Much Ado About Nothing

“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 recheat 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 to the finer), I will live a bachelor.” 

When Benedick makes this speech swearing off women and marriage forever, Claudio and Don Pedro reply that any man who talks like this will be in love within a matter of days. But Benedick’s words here, besides being ironically funny, also betray his anxieties. All his images are of hunting horns, evoking both the fear of being ripped to shreds and the fear of infidelity (horns were a ubiquitous symbol of cuckoldry). Benedick’s mistrust of marriage is at root less cynical than it is anxious.

“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.” 

Don Pedro’s scheme is perplexing: Why should Claudio want the Prince to woo his beloved Hero for him, and why should the Prince make this offer? Neither Don Pedro’s reasoning nor Claudio’s acquiescence is ever fully explained, and every production of the play deals with this plot differently. This moment is the first of many instances of sexual conspiracy, disguise, and eavesdropping, and it sets the mood for the plot that follows: In this play’s world, sexuality always carries the threat of deceit and uncertainty about other people’s motives.

“The prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance, and, if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.”

Antonio’s scrambled retelling of Don Pedro and Claudio’s plan is the first of many moments in the play in which eavesdropping leads to confusion. The “nothing” of the play’s title was a double pun in Shakespeare’s time, both suggesting “noting” (or taking note—especially of words that were never meant for one’s ears) and a crude reference to vaginas (sometimes insultingly called “nothing”). Both kinds of “nothing,” the play suggests, have the potential to cause uproar. Here, a story overheard and jumbled by multiple retellings produces confusion as to Hero’s romantic and sexual future.

“I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any. 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. […] If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking.”

Don John here proclaims himself a villain so straightforwardly it is almost comical. While his machinations will eventually have serious and upsetting consequences, he is also emphatically stagy, more a necessary piece of grit in the play’s oyster than a full-fledged character in his own right. But the source of his grudge—he is Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother, and as a “bastard” has no right to inherit family property—also draws attention to some of the play’s questions about how status, sex, and power interact.

“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 upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near 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. […] Come, talk not of her.” 

Benedick’s outrage at Beatrice’s insults hints at the gathering storm of love will soon break over him. That he feels her insults as “poniards” (or daggers) suggests that she knows him well, and that his insecurities are easy targets for her. Even in this moment of outrage, Benedick’s closeness to Beatrice is clear, in that they share a virtuosically playful way with words.

“DON PEDRO

Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you, for out o’ question you were born in a merry hour.

BEATRICE

No, sure, my lord, my mother cried, but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.” 

Not long after this exchange, Don Pedro and Leonato will remark that Beatrice doesn’t have any melancholy in her disposition, and that she laughs even at bad dreams. This passage shows that they misunderstand Beatrice’s character. Her tale of her crying mother (who may have died giving birth to her) and her earlier rueful jokes about Benedick winning her heart with “false dice” suggest that Beatrice merely masks her sadness with wit. This play genuinely takes the world lightly, but doesn’t deny that taking the world lightly is just one way to bear its heaviness.

“I will teach you how to humor your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, with your two helps, will so practice on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love gods.” 

Don Pedro claims that “we are the only love gods,” but the play does not fully support his claim. His scheme certainly puts Beatrice and Benedick’s stalled love affair back into motion. But love, the rest of the play suggests, is a capricious force that humans cannot control. Believing that one has the power of love at one’s disposal, as this line foreshadows, leads to trouble.

“Now divine air! Now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?”

Benedick reduces the beauty of music to the earthy matter it comes from: the sheep-gut strings of a lute or a fiddle. But music and the strings it comes have a relationship similar to that between the “souls” and “bodies” he refers to. These lines might stand as an epigraph for the whole play, in which sublime love emerges from the ridiculous movements of earthly bodies, yet still triumphs, matters, and means something to those it affects.

“This can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne. […] Love me? Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her. […] I must not seem proud. Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair—’tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous—’tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me—by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. 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 and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career 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.”

Benedick justifies his lightning-quick turnaround from sniping at Beatrice to deciding he loves her with an attempt at sophisticated reasoning that emerges as comedy. Earlier scenes have already suggested Benedick loves Beatrice behind his mask of insults, so the audience knows it is not pragmatic thoughts of populating the earth that makes his heart soar when he believes that Beatrice loves him. Here, Benedick falls into exactly the trap he has sworn he’ll never fall into. This, the play suggests, is the inescapable fate of humanity. Benedick’s fall is just as sweet as it is absurd, and he can neither reason his feelings away nor reasonably account for why he gives in to them.

“But nature never framed a woman’s heart / Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice. / Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, / Misprizing what they look on, and her wit / Values itself so highly that to her / All matter else seems weak. She cannot love, / Nor take no shape nor project of affection, / She is so self-endeared.” 

The trap that Hero and her waiting-women lay for Beatrice is different than the trap the gentlemen lay for Benedick. Whereas the men bait Benedick with flattering tales of how deeply Beatrice is in love with him, the ladies roundly insult Beatrice by saying she is too full of herself. Benedick gets caught with honey; Beatrice, with vinegar.

“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.”

Beatrice’s love speech contrasts markedly with Benedick’s. While Benedick reasons at ridiculous length about why he should return Beatrice’s love, Beatrice makes short work of her decision, perhaps choosing what she has wanted all along.

“Wonder not till further warrant. Go but with me tonight, you shall see her chamber window entered, even the night before her wedding day. If you love her then, tomorrow wed her. But it would better fit your honor to change your mind.” 

Don John’s scheme is not only treacherous and deceptive, but prurient. The false scene of infidelity he concocts requires voyeuristic spying in order to work—a metaphorical “penetration” of the “wrong window.” The performance he plans is literary and even theatrical, in that it requires an audience. The scheme might remind the audience that they, like many of the play’s characters, are also voyeuristic, spying on people who do not know they are being watched.

DOGBERRY

If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your office, to be no true man, and for such kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them, why, the more is for your honesty.

WATCHMAN

If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on him?

DOGBERRY

Truly, by your office you may, but I think they that touch pitch will be defiled. 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.” 

Dogberry’s absurd “logic” is an extension of the play’s general confusion and uproar. Here, he explains that associating with thieves by arresting them can only dirty one’s hands; the best thing to do with thieves is to let them prove they are evil characters by escaping. This twisted line of reasoning points to the play’s overarching message that people’s beliefs and reasons are often less sensible than they would like to believe. Dogberry is an honest fool among supposedly sophisticated ones.

“HERO

These gloves the count sent me, they are an excellent perfume.

BEATRICE

I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell.

HERO

A maid, and stuffed! There’s goodly catching of cold.” 

This is one of a long sequence of dirty jokes the women make as they help Hero prepare for her wedding. “Stuffed” means “pregnant,” which introduces painful dramatic irony through a joke. The bachelorette-party lightness with which the women joke about scandalous sexual behavior may feel ominous to the audience that already knows Hero is about to be publicly humiliated for just such behavior, especially since the audience also knows she is innocent of everything she is about to be accused of.

“Behold how like a maid she blushes here! / O, what authority and show of truth / Can cunning sin cover itself withal! / Comes not that blood as modest evidence / To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear, / All you that see her, that she were a maid, / By these exterior shows? But she is none: / She knows the heat of a luxurious bed; / Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.” 

When Claudio cruelly shames Hero on their wedding day, he manages to turn even the true evidence of her innocence—her horrified blush at his sordid accusations—into evidence of guilt. The “blood” in this image, rising to Hero’s cheeks, might also suggest the blood women supposedly spilled the first time they had sex. Here, the willful misinterpretation that has so far united couples now tears them apart.

“I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” 

When he at last confesses his love to Beatrice, the voluble Benedick is uncharacteristically brief. His changed speech pattern reflects that circumstances have changed. As Claudio’s accusation turns misunderstandings into serious business, Benedick and Beatrice begin to express their true feelings in plainer language (though they do not give up jokes at each other’s expense).

“BEATRICE

I love thee with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.

BENEDICK

Come, bid me do anything for thee.

BEATRICE

Kill Claudio.” 

Beatrice and Benedick seal their love not with a kiss, but with a terrible agreement. Though Benedick refuses Beatrice’s demand at first, he at last comes to see things her way: that Claudio’s slander can only be fairly answered in the severest terms. Benedick puts his faith in Beatrice’s judgment and attends to her needs, even to the point of deciding to fight his best friend to the death. The close of Act IV marks a transformation in the play’s world: this comedy has become deadly serious.

“But, masters, remember that I am an ass. Though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.”

Dogberry’s malaprops provide comic relief during the play’s new seriousness. Whereas the previous scene, the failed wedding, depicts deception and miscommunication, this scene uses miscommunication to tell the truth. Dogberry, who is trying to make sure that Conrade’s insults make it into the court records, ends up accidentally proclaiming the truth: that he is indeed an ass. This statement of fact is an appropriate end to a scene that reassures the audience that despite its currently dire circumstances, the play is still a comedy.

“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.” 

Benedick’s challenge to Claudio is as terse and plain as his previous jokes were florid and witty. This new side of his personality demonstrates the reputed warlike bravery we haven’t yet seen on stage. It also suggests that he respects Beatrice enough to put his life on the line for her—and even, for once, to stop joking.

“The lady is dead upon mine and my master’s false accusation, and briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a villain.” 

Borachio’s sincere change of heart contrasts with the pantomime villainy of Don John. Borachio both acknowledges his part in the scheme and does his best to clear Margaret’s name, and persists in making himself understood even though his jailor, Dogberry, can scarcely pair two coherent words of accusation against him.

“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.” 

Benedick’s words to Beatrice here are a perfect summation of their relationship, at once sincere affection (“I will live in thy heart”) and filthy humor (“die”—that is, orgasm—”in thy lap”). Both the sublime and the sexual are grounded in the everyday: not only will Benedick be figuratively “buried” in Beatrice’s eyes, he will also run mundane family errands with her. Even if Beatrice and Benedick had to be tricked into admitting they love each other, their love appears more complete and down to earth than Claudio’s sudden passion for Hero.

“Good morrow, masters. Put your torches out. / The wolves have preyed, and look the gentle day, / Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about / Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.” 

Don Pedro brings Claudio’s ceremony outside Hero’s tomb to a poetic close, suggesting with images of dawn that a symbolic “day” is breaking over his and Claudio’s guilt and sorrow. This scene provides another moment of dramatic irony: the audience gets to enjoy both Claudio’s well-deserved suffering and the knowledge that everything is about to end well, since Hero is in fact alive.

“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.”

Before they are married, Beatrice and Benedick fit in one last volley of mutual teasing. Their exaggerated disinterest in each other suggests that in fact, even in a “giddy” world, Beatrice and Benedick’s romance stands as an example of love founded on real and reciprocal understanding.