Much Ado about Nothing – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1, Scene 1 (534-40, A messenger reports that Prince Don Pedro of Aragon is coming to Messina, where Leonato is governor; Claudio has won praise in battle; Beatrice asks mockingly about Benedict; Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedict and Don John arrive, and Leonato greets them, introducing them to his daughter, Hero. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

This play is determined to make light of everything, as we can see from the outset. [1] A messenger reports that Prince Don Pedro of Aragon is less than ten miles from Messina, on his way with his troops to visit the governor of that town, Leonato. No sooner does this party of elegant warriors arrive from a vaguely described battle than they must summon their skills in decorum and wit.

Young Claudio has apparently impressed his commander Don Pedro, and has been showered with honors. Even before Benedict arrives with the party of warriors, his old flame Beatrice is busy mocking his valor in front of anyone who will listen: “I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these / wars? … For indeed, I promised / to eat all of his killing” (535, 1.1.35-37).

As Leonato says, “There is a kind / of merry war betwixt Signor Benedict and her. They never / meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (535, 1.1.49-51). Once Benedict arrives, Beatrice paints him as an object of ridicule: “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Bene- / dict. Nobody marks you” (536. 1.1.94-95). Benedict, in turn, claims that Beatrice is the only woman in the world who is not in love with him. And on they go in their hilariously sarcastic way, trading wits to the delight of the assembled residents and guests.

The only sour or “off” note in this opening gathering is the laconic answer that Don Pedro’s illegitimate half-brother Don John gives to Leonato’s gracious welcome: “I thank you. I am not of many words, but I thank you” (537, 1.1.129). Don John seems to be the only person of note in Messina who is not given to witty verbal displays.

As we find out when Benedict responds to Claudio’s earnest questions about Hero’s wonderful attributes, he is aware that he is of two minds concerning women. He can offer “simple true judgment” (537, 1.1.137), or play the tyrant to all womankind.

Of course, Benedict’s simple judgment about women turns out to be tyrannical enough: he is absurdly perfectionist about them. To both Claudio and Don Pedro, Benedict explains that he will not enter the fray when it comes to love, neither trusting nor mistrusting women but refusing to have any serious dealings with them.

Don Pedro is not impressed with this line of reasoning, and insists to Benedict, “I shall see thee, ere, I die, look pale with love” (539, 1.1.210). The Prince sounds as if he shares Shakespeare’s sense of love’s power as something that cannot be denied except at great cost.

What we will see in this play is mostly the light-hearted side of the truth Shakespeare states darkly in Sonnet 129: “none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.” This wilder, more irrational dimension of love is brought home to us not by the clever barbs of Beatrice and Benedict but by the extreme anger of the inexperienced lover Claudio when faced with what he falsely believes to be the sordid truth about his beloved Hero.

Once Benedict is out of the way, Claudio opens up to Don Pedro about his passion for Hero, which is a little less sudden than what’s implied in Christopher Marlowe’s famous line in Hero and Leander, “Whoever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?” [2] Claudio says that before setting off on the recent military expedition, he “looked upon … [Hero] with a soldier’s eye (540, 1.1.254) rather than that of a lover, but now that the campaign is finished, he looks upon her in quite another way.

The young man seems a bit shy and intimidated by the fact that Hero is the daughter of Messina’s governor, so Don Pedro gamely steps up and offers to disguise himself at the upcoming masked ball and woo Hero in Claudio’s name. He will then speak with Leonato, and the way will be smoothed for Claudio.

We need not make too much of this indirectness, except perhaps to say that Claudio isn’t fighting his own love-battle here, which may in part account for the ease with which the melancholy Don John’s villainy will fool him in the next act: he really doesn’t know Hero in the deepest sense; he is in love with a romantic ideal through the lovely presence of Hero. Claudio is one of Shakespeare’s practitioners of that old and almost unavoidable trick, “idealizing eroticism.”

Act 1, Scene 2 (541, Leonato’s brother Anthony tells him that one of his people overheard Don Pedro telling Claudio that he loves Hero and means to woo her at the masked ball. Leonato says he’ll pass along this news to Hero so that she may have an answer ready for Don Pedro.)

Leonato’s brother Antonio seems to have heard a garbled account from one of his workers of the previous scene’s conversation between Claudio and Don Pedro; he tells Leonato that Don Pedro means to woo Hero in his own interest rather than that he is going to do Claudio’s wooing for him.

Act 1, Scene 3 (541-42, Conrad asks Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother Don John why he is sad, and Don John can provide no sufficient answer: he has no desire to fit into the cheerful set that reigns in Messina; Borachio relates the news that the Prince plans to woo Hero in disguise for the sake of Claudio; Don John is pleased with this intelligence because he thinks he may frustrate anything good that might come of this plan.)

Don John is the “illegitimate” brother of Don Pedro, and he appears to be an unhappy, superfluous man within the felicitous social order of Messina. He had lately been in rebellion against or severe disagreement with Don Pedro, who promptly forgave him. But Don John needs enemies. He really has nothing much to do except to make trouble for everyone else. He seems to be constitutionally depressed, and paradoxically revels in his own unhappiness: “There is no measure in the occasion that breeds, there- / fore the sadness is without limit” (541, 1.3.3-4).

This is a man whose grief has little trace of what T. S. Eliot would call an “objective correlative.” [3] Don John’s basic complaint is surely that his legitimate brother has all the power merely due to his being born to wedded parents, but that hardly seems to be a sufficient reason for his unsociable, fundamentally selfish, non-Messina state of mind.

Revealingly, Don John’s watchword, as uttered to his attendant Conrad, is “let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me” (542, 1.3.30). Nobody with that attitude could possibly fare well in a comedy—selfishness is the primary trait of characters such as Countess Olivia’s pompous and hypocritical steward Malvolio in Twelfth Night. [4] Immovability or obstinacy is another key trait, and we see that manifested in, among others, Shylock the moneylender in The Merchant of Venice. [5] Don John combines these traits.

This being the case, when Borachio enters with the alleged news that “the Prince should woo / Hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to / Count Claudio” (542, 1.3.50-52), Don John sees potential for mischief. He evidently feels that the young man has been given honors lately beyond his deserving, and has even replaced him in his brother Don Pedro’s affections.

All in all, jealousy of others’ success in love, society, and politics appears to be the law of Don John’s being. In him, Messina has its “plain-dealing villain” (542, 1.3.26). Off he goes with Conrad and Borachio, then, to hash out what sort of evil they may work with Borachio’s piece of intelligence.

ACT 2

Act 2, Scene 1 (543-50, Leonato and Anthony tease Beatrice for having a “shrewish” tongue, and she replies with an impossible male standard for her approval; Beatrice and Leonato clash over his advice to her and Hero about submitting to men; the masked revelers enter: Don Pedro takes Hero aside; Ursula banters with Balthasar and Antonio; Beatrice and Benedict trade barbs; Don John convinces Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself; Benedict takes Claudio aside and mistakenly confirms this rumor. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

Beatrice itemizes her perfect man in an anatomically impossible way, and then offers Leonato and Anthony a comically exclusive explanation of why she still has no husband: “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” (543, 2.1.29-32). Beatrice is playing the goddess Diana in her lighthearted way—following this advice would rule out any man whatsoever.

Apparently, there is no man-porridge that is just right for this grown-up Goldilocks. We sense that she fears being dominated by a mature man, but that she would hold a mere stripling in contempt. Beatrice also makes a light reference to cuckolding in this passage, and it’s interesting to note the irony of such references when the very prospect of such betrayal (even a false prospect) sends the nascent love between Claudio and Hero into a near-lethal tailspin.

There is also something poignant about Beatrice’s musings on her unmarried state: she dutifully serves up the proverb about the fate of old maids being to deliver apes to hell, [6] but then she offers a more imaginative take on her fate: after her death she will be invited by Saint Peter to sit with the “bachelors” (of either sex), and “there live we, as merry as the day is long” (543, 2.1.41). This sounds more like an eternal self-help session than a happily-ever-after scenario.

Anthony and Leonato do their best to keep up with Beatrice’s defensive wit, which she puts in service of Hero. Offering something akin to a shorter, dancing-themed version of Jaques’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech in As You Like It, [7] she says that the cycle of courtship, marriage, and regret is “as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace” (544, 2.1.62).

The first stage, Beatrice explains, is “hot and hasty … and fantas- / tical,” while the wedding itself is all decorous “state and ancientry.” In the end, all that’s left is an allegorized figure Repentance, who “falls into the cinquepace, faster and faster, till / he sink into his grave” (544, 2.1.63-67). That is not exactly a heartwarming prospect to lay out before a young lady about to enter married life, but Beatrice describes her gloss as clarity: “I can see a church by / daylight” (544, 2.1.69-70), she tells Leonato.

The revelers enter for the masked ball, and Don Pedro goes right to work wooing Hero in disguise, claiming to be Claudio. Ursula, Balthasar, and Anthony exchange repartee, and then we’re on to the heavyweight match of the night between Beatrice and Benedict. These two have been publicly raking each other over the coals for some time, but as Oscar Wilde would say, give someone a mask and you will get the truth. [8]

Beatrice, true to form, characterizes Benedict sharply to his masked face as “the Prince’s jester” and says that he is “A very dull fool, only / his gift is in devising impossible slanders” (545, 2.1.122-23). She can’t know it yet, but as we shall see, these barbs have struck Benedict to the quick: he is rather vain about his wittiness.

As the reveling continues, Don John and Borachio industriously make their way to Claudio, and Don John, deliberately misaddressing Claudio as “Benedict,” plants the falsehood that Don Pedro is actually wooing Hero for his own selfish interest. Claudio, being the inexperienced, jealous young fool that he is, promptly falls for this device, and hashes out his gullible response with the help of some sorry clichés: “Friendship is constant in all other things / Save in the office and affairs of love” (546, 2.1.156-57), and so forth.

And just like that, thinks Claudio, goodbye Hero. Benedict makes things worse by apparently believing that Don Pedro has indeed wooed Hero for himself. And to himself, Benedict reveals the degree to which Beatrice’s mean description of him has got under his skin: “It is the base, though bitter, / disposition of Beatrice that puts the world into her person / and so gives me out” (547, 2.1.185-87).

Enter Don Pedro, who promptly relates to Benedict that Beatrice has a quarrel with him, only to hear the man declare, “I would / not marry her though she were endowed with all that Adam / had left him before he transgressed” (548, 2.1.222-24). In other words, not for all the world.

Benedict seems desperate to avoid Beatrice, so of course she immediately shows up, only to be emblematized hilariously as “my Lady Tongue” (548, 2.1.243). When Don Pedro mildly rebukes Beatrice, saying, “Come, lady, come! You have lost the heart of Signor / Benedict” (548, 2.1.244-45), she responds more poignantly than we might have expected: “Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave / him use for it: a double heart for his single one. Marry, / once before he won it of me with false dice” (548, 2.1.246-48).

Evidently, these two have a history, though its parameters are not precisely known to us. It sounds as if Beatrice feels “let down” by this man at whom she now continually rails, and there’s no hint that Benedict has reflected deeply on anything he may have done to incur her displeasure, if indeed that was the case.

In any case, Beatrice has brought along Claudio, who promptly makes a fool of himself by baselessly accusing the honorable Don Pedro of betraying him over Hero. But the Prince immediately cures Claudio of this misprision, saying, “Here, Claudio, / I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have / broke with her father, and his goodwill obtained” (549, 2.1.262-64). Well, that must be embarrassing news—but wonderful all the same—for Claudio! The two lovers do the necessary promising and seal things with a kiss.

Beatrice exclaims upon witnessing the happiness of Hero and Claudio, “Thus goes everyone to / the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner / and cry, ‘Heigh ho, for a husband!’” (549, 2.1.281-83) She is the odd woman out, or at least that’s how she describes herself.

But now it’s Beatrice’s turn to hear a proposal, and the words she speaks are Shakespearean gems. When Don Pedro surprisingly asks her, possibly in earnest, possibly only in admiring jest, [9] “Will you have me, lady?” her answer is graceful but firm “No, my lord, unless I might have another for work- / ing days. Your grace is too costly to wear every day” (549, 2.1.289-90). In other words, she sees Don Pedro as being a bit too far beyond her station to marry her, so she lets him down easy.

When Don Pedro says he believes Beatrice was “born in a merry / hour” (549, 2.1.294-95), she offers the wonderful and revealing observation, “No, sure, my lord, my mother cried. But then there / was a star danced, and under that was I born” (549, 2.1.296-97). In these lines, Beatrice refers to the pain that her mother, like all mothers, suffered to bring her into the world. But after this sorrow came a dancing or shooting star, and in her view, it is this event that truly marks her birth. [10]

There is a strong sense here of wanting to be noticed, like a celestial event, and yet set free from the travails involved in being a woman since the time of Adam and Eve. That is what makes Beatrice’s witticism at once happy and almost elegiac: it could easily be found in one of Shakespeare’s later, so-called “romance” plays such as The Winter’s Tale or The Tempest, with their bittersweet ambience.

After asking Beatrice if she will marry him and receiving this happy-sad response, Don Pedro declares to Leonato that they really ought to bring Beatrice and Benedict together, so right away he enlists Hero in deceiving Beatrice, while he and his friends will take care of duping Benedict.

Don Pedro evidently thinks this would be quite an accomplishment: “If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an / archer. His glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods” (550, 2.1.340-41). There are good deceptions and bad deceptions in this comic play—almost any plan is a good plan if it helps bring two well-matched but obstinate lovers together.

Don Pedro’s turn from fielding Beatrice’s rejection of him to cooking up a complex plot is so adroit that it calls to mind the Renaissance author Baldassare Castiglione’s key term sprezzatura, by which is meant a kind of “nonchalance” whereby one makes difficult things look easy. Most of the characters in this play, indeed, have a knack for demonstrating this very quality. [11] With such easy grace, then, does Don Pedro, the Aragonese military overlord of Sicily and therefore of Leonato’s Messina, vie for the title of “Love-God” with no less than Cupid.

Act 2, Scene 2 (550-51, Borachio outlines his plan to Don John whereby Claudio’s imminent marriage to Hero may be prevented; Don John promises Borachio a thousand ducats if the plan succeeds.)

Meanwhile, Borachio and Don John are at work effecting their own wicked designs against Claudio and Hero’s future happiness. This plot turns upon mistaken identity: while Claudio and Don Pedro are induced to look on, Borachio will dally with Hero’s maid Margaret, calling her Hero while she calls him by his own name. [12] Claudio and Don Pedro will be convinced that they have seen Hero behaving unchastely right before her wedding day.

Most readers will no doubt feel that Claudio’s susceptibility to this cheap, hastily worked-up subterfuge is a mark of his own immaturity and failure to trust the woman whom he would make his bride.

Act 2, Scene 3 (551-56, Benedict marvels to himself at the change wrought by love in Claudio; Balthasar sings the fine song “Sigh no more, ladies…”; Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio aim at the hidden Benedict’s ears a tale about the supposedly lovesick Beatrice—they describe her as too ashamed of her intransigence to declare her love; Benedict marvels at this turn of events, but determines to accept Beatrice’s affection.)

In a long prose soliloquy, Benedict [13] wonders at his friend Claudio’s sudden transformation from a youth totally caught up in martial pursuits to a soon-to-be married young man. He sums up his own perfectionist attitude about women with the declaration, “till all graces / be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace” (552, 2.3.25-26).

But now the conspirators Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio are on the scene, along with the vocalist Balthasar, who is (perhaps with feigned reluctance) induced to sing a song aimed foremost at women, but that may also shame Benedict into recollecting that he has—to hear Beatrice tell it, as she already has—let his old flame down: “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, / Men were deceivers ever …” (553, 2.3.57-58ff).

Most likely, the song is a clue to what really underlies both Beatrice and Benedict’s hesitation: fear of disappointment or betrayal. But it’s also interesting in its advice to turn passionate lamentation into cheerful nonsense: “be you blithe and bonny, / Converting all your sounds of woe, / Into hey nonny nonny” (553, 2.3.62-64). Now that would be true liberation, we might suppose—but of course a comedy of manners with a strong love-plot can’t grant the main characters such freedom from the imperative of erotic attraction.

When the music ends, Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato play their parts to perfection, all giving out that they know Beatrice is enamored of Benedict. Don Pedro even throws in the barb that Benedict ought to realize he is unworthy of so fine a woman.

Benedict is profoundly impressed by all of this, and takes to heart the accusation that he may have behaved too “proudly” in his previous dealings with Beatrice: “I hear how I am cen- / sured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the / love come from her” (556, 2.3.199-200).

It seems important to him, too, that Beatrice is considered beautiful by other men: “They say the lady is fair. ‘Tis a truth; I can bear them witness” (556, 2.3.203-05). At long last, he gives in to the dictates of society: “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” (556, 2.3.213-15).

As so often, people most easily are led to desire what they are convinced others find worthy of desire: just as the social interactions in Much Ado About Nothing are often studiedly breezy “performances,” so there is a kind of specular artifice at work here in Leonato’s beautiful Italian garden.

Helena is right in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when she says that “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity ….” [14] Here, though, what’s needed is not such alchemy but instead a little nudge to reaffirm what seems to be the secret affection of both Benedict and Beatrice for each other.

ACT 3

Act 3, Scene 1 (556-59, Margaret helps trick Beatrice into overhearing Hero and Ursula talk in Leonato’s garden about how deeply Benedict loves her and how worthy a gentleman he is, but also how disdainful and stubborn Beatrice herself is; Beatrice does a turnabout and decides that she must return Benedict’s purported affection.)

Hero has everything planned to ensnare Beatrice: she tells the gentlewoman Margaret, “When I do name him, let it be thy part / To praise him more than ever man did merit” (557, 3.1.18-19). As for Hero, her is to propagate the claim that “Benedict / Is sick in love with Beatrice” (557, 3.1.20-21). Beatrice is further treated to a generous helping of dispraise for her arrogance, selfishness, and fundamental unfairness in judging men’s qualities: “So she turns every man the wrong side out, / And never gives to truth and virtue that / Which simpleness and merit purchaseth” (558, 3.1.68-70).

Beatrice is impressed both with the report that Benedict is in love with her and with the scornful description of her character. She casts away her hesitations so enthusiastically as to make it seem she was never serious about them: “Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? / Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!” (559, 3.1.108-09) exclaims Beatrice, and now we know that she is more open to love than we (or she) had thought. To the absent Benedict, she promises, “I will requite thee, / Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand” (559, 3.1.111-12).

Act 3, Scene 2 (559-61, Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato mark the physical and behavioral signs that Benedict is in love; as soon as Benedict exits, Don John asserts to Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero is unfaithful—he will prove her so tonight, the night before the wedding is to take place, by bringing them to a spot where they can witness a lover entering her window; Claudio promises to shame Hero at the wedding if this report should prove true.)

Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato tease Benedict about certain signs that he may, at long last, be in love. Don Pedro at first half-professes not to believe it, saying, “There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be / a fancy that he hath to strange disguises …” (560, 3.2.26-27), but this line of thinking quickly turns towards affirmations of the charge: “Conclude, con- / clude! He is in love” (560, 3.2.51-52). Benedict takes his leave, most likely to broach the subject of marriage in conversation with Leonato.

Don John is up to his devious tricks again, this time proclaiming to Claudio in supposed confidence that Hero is not what the young man thinks she is: “the lady is disloyal” (561, 3.2.86-87). In sum, Don John asserts that Claudio may see for himself the timely proof he needs: “You shall see her chamber window entered, / even the night before her wedding day” (561, 3.2.94-95).

Claudio, naïve as he is, believes the older man, though with graver consequences than Benedict’s crediting of Leonato because of his white beard when Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato are busy duping him into pining for Beatrice. [15] Claudio says that if he finds that Hero is disloyal, he will humiliate her in public, at church, right at the moment when they are to be married. This is unattractively ostentatious of him, to say the least. While Don Pedro says, “I will not think it” (561, 3.2.99), he chimes in with a promise to “disgrace” Hero if what Don John says proves true.

Act 3, Scene 3 (562-65, Constable Dogberry and his helper Verges choose the night watch, giving strangely ineffectual orders on how to deal with offenders and charging the men to look for anything untoward near Leonato’s house, where wedding preparations are under way; Borachio relates to Conrad how, following Don John’s request, he has wooed Margaret and fooled Claudio and Don Pedro into believing they have witnessed Hero being unfaithful; two of Dogberry’s watchmen overhear the vile tale and arrest Conrad and Borachio.)

Constable Dogberry enters the play here with Verges, and chooses the watchmen for this evening. The Constable utters one confused line after another, as when Dogberry says to the first watchman, “To be a well-favored man is the gift / of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature” (562, 3.3.14-15).

Dogberry is a malapropist who prides himself on being a man of means and an upholder of authority, but his orders to the watch couldn’t be less authoritative: “you are to bid any man stand, in the Prince’s name,” he says, but if they won’t stand (i.e., stop), the watchmen are to “take no note of him, but let him go / … and thank / God you are rid of a knave” (562, 3.3.25-27).

Verges adds helpfully that if a man won’t stop when he’s ordered to, why then, he is “none of / the Prince’s subjects …” (562, 3.3.28-29) and therefore none of the watchmen’s concern. It appears that neither Dogberry nor Verges has the slightest idea what his job really entails. Even so, two vigilant watchmen he has chosen actually do Messina a huge favor when they overhear Borachio recounting to Conrad his part in Don John’s plot against Hero and Claudio.

One thing we can say is that while Dogberry has no clear grasp of the concept of “security,” at least his notions come from a good place: his character is distinguished by charity: as he says, “I would not hang a dog by my will, much / more a man who hath any honesty in him” (563, 3.3.57-58).

Act 3, Scene 4 (565-67, Hero spends the morning preparing for the wedding; Beatrice claims to have a cold; Hero and Margaret needle her about being in love with her nemesis, Benedict.)

Hero fusses about her wedding dress and accoutrements, and Beatrice enters, claiming to be suffering from a cold. Hero and especially Margaret engage in a bit of bawdy humor at Beatrice’s expense. Margaret professes her disbelief that Beatrice could possibly be in love: “I cannot think, if I would think my heart out of / thinking, that you are in love, or that you will be in love, or / that you can be in love” (567, 3.4.373-75).

All the same, she says, Benedict was in the same case not long ago, as a sworn enemy of love and all its pitfalls. Finally, she bluntly says to Beatrice, “methinks you look with your eyes as other women do” (567, 3.4.79). Finally, the conversation ends when Ursula brings news that Don Pedro, Leonato, Benedict, Don John and other men are coming to escort her to her wedding to Claudio.

Act 3, Scene 5 (567-68, Dogberry and Verges try to tell Leonato that they’ve arrested Borachio and Conrad, but they make such a hash of it that he doesn’t really understand their report, and so dismisses them with orders to question the prisoners; Leonato departs for the wedding, not realizing that he’s missed an opportunity to discover the plot against Hero and Claudio.)

Dogberry and his assistant Verges squander a golden chance to help Leonato discover Don John’s sordid plot against his daughter Hero—the Constable does little more than mangle terms of respect for Leonato and string together a series of unrelated and irrelevant proverbs. Like a number of Shakespeare’s comic characters, Dogberry does his level best to imitate the expressions of his learned “betters,” but his attempts only end up making him look ridiculous.

Only Verges, ironically, even comes close to breaking the news comprehensibly when he says “our watch tonight … / ha’ ta’en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in / Messina” (568, 3.5.28-30). But he is at once silenced by Dogberry, and Leonato soon leaves in haste to bring Hero to her wedding ceremony.

ACT 4

Act 4, Scene 1 (569-75, As the wedding ceremony commences, Claudio denounces Hero as unchaste and disloyal; both Don Pedro and Dohn John back up his claim; Leonato is stricken, convinced by this testimony; Hero collapses, and is left alone with Beatrice and Benedict, the Friar Francis, and Leonato; the Friar is convinced that Hero is innocent and tells Leonato to announce that she has died, which, he reasons, will induce deep regret within Claudio and recall him to his former affection for Hero. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

When the wedding ceremony begins, Claudio behaves cruelly towards Hero, shaming her in front of the entire wedding party: he says that Hero is “but the sign and semblance of her honor” (569, 4.1.32). In Shakespeare, when a woman’s chastity is suspected due to some misprision, men’s insults flow freely and can become extreme: Claudio says with the utmost disrespect to Hero, “you are more intemperate in your blood / Than Venus or those pampered animals / That rage in savage sensuality” (570, 4.1.58-60). [16]

Claudio is also disrespectful towards Leonato, and the elder man, rather than become righteously angry at the vile insults heaped upon his daughter in public, asks in anguish and probably more than a little self pity, “Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?” (571, 4.1.107) He even suggests that death would better for Hero than the shame into which her reputation has instantly fallen.

Don Pedro, another seeming male adult in the room, has also been taken in by Don John’s midnight “show.” He believes he has been an eyewitness to Hero’s shameful conduct, and thus adds his denunciation to the chorus of men against her. We might be willing to excuse the immature Claudio, at least were it not for his abject failure to tell the difference between a flesh-and-blood human being and an abstract category as constructed by other men, but to see the same behavior from Leonato and Don Pedro is heartbreaking, not to mention cringeworthy.

But even as Leonato continues to pepper the dialogue with absurd and offensive condemnations of his own daughter, Beatrice, Benedict, and Friar Francis understand the situation better. Beatrice is at once sure that Hero has been betrayed by some villain, and it doesn’t take Benedict long to suppose that the villain must be Don John. He reasons that the princes condemning her are ordinarily men of honor, so they must be speaking in a state of induced misprision: “The practice of it lives in John the bastard, / Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies” (573, 4.1.186-87).

Friar Francis has been closely observing Hero’s countenance, and is quite certain that she has been vilely abused: he says to the company, “trust not my age, / My reverence, calling, nor divinity, / If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here, / Under some biting error” (572, 4.1.165-68). Francis soon thereafter works up a scheme not unlike the one Friar Laurence designed for Juliet in Romeo and Juliet a few years before Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing. [17]

In Francis’s plan, Hero will disappear and everyone will be told that she has died, as indeed it appeared she had when she collapsed at the wedding. The extreme suppositions, the rashness, of Claudio and his supporters must be cured with a show of extremity of another sort. As Francis says, this plan will instill remorse in those who have been so quick to condemn Hero: he explains, “what we have, we prize not to the worth / Whiles we enjoy it. But being lacked and lost, / Why, then we rack the value” (573, 4.1.16-18).

As soon as they get some time alone, Beatrice and Benedict at last declare their love. The expressions of love, when they finally issue forth, are every bit as strange as we should expect them to be, considering the two eccentrics issuing them. Benedict’s first iteration is, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not / that strange?” (574, 4.1.264-65) And Beatrice comes round to the utterance, “You have stayed me in a happy hour. I was about / to protest I loved you” (574, 4.1.279-80).

By the way, the whole conversation about love between these two is in prose, not verse, which seems appropriate. Let there be no fancy Romeo-and-Juliet-style shared sonnets for Beatrice and Benedict, thank you—just their usual witty exchange. [18]

But Beatrice is Beatrice, and she is not quite done yet. When Benedict dares her, “Come, bid me do anything for thee” (575, 4.1.284), she lays a heavy burden upon him: “Kill Claudio” (575, 4.1.285). That is how he can prove his loyalty to her. At first, Benedict refuses—the male social bonds are very strong in this play, as we can see from the ease with which the men band together and take one another’s word for holy writ. Beatrice pointedly avers that if she were a man, Claudio would be done for: “I would eat / his heart in the marketplace” (575, 4.1.301-02).

Without much more prodding than that very effective barb (which makes him realize that nice words purporting “allyship” aren’t going to cut it with a firebrand like Beatrice) Benedict gives in, saying, “Enough, I am engaged. I will challenge him” (575, 4.1.323).

Act 4, Scene 2 (576-77, Dogberry questions Borachio and Conrad in the most confusing manner possible; the Sexton orders Borachio and Conrad to be tied up and taken to Leonato’s place.)

In their confused and meandering way, and with the Sexton’s help, Dogberry and Verges draw the truth from Borachio, which is simply that Don John offered him a thousand ducats for making a false accusation against Hero. (576, 4.2.41-42) Don John himself has departed from Messina, knowing that the game is up.

But aside from the actual purpose of the hearing, Constable Dogberry is upset that Conrad has called him an ass. This insult jars with his own high estimation of himself: “I am a wise fellow, and which is more, / an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is / more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina …” and so forth (577, 4.2.71-73). Dogberry doesn’t seem to understand that everyone present has probably recognized that for once, Conrad is telling the truth. Dogberry is honorable, but we may be sure that he is also an ass.

The Sexton has heard enough, and he orders the two malefactors bound and sent off to Leonato, who can determine what to do with them.

ACT 5

Act 5, Scene 1 (577-84, Anthony tries to console Leonato, only to be rebuked; Claudio and Don Pedro arrive, and Leonato and Anthony, both old men, tell them that Hero has died, after which they attempt unsuccessfully to challenge Claudio to a duel; then in comes Benedict, and he, tooinsults and challenges the incredulous Claudio; Dogberry brings in the prisoners Borachio and Claudio, and soon Don Pedro and Claudio realize that they have been deceived about Hero; Don John has run away from Messina. (SYNOPSIS CONTINUES …)

Leonato is in anguish about Hero’s death, and his brother, Anthony, tries to console him, but to no avail. As Leonato says, “there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently, / However they have writ the style of gods / And made a push at chance and sufferance” (578, 5.1.35-28).

When Claudio and Don Pedro arrive, and the seniors Leonato and Anthony inform them that Hero has died. They then try at length and without success to challenge Claudio to a duel. The young man, it seems, does not take their challenge seriously, which only angers them the more.

Immediately after the two old men depart, in marches Benedict and begins a lengthy but entirely serious challenge of his own to an incredulous Claudio. At first, neither Claudio nor Don Pedro really believes Benedict is in earnest. They both try to engage him in a characteristic battle of wits, but as he becomes more and more cutting, they finally realize that he means business. Benedict says firmly, “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” (581, 5.1.182-84).

Dogberry and Verges enter, and make about as much (or as little) sense as they usually do. Don Pedro finds it necessary to get the truth directly from Borachio, and once he has done so, the only remaining thing is how, if at all, Claudio can make partial amends for his grievous fault in accusing Hero.

Leonato offers a solution that is very far from the violent approach he took earlier in this scene: he proposes to Claudio, “My brother hath a daughter, / Almost the copy of my child that’s dead, / And she alone is heir to both of us. / Give her the right you should have given her cousin, / And so dies my revenge” (583, 5.1.273-77). We may feel compelled to ask what good this could do for poor Hero, were she actually dead, but in any case, Claudio is overwhelmed with gratitude and accepts the offer at once.

Leonato still means to speak closely with the gentlewoman Margaret about any knowledge she may have pertaining to Don John’s plot, and of course there will be the business of dealing with the villain Don John, who has skipped town. But otherwise, with regard to the criminal proceedings, “we’re done here.”

Act 5, Scene 2 (584-86, Benedict has a saucy conversation with Margaret, and then laments that he is a dreadful poet; Benedict lets Beatrice know that he has challenged Claudio to a duel, just as she requested; Beatrice and Benedict exchange jests over what first attracted each to the other; Ursula bids them go to Leonato’s house and hear the news in full that Hero has been “mightily abused,” Claudio and Don Pedro deceived, and Don John has fled from Messina.)

Benedict and Margaret enjoy a spirited conversation shot through with racy double entendres, but once he is alone, Benedict struggles to sing a tune or come up with even a minimally acceptable rhyme for, as he says, he “was not born under / a rhyming planet …” (585, 5.2.83-84). That much is evident from the rhymes he mentions trying.

Beatrice enters and wants to know if Benedict has done what she requested: challenge Claudio to a duel. He is able to say that he has done so. That said, he is free to ask Beatrice how they two first fell in love. As for their courtship, the sum total is, as Benedict puts it, “Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably” (586, 5.2.60). The charming thing about this couple is that while they can scarcely be said to idealize romantic love, they are also—and obviously—deeply in love.

The happy, barb-slinging couple are summoned by Ursula to Leonato’s house with the news that Hero’s innocence has been proved, Claudio and Don Pedro were deceived, and Don John has fled from Messina, knowing he has been identified as the mastermind of this whole plot.

Act 5, Scene 3 (586-87, Claudio arrives at Leonato’s family tomb; Claudio reads out an epitaph for Hero, and hangs the scroll upon the tomb.)

Claudio must show remorse for the supposed death of hero, and to facilitate this, Leonato has arranged a nighttime ceremony. Claudio reads from the scroll the epitaph lines, beginning with, “Done to death by slanderous tongues / Was the Hero that here lies” (586, 5.3.2-3). A musician sings the tune, “Pardon goddess of the night, / Those that slew thy virgin knight” (587, 5.3.12-13ff). Now that this obligation is done, Claudio and Don Pedro will head for Leonato’s place and the second wedding.

Act 5, Scene 4 (587-90, Leonato reaffirms the innocence of those who had been thought otherwise, and choreographs the upcoming ceremony; Claudio and Don Pedro arrive; Benedict privately asks Leonato if he may marry; the women enter wearing masks; Claudio takes Leonato’s “niece” by the hand, and she unmasks to reveal that she is Hero; Benedict inquires which is Beatrice; Beatrice and Benedict at first deny that they love each other, but their stolen poems are adduced as evidence; they agree to marry, so a double wedding will take place after the concluding dance.)

Speaking to Benedict, the Friar, Anthony, Margaret, and Ursula, Leonato happily reaffirms that Don Pedro and Claudio as well as Hero and, for the most part, Margaret, are all innocent of intentional wrongdoing. He then asks the women to withdraw and return wearing masks when he next calls for them.

Benedict privately asks Leonato for permission to marry Beatrice since, he says “Your niece regards me with an eye of favor” (588, 5.4.22). Leonato responds, “That eye my daughter lent her …” (588, 5.4.23). And when Benedict avows that his eye, in turn, is similarly disposed toward Beatrice, Leonato hints that he, Claudio, and Don Pedro may have had something to do with that circumstance. Benedict doesn’t seem to realize the implication here—Leonato is referring obliquely to the dual plots whereby Benedict and Beatrice were tricked into falling in love. No matter—the outcome is the thing.

Claudio and Don Pedro arrive, and after teasing Benedict a little while, it’s time for Claudio to receive his new bride, sight unseen. With Leonato looking on, the young man takes his bride by the hand, she unmasks and reveals that she is in fact Hero. Leonato confirms as much, saying, “She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived” (589, 5.4.66).

Benedict then asks which masked woman is Beatrice, and she answers in her own name. At first, these two are flummoxed at the new reality of declaring their love in full view of the public, or indeed in full view mainly of their closest friends and relatives. When asked by Benedict is she loves him, Beatrice can say only, “Why, no, no more than reason” (589, 5.4.74), while Benedict, asked if he loves Beatrice, makes the same reply. This standoffishness is quickly overcome, however, when a stolen sample of their love poetry is produced as evidence.

At last, Benedict, when challenged by Don Pedro’s teasing barbs, is ready to declare his passion before everyone: “since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any / purpose that the world can say against it,” and he continues, “for man is a / giddy thing …” (590, 5.4.104-05, 106-07). Whatever he may have said about love and marriage in the past, why, that’s all done now. Benedict calls for a dance, tells Don Pedro he looks sad and should find himself a wife, saying, “There is no / staff more reverend than one tipped with horn” (590, 5.4.119-20).

The play ends by banishing, at least for a day, all thought of how precisely to deal with that dedicated villain Don John, but Benedict assures everyone that the man’s future will involve “brave punishments” (590, 5.4.124).

Final Reflections on Much Ado About Nothing

What is the “nothing” about which there is so much ado in this play? It seems to be certain overly rigid notions pertaining to female chastity and male honor. It isn’t that Shakespeare would have us tear these concepts to pieces or dismiss them altogether, and in general his plays affirm the value of such central social constructions. The point seems instead that when mainstays like chastity and honor are too closely defined, too rigidly enforced, or too heavily leaned on, serious problems are bound to ensue.

Even the most vital concepts, when mistreated, quickly become hollow shells of themselves, useful mainly to those who would abuse them for power or gain. They become a cover for the narrow-minded and the toxically insecure, a cudgel for those determined to cause harm, and a stumbling-block for the naïve and inexperienced. This “hollowing-out” tendency is something that Shakespeare tracks through a great many of his plays, in all four of the genres we use to describe them today: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. This interest of his is by no means limited to tragedy.

Much Ado About Nothing ends as a more or less sunny romantic comedy, and the developing love match between the “wiseguys” Beatrice and Benedict steals the show, even though the Hero and Claudio plot is also vital to the play’s success. Still, the whole action could easily have taken a tragic turn after the fashion of, say, Othello or Romeo and Juliet. Claudio’s inexperienced overreliance on a rigid, brittle notion of Hero’s “chastity” and a similarly wrongheaded conception of his own “honor” really could have been the death of Hero.

What saves Claudio and his ultimate bride is simply the comic disposition of the universe created by Shakespeare. The comedy gods are with Hero and Claudio, so to speak, and we all know the comedy gods love to grant people second (and sometimes umpteen) chances.

The language, customs, and institutions that keep a society healthy may need to be stress-tested from time to time, lest they become hollow or otherwise structurally unsound. Still, there’s no need to overdo things, either. Just the right amount of pressure will do just fine, thank you. Of course, there’s always the Gospel injunction to season such testing: “Care not then for the morrow, for the morrow shall care for itself: the day hath enough with his own grief.” [19]

Shakespeare’s comedy takes for one of its main concerns an appreciation of the need for accommodation in human societies and among people in their individual relations. This accommodation is sometimes said to be one-sided, in the sense of individuals needing to accommodate themselves to the dictates and imperatives of the collectivity if they would wrest for themselves some measure of happiness, but it seems more accurate to say that the demand is reciprocal: sometimes, societies need to make allowances for the sheer quirkiness, the eccentricity, of the individuals who comprise them.

In As You Like It, marriage as an institution seems entirely capable of making room not only for “perfect couples” such as Rosalind and Orlando but also for silly, flawed ones like the jester Touchstone and his goat-keeper lass, Audrey: it can use them all in the service of its social imperative. [20] As Benedict himself says, “the world must be peopled. When I said / I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were / married” (556, 2.3.213-15).

Beatrice might well say much the same thing, and for both hilariously eccentric, ever-jesting individuals in this coupling, while in one sense they’re giving in to their society’s main imperative, in another, their society is making room for, even blessing, their peculiar, irony-rich kind of union.

One last thought: while some readers or audience members may find the play’s many references to the inevitability of “cuckoldry” rather distasteful or at least shopworn, its omnipresence in this and some other Shakespeare plays is probably an affirmation of the irrepressible strength of eros or sexual desire and of the role it plays in human life.

Eros, that is, no doubt produces a lot of chaos in the institutional context of marriage, but at the same time, that institution (which is nearly universal in one form or another) would not exist without it, and so would not deliver the nearly magical societal, civilizational benefits that Shakespeare attributes to it. And so we return to the need for something better, more mature, than naïve overreliance on impossibly perfect notions of honor and chastity. Shakespeare seems to suggest that “society” itself levies no such rigid demands for perfection, so why should its individual members do so?

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 production was filmed in Villa Vignamaggio, Greve in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy.

[2] Marlowe, Christopher. Hero and Leander. “Where both deliberate, the love is slight: /
Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 8/1/2024.

[3] In his essay “Hamlet and His Problems,” T. S. Eliot writes that Hamlet’s melancholia has no immediate cause or object. To state his general point more fully, “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” [continued ….]

The example Eliot gives of such a correlative is Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking episodes: we have been informed already by the play’s events as to why she is suffering these episodes. Project Gutenberg. Accessed 3/29/2024.

[4] Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 743-97. Sir Toby skewers Malvolio with the following excellent questions: “Art any more / than a steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, / there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (761, 2.3.105-07)

[5] Shakespeare, William. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 467-521. Shylock’s famous cutting-off of Antonio’s pleas is, “I’ll have no speaking; I will have my bond” (501, 3.3.17).

[6] See the Norton editors’ footnote 5 on pg. 543.

[7] Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731. Jaques begins with the observation that “All the world’s a stage …” and goes on to list the supposed seven phases of an individual’s life (696, 2.7.139).

[8] Wilde, Oscar. “The Critic as Artist.” The full quotation runs, Gilbert: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 4/1/2024.

[9] Though as the Norton editors’ “Performance Comment 6” on pg. 549 points out, the actors in this scene could play Don Pedro’s proposal as merely being meant to elicit more of Beatrice’s famous verbal wit, which it succeeds in doing. Either reading is plausible.

[10] What is a “dancing” star? Does Beatrice mean “a shooting star”? Shakespeare has been known to connect dancing with astronomical or astrological references, as when, in Twelfth Night, he makes Sir Toby Belch compliment Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s calf by saying that he thought it was “formed under the star of a galliard” (Norton Comedies 748, 1.3.119) by which is meant a cinquepace-patterned dance. Then there is Helen in All’s Well That Ends Well, sighing that her love for Bertram is hopeless: “’Twere all one / That I should love a bright particular star / And think to wed it, he is so above me” (Norton Comedies 973, 1.1.81-83). [continued ….]

The Folklore Society’s website at https://folklore-society.com offers this interesting note, though they do not connect it to Much Ado About Nothing: “One major liturgical symbol is the kindling of ‘new light’ between Holy Saturday and Easter Day, ideally at midnight or at dawn, to represent Christ the Light, or Sun, of the world. In folk tradition, as recorded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was commonly believed throughout England that the sun itself danced for joy as it rose on Easter Sunday.” [continued ….]

This would explain the technical element in Beatrice’s reference to a dancing star, but unless she means that she was born on Easter Sunday, this folk allusion doesn’t seem to fit the context: surely she is not comparing herself to the risen Christ. See “Easter: Miscellaneous.” Accessed 4/1/2024.

[11] In his introduction to Much Ado, editor Stephen Greenblatt mentions this key term of the Italian Renaissance on pg. 523, defining it more or less as the ability to combine excellent qualities like sincerity and elegance or wit into one seamless performance. For Castiglione’s treatment of la sprezzatura, see The courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio diuided into foure books, translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, or the Project Gutenberg’s e-text of the 1902 translation by Leonard E. Opdycke. Castiglione’s Count Lodovico da Canossa explains the term “la sprezzatura”: [continued ….]

“But having before now often considered whence this grace springs, laying aside those men who have it by nature, I find one universal rule concerning it … and that is to avoid affectation to the uttermost and as it were a very sharp and dangerous rock; and, to use possibly a new word, to practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.” The term “nonchalance” in this passage is the translation Opdycke chose for la sprezzatura.

[12] As the Norton editors point out, there seems to be a slip at line 44; it makes no sense that Margaret would call Borachio Claudio.

[13] It’s uncertain why the Norton editors chose to rename Benedick as Benedict, but in “Shakespeare’s Many Much Ado’s: Alcestis, Hercules, and Love’s Labour’s Wonne” (Brief Chronicles Vol. I (2009) 109; Earl Showerman cites the Arden Shakespeare editor Claire McEachern’s gloss of the sole quarto printing of Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.81-85 (“O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease! / He is sooner caught than the / pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If / he have caught the Benedict, it will cost him a thousand pound ere ‘a be cured”) as follows: [continued ….]

“Benedicts” were the “Catholic priests qualified to perform exorcisms, and madness was often thought to be caused by demonic possession, hence ‘caught the Benedict.’” (McEachern 155) The change, then, at least in the Quarto edition, is delightfully ironic in that Benedict thinks himself all but immune from the crazy-making passion of love. Accessed 4/1/2024.

[14] Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. See 411, 1.1.232-33.

[15] See Much Ado, 2.3.109-10: [aside] “I should think this a gull, but that the / white-bearded fellow speaks it.”

[16] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 512-86. Othello’s descriptions of Desdemona’s alleged unfaithfulness include such passages as, “Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks; / The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, / Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth, / And will not hear’t” (568, 4.2.76-79).

[17] Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Second Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 209-77. See 261, 4.1.68-76.

[18] Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Second Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 209-77. See 225-26, 1.4.204-17.

[19] See Matthew 6:34. (Geneva Bible 1599). Gatewaybible.com. Accessed 8/2/2024. In the King James version, this line is rendered, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

[20] See Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Comedies

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Comedies