exactly what he gets from Benedick:
You
are a villain; I jest
not;
I will make it good how you dare, with what
you
dare, and when you dare. Do me right, or
I will
protest
your cowardice. You have killed a sweet
lady,
and her death shall fall heavy on you.
Let me
hear
from you.
Now this could not be clearer or
more serious. And yet neither Claudio
nor Pedro will take it seriously. In
fact, Don Pedro tries to turn the conversation to Beatrice at line 158:
I’ll
tell thee how Beatrice praised thy wit
the
other day. I said thou hadst a fine wit. “True,”
said
she, “a fine little one.” “No,” said I,
“ a great
wit.”
“Right,” says she, “a great gross one.” “Nay,”
said
I, “a good wit.” “Just,” said she, “it hurts
nobody.”
“Nay,” said I, “the gentleman is wise.”
“Certain,”
said she, “a wise gentleman.” “Nay,”
said
I, “he hath the tongues [knowledge of languages].” “That I believe,”
said
she, “for he swore a thing to me on Monday
night
which he forswore [denied] on Tuesday morning;
there’s
a double tongue; there’s two tongues [dishonesty].” Thus
did
she an hour together transshape [distort] thy particular
virtues. Yet at last she concluded with a sigh
thou
wast the prop’rest man in Italy.
Most of this comic sequence is
clear. When Beatrice says Benedick is a
“wise gentleman” she is, in effect, calling him a “wiseass.” It is a litany of typical Beatrice insults, which
we know Pedro is just making up, and yet it concludes with her acknowledging
that she is attracted to Benedick. In
fact they reveal the deception in the garden at line 177 where Claudio admits
that they saw him eavesdropping. At line
179 Pedro brings up Benedick’s boast in the opening scene: “But when shall we
set the savage bull’s/ horns on the sensible Benedick’s head?” However, Benedick will not let their humor
deter him, and at line 183 he repeats his challenge and here he calls Claudio
“boy!” And at line 186 he turns to Don Pedro and announces, “My lord, for/ your
many courtesies [favors] I thank you. I
must discontinue/ your company.” Now
this is extraordinary. Benedick he was
one of Pedro’s favorite courtiers. In
such a position you do not suddenly announce that you are quitting; you wait to
be dismissed. Benedick, just in passing,
reveals at line 188 what we already know:
Your
brother the bastard is
fled
Messina. You have among you killed a
sweet
and innocent lady. For my Lord Lackbeard
there,
he and I shall meet; and till then peace be
with
him.
He insults Claudio again by
calling him “Lackbeard,” that is, not yet man enough to have a beard. John’s flight should be confirmation of the
suspicion that something is not right, but Pedro and Claudio continue to treat
the situation as a joke, saying that Benedick’s seriousness is the result of
his being overwrought with Beatrice’s love.
Now the cavalry finally rides to
the rescue with the arrival of Dogberry with the “benefactors.” Notice who finally convinces Don Pedro about
the deception which took him in. Notice
how Leonato’s arrival changes the tone of the proceedings. Dogberry, in his final appearance, is given a
handsome tip for his work. Notice his
reaction and what he emphasizes about the crime. [Act V, scene 1, lines 202 – 334]
Dogberry makes his customary mess
of the language, saying essentially the same thing in six different ways in his
speech at lines 214 – 218. Don Pedro at
line 219 plays along with the joke, which, of course, Dogberry doesn’t
understand. It is finally the criminal
himself, Borachio, who reveals the exact nature of the crime and the deception
in his long speech at lines 229 – 243.
Borachio, convinced of Hero’s death, is filled with guilt and says at
line 242 that he desires “nothing but the/ reward of a villain” that is, death. Belatedly, Pedro and Claudio express regret
for Hero’s death. Speaking verse now,
after the comic prose of the preceding section, Claudio says of his almost-wife
at line 252 “Sweet Hero, now thy image doth appear/ In the rare semblance that
I loved it first.” Leonato enters and
enjoys of moment of triumph as he revels in the fact that he was correct in his
earlier condemnation. As he tells
Borachio at line 266, who says he alone is guilty of Hero’s death,
No,
not so, villain! Thou beliest thyself.
Here
stand a pair of honorable men;
A
third is fled, that had a hand in it.
I
thank you, princes, for my daughter’s death.
Record
it with your high and worthy deeds.
‘Twas
bravely done, if you bethink you of it.
The sarcasm here is pretty heavy
but justified as Leonato uses a kind of verbal indirection to indict Don Pedro
for his complicity. Obviously he cannot
openly condemn the ruler but he makes him feel the sting. Claudio can only abjectly beg for forgiveness. Leonato imposes three tasks on him before he
can be forgiven: 1.) inform the citizens of Messina “How innocent she died” [l.
284]; Hero’s reputation must be restored; 2.) do public penance and “Hang her
an epitaph upon her tomb” [l. 285]: 3.) agree to marry Leonato’s niece. Now this task confounds modern
audiences. After what he did to
Leonato’s daughter, who would want to have to look at Claudio’s bland,
judgmental face at the table every Thanksgiving? And yet, because it was a “good” marriage in
social and financial terms, Leonato doesn’t want to give it up.
At line 297 when Leonato says he
wants to question Margaret for her complicity in the crime, Borachio is quick
to defend her and say she was not aware of the plot and had always been
virtuous. Even bad guys can be
gentlemen. One does have to wonder about
a woman who agrees to pretend to be another woman in a sexual fantasy.
Before he turns over the criminals
for punishment, Dogberry wants to make sure that Leonato knows about the most
serious charge against Borachio and Conrade, the fact that one of them called
him “ass.” At line 308 Dogberry also drags up the old charge about Borachio’s
“foul thief Deformed.” In his drunken
hyperbole about fashion back in Act III, scene 3, Borachio had created a
hypothetical character representing fashion, who he mentioned wore a lovelock
in his hair. The Watch thought he was
talking about a real thief named “Deformed,” and now Dogberry has figured out
that if he had a lock in his hair, he must a key in his ear at line 310. Now he expands upon this criminal mastermind
and decides that he is responsible for the hard-heartedness of the society
because he has borrowed money and not repaid it. God only knows how Dogberry came up with this
creative addition! At line 318 Leonato gives the constable what we hope is a
substantial gratuity. Poor Dogberry is
so undone by this all he can say at line 319 is “God save the foundation!”
referring to a charitable institution.
This line is what beggars said when they received alms, an inappropriate
response for a Master Constable.
Dogberry’s final speech is characteristically misspoken and comically
mismatched at line 322, addressed to Leonato:
I
leave an arrant knave with your worship,
which
I beseech your worship to correct yourself,
for
the example of others. God keep your
worship!
I
wish your worship well. God restore you
to health!
I
humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry
meeting
may be wished, God prohibit it!
First this is a funny sequence
because Dogberry just throws out lines that he might have heard others use,
such as “God restore you to health,” which is hardly appropriate in this
case. But it is the final sentence that
is the howler: “if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.” We can all think of times when we need God to
“prohibit” something. The scene ends
with Claudio agreeing to mourn at Hero’s tomb that night
Act V, Scene 2
This is the only “date” that
Benedick and Beatrice have. How has
their relationship changed since the last time we saw them? If you were a relationship counselor, what
would you advise them about their prospects for marriage? [Act V, scene 1]
This is not your typical
date. Despite their love and their
shared goals, they are too wise to delude themselves. A lot of their old cynicism about love and
marriage is still in the air. The scene
opens with a brief exchange between Benedick and Margaret, and once again we
see her as a kind of sexual jester, making jokes in questionable taste but in
good spirits. Benedick at line 6
promises her a sonnet, something that most women would have appreciated: “In so
high a style, Margaret, that no man/ living shall come over it; for in most
comely truth/ thou deserves it.” What he is saying here is that he will write a
poem in such a fine style that no one will ever be able to equal it. Margaret deliberately misinterprets this idea
to turn it into a bawdy joke: “To have no man come over me,” that is to have no
man be on top of her. This leads into a
witty exchange about weaponry. Benedick
offers to give her the bucklers, the small shields used in warfare, if she will
send Beatrice to him. Margaret, at line
19, says women have bucklers of their own; they want swords, a phallic
reference. He says women should attach spikes,
called “pikes,” in the center of their targets, another name for bucklers, but
that they would need to use vices to accomplish the job, a bawdy reference to
tightened thighs in intercourse. She leaves to fetch Beatrice.
Benedick has been working on a
song about the god of love. But after
only four lines he gives up, saying while he is a good lover, he is a lousy
writer. He mentions other great lovers
of the past: Leander, the ancient Greek lover of Hero, who drowned in the
Hellespont; Troilus, the ancient Trojan, who first approached his beloved,
Cressida, through her uncle, Pandarus, who gave his name to panderers or pimps. Benedick lumps them all under the tile of
“quondam carpetmongers,” that is men who weren’t good warriors except in the
bedroom. These lovers only appear now
“in the even road of a blank verse,” that is in love poems. Benedick
at line 16 explains why he is giving up:
Marry,
I cannot show it in rhyme. I have tried.
I
can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby,” an
innocent
rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn,” a hard rhyme;
for
“school,” “fool,” a babbling rhyme. Very
ominous
endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming
planet,
nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
Benedick is too cynical to write
simple love poems. Linking “lady” with
“baby” is a reminder of the consequences of love. The fashionable word for women who were
difficult to win was “scorn” but that leads him to think of the horns of the
cuckold. When you studied love you were
said to be set to school, which he associates with idiots or with illegitimate
children, also called “fools.” The
Elizabethans believed that your skills were dictated by the planet under which
you were born.
Beatrice enters at line 42 and
they have a funny little exchange. He is
surprised that she came when he asked her to, and she says she did come and
will leave when he tells her. In his
excitement he says, “O, stay but till then,” and she says, “’Then’ is spoken.
Fare you well now. The she gets serious
and asks about what has happened between Benedick and Claudio. Once again we get this uncomfortable coupling
of the serious and comic plot lines.
Once he assures her that he has issued the challenge, they move to his
agenda at line 60: “And I pray thee now tell me, for/ which of my bad parts didst
thou first fall in love/ with me?” He is so cocky about the way he phrases this
request. But Beatrice is fully prepared
to answer in the same vein:
For
them all together, which maintained so
politic
a state of evil [a community of wickedness]that they will not admit
any
good part to intermingle with them. But
for which
of
my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
She loved him for his absolute
peerless achievement of evil. He in turn
appreciates her choice of “suffer love.”
As he says at line 66, “Suffer love? A good epithet. I do suffer love/ indeed, for I love thee
against my will.” We can see how these
two are beginning to discover the deception that has bought them together. As Benedick says at line 72 “Thou and I are
too wise to woo peaceably.” It’s only a
question of time before they revert to their old behavior patterns. They will spend their lives fighting. When she chides him for apparently praising
himself, he answers at line 76 “If a man do/ not erect in this age his own tomb
ere he dies, he/ shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings/ and the
widow weeps.” That is, the memory of a
good man hardly lasts as long as the bell rings announcing his death or as long
as his widow weeps for him. He goes on
to say that he will have to be the trumpet of his own virtues, even though he
is praiseworthy. But if he was fishing
for a compliment from her, he’s out of luck.
So he asks seriously about how she and her cousin are doing, and she
says not very well.
Then Ursula comes in with news of
the revelation of the plot and the urgent request for Beatrice to return to
Leonato’s. She asks if he will go with
her to her uncle’s to hear the news. Benedick
is overjoyed because now he will not have to fight Claudio, and he and Beatrice
can be wed. He tells her at line 100 “I
will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and/ be buried in thy eyes; and
moreover, I will go with/ thee to thy uncle’s.”
The full import of this sentiment can be appreciated if you recall the
meaning of “die” in Elizabethan slang.
Act V, Scene 3
In this short scene we see Claudio
mourning before Hero’s supposed tomb. He
has written a fine elegy which he recites, followed by a sad song about a guy
who killed his girlfriend. What’s ironic
about this scene is that he says a lot more about Hero in death than he ever
said about her in life. The scene is
also a reminder of the conventional emotions and language of love and grief
that people like Claudio and Hero engaged in, in contrast to that of Benedick
and Beatrice. But within the limits of
his character Claudio does perform the required act of repentance. [Act
V, scene 3]
Act V, Scene 4
In this scene all the
misunderstandings are cleared up.
Claudio and Hero are reunited.
Beatrice and Benedick, after a number of not so subtle hints, finally
discover that they have been set up to love each other through deception. Will their love survive this exposure to the
truth? [Act V, scene 4]
As the scene opens all the people
in on Hero’s feigned death are together celebrating their triumphs. At line 8 Benedick is relieved that he will
not have to face Claudio in a duel. At
line 20 he announces his love for Beatrice and his intention to marry her. Leonato now reveals at line 25 that Benedick
got his love from the deception in the garden and that Beatrice was deceived in
a similar fashion. Benedick does not at
first understand, saying at line 27 that Leonato’s remarks are “enigmatical,”
that is, puzzling. The girls are sent
off stage when Claudio arrives, and the proceedings assume a serious tone. Claudio confirms that he will marry Leonato’s
niece at line 38 “were she an Ethiope,” that is, a dark-skinned woman whose
beauty was undervalued in that society which prized the fair-skinned. Don Pedro and Claudio continue to treat the
idea of Benedick marrying as a joke, reminding him at line 43 that
he thinks upon the savage bull.
Tush,
fear not, man! We’ll tip thy horns with gold,
And
all Europa shall rejoice at thee,
As
once Europa did at lusty Jove
When
he would play the noble beast in love.
If Benedick does marry and
receives the horns of the cuckold as he fear back in Act I, scene 1, at least
the horns will be made more elegant. The
references to Europa and Jove refer to a story from mythology which your notes
explain for you. Benedick turns the myth
of the cuckolding bull into an elaborate insult of Claudio at line 49: “And
some such strange bull leaped your father’s cow/ And got [begot] a calf
[foolish animal] in that same noble feat/ Much like to you, for you have just
his bleat.”
Claudio and Hero are
reunited. Hero declares that she died
until her shame could be erased.
Beatrice is finally revealed at line 73, and Benedick asks the question
all the revelations have prompted him to ask at line 74:
Benedick: Do you not love me?
Beatrice:
Why, no; no more
than reason.
Benedick: Why, then your uncle, and the
Prince, and
Claudio
Have been deceived – they swore you did.
Beatrice:
Do you not love me?
Benedick: Troth, no; no more than reason.
Beatrice:
Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula
Are much deceived; for they did swear you
did.
The dynamic here is that neither
wants to appear weak or vulnerable to love in front of all the rest of the
characters and especially each other. So
Beatrice hits on this phrase, “no more than reason,” and Benedick throws it
back in her face. Having declared that
each loves the other only as much as would be reasonable (and there’s a
self-contradiction – “reasonable love”) they are faced with a whole new set of
options and a new opportunity to compete with each other.
Benedick: They swore that you were
almost sick for me.
Beatrice:
They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.
Benedick: ‘Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?
Beatrice:
No, truly, but in friendly recompense.
They immediately start competing
over who suffered more in the imaginary accounts that deceived each of them. It’s no surprise that Beatrice gets the last
word – “well-nigh dead for me.” And then
the shock of the full realization comes that neither loves the other. The affair is off. They’ll just be friends.
Bur Leonato and the others won’t
let them escape that easily. Leonato at
line 84 insists
Leonato: Come, cousin, I am sure you
love the gentleman.
Claudio:
And I’ll be sworn upon ‘t that he loves her;
For here’s a paper written in his hand,
A halting [poorly written] sonnet of his
own pure brain,
Fashioned to Beatrice.
Hero: And
here’s another,
Writ in my cousin’s hand, stol’n from her
pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
Well, if you write a sonnet to
someone, you must love them. It’s hard
evidence of your genuine affection. So
rather than trying to fight it, Benedick, switching from verse back to his
customary prose, goes with the flow at line 91:
Benedick: A miracle! Here’s our own
hands against our
hearts.
Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I
take thee for pity.
Beatrice: I would not deny you; but, by this good day,
I yield upon great persuasion, and partly
to save
your life, for I was told you were in a
consumption.
Rather than admit to love, Benedick agrees to
marry her as an act of Christian charity because he feels sorry for her. As usual, Beatrice gets the last word by
agreeing to the marriage only after great persuasion and because she understood
he was dying of tuberculosis. Benedick
stops all further discussion by kissing her.
When Don Pedro starts to kid Benedick
at line 100, he puts it all in perspective:
I’ll
tell thee what, Prince: a college of
witcrackers
cannot flout me out of my humor. Dost
thou
think I care for a satire or an epigram? No. If
a
man will be beaten with brains, ‘a shall wear
nothing
handsome about him.
Benedick has been the biggest
“witcracker” around, and now he simply turns his back on it. It is his “humor,” the Elizabethan concept of
chemical destiny, to marry, and no verbal assault, like the ones he bestowed on
Claudio in the opening scene, will deter him.
After all, if people were really affected by intellectual attacks
(“beaten with brains”) they would never do anything or wear anything
good-looking. He continues his
justification at line 104:
In
brief, since I do propose
to
marry, I will think nothing to the purpose
that
the world can say against it; and therefore never
flout
at me for what I have said against it; for man
is
a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.
Nothing will deter him in his
decision, certainly not the fact that in the past he “flouted” the
institution. How does he explain this
apparent inconsistency on his part? “Man
is a giddy thing,” that is, incapable of consistency. Benedick neatly avoids responsibility for his
own actions by making all mankind guilty of the same flaw. It’s a nice trick. He then magnanimously excuses Claudio from
his earlier challenge, saying that he would have beaten him but now enjoining
him, as a future relative, to “live unbruised and love my cousin [Hero].” And when Don Pedro looks sad, perhaps because
he is the odd man out in this happy scene, Benedick at line 122, “Prince, thou
art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife!/ There is no staff more reverend
than one topped with horn.” So even here, on the brink of marriage, Benedick is
still cracking wise about the prospects of cuckoldry. Not even the news of the capture of Don John
interrupts the happy mood. Benedick
insists that this not be allowed to dampen the mood of festivity, saying that
he will “devise brave punishments” for him tomorrow. (We can imagine what kinds
of things Benedick might force John to do for penance.) Then he demands that before they all marry
they dance. Leonato, who has already
seen one wedding blow up in his face, doesn’t want to wait, but Benedick
insists and they all dance. As in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, the dance is a kind of a visual metaphor for
harmony at the human level after all this discord of the comedy.
Thus ends Much Ado About
Nothing.