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BBC - Shakespeare Songs - Much Ado About Nothing

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Key points from Much Ado About Nothing are summerised using original music and quotations.

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essay questions about MAAN_pupils version

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Quiz about MAAN

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MAAN_notes on prose and verse_Block's book

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To memorise quotes from the play

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Start studying MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING QUOTES. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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About love in Elizabethan England

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About Melancholy

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Read about 'Bright's Treatise of Melancholy, 1586', on the British Library's website.

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Why Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter - David T. Freeman and Gregory Taylor

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Teaching Shakespeare | Introducing Iambic Pentameter |Royal Shakespeare Company

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This video 'Introducing Iambic Pentameter' is a sample of the resources available as part of Teaching Shakespeare, a ground-breaking education partnership between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Warwick. At the heart of this professional development programme is a unique online learning platform which introduces the core principles and practice of an active approach to teaching Shakespeare.

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RSC article about Shakespeare's allusions

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RSC article about Shakespeare's allusions

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Shakespeare's plays are littered with classical, historical and literary references that can be hard for our modern ears to understand.

Here are some explanations to some of the allusions that appear in his texts and might not be widely understood today.These examples were put together by Heloise Senechal, from The Complete Works of Shakespeare (2008) published by the RSC and Macmillan.

From The Third Part of Henry the Sixth, Act 3, Scene 3

GLOUCESTER : I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall,
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk,
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machevil to school.
mermaid basilisk Nestor Ulysses King of Ithaca and hero of Homer's Odyssey; noted for his cunning Proteus set ... school teach Machiavelli a few things the sea god Neptune's herdsman, who had the ability to change shape at will Greek leader who fought at Troy; famed for his wisdom and eloquence mythical reptile whose gaze had the power to kil all ... transgressed Hercules ... too club and lion's skin; turning a roasting spit was one of the lowliest domestic tasks Ate conjure exorcize (the sending of evil spirits back to hell had to be carried out in Latin so a scholar would be required) Greek goddess of discord and vengeance in Greek legend the Queen of Lydia, Omphale, made Hercules dress as a woman and spin wool while she took over his i.e. the delights and dominion of the Garden of Eden before the Fall the siren of classical mythology was said to sing sweetly in order to draw sailors onto rocks where they would drown St Albans a town about twenty-five miles from London forswore himself broke his oath (of loyalty)
Sinon in Virgil's Aeneid, the man who pretended to desert the Greeks and persuaded King Priam of Troy to admit the wooden horse into the city, as a result of which Troy was destroyed

Machevil an intriguer, an unscrupulous schemer (from Niccolò Machievalli's The Prince, a sixteenth-century treatise perceived as advocating ruthless political cunning)
for aunt i.e. Hesione, Ajax's mother and sister of Paris' father Priam; she was rescued from a sea monster by Hercules and given to the Greek Telamon;aunt plays on a slang sense of 'bawd, old prostitute' in retaliation for
From Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2, Scene 1
weight The ... heaven according to the Bible (specifically Romans 9:15, in which God says 'I will have mercy on him to whom I will show mercy'). in full (literally, weighing rather than counting coins, in order to ensure their true value)
Benedick energetically declares his loathing of Beatrice.

BENEDICK: ... I would not marry her, were she 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...

From The Tragedy of Richard the Third, Act 1, Scene 3

Richard addresses Elizabeth, wife to his brother Edward IV.

RICHARD: . . . Was not your husband
In Margaret's battle at St Albans slain?
Let me put in your minds, if you forget,
What you have been ere this, and what you are:
Withal, what I have been and what I am.

MARGARET: A murd'rous villain, and so still thou art.
Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick,
Ay, and forswore himself - which Jesu pardon! -

husband ... slain historically, Elizabeth's first husband, Sir John Grey, was killed fighting for the Lancastrians, although in 3 Henry VI (Act 3 scene 2) he is depicted as having fought for the Yorkists

Clarence ... Warwick Clarence and the Earl of Warwick deserted the Yorkists; Clarence married Warwick's daughter, but later returned to the Yorkist cause, events that are depicted in 3 Henry VI

From Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, Scene 2

Troilus describes Paris' role in the cause of the Trojan war.

TROILUS: And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive,
He brought a Grecian queen...
Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl
Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships,
And turned crowned kings to merchants.

Grecian queen i.e. Helen (may pun on 'quean', i.e. prostitute) price ... ships echoes Faustus' line to Helen in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus ('Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?')

From Measure for Measure, Act 1, Scene 3

CLAUDIO: Thus can the demigod Authority
Make us pay down for our offence by weight
The words of heaven; on whom it will, it will,
On whom it will not, so.

Developed with Macmillan and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

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Classical references in Shakespeare's | Royal Shakespeare Company

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Shakespeare's plays are littered with classical, historical and literary references that can be hard for our modern ears to understand. Here are some explanations to some of the allusions that appear in his texts and might not be widely understood today.These examples were put together by Heloise Senechal, from The Complete Works of Shakespeare (2008) published by the RSC and Macmillan.

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Comedy, tragedy and Gender politics in MAAN_British Library article

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Comedy, tragedy and Gender politics in MAAN_British Library article

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Deception and Dramatic Irony in MAAN_British Library article

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Deception and Dramatic Irony in MAAN_British Library article

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Although the characters might be fooled by the many deceptions in the play, the audience seems to know better, but Andrea Varney suggests that our role as observers is more complex and uncertain.

In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare sets up a fairy-tale contrast between two half-brothers - Don Pedro and the illegitimate Don John. As in many plays of this era, the 'bastard' is cast as the villain while Don Pedro, the Prince of Aragon, seems to be the reliable face of authority in Messina.

Within this symmetrical structure, we might expect the good Prince to be open and honest, while Don John and his cronies will be duplicitous. However, it soon becomes clear that deception and self-deception, visual and verbal confusion, are rife everywhere in Messina - from Don Pedro's benevolent schemes to bring two pairs of lovers together, to Don John's vindictive plots to pull them apart.

A 'plain-dealing villain' and a disguised prince

Don Pedro seizes on the idea of 'disguise' as soon as he hears of Claudio's romantic interest in Hero. With honest intentions, he offers to play Claudio's 'part' and woo Hero on his behalf at the masked 'revelling' that evening (1.1.320-21). By contrast, Don John seems weary at the thought of disguise. He describes himself paradoxically as a 'plain-dealing' villain (1.3.32) and declares 'I cannot hide what I am' (1.3.13).

Shakespeare takes up this notion in the tragedy of, with another pair of half-brothers. The illegitimate Edmund plots his father's overthrow, but honest Edgar disguises himself as a beggar to be true to Gloucester. We are forced to recognise that honesty can be malevolent, disguise can be well meaning, and seemingly innocent costumes can conceal dark purposes. In place of clear oppositions, Shakespeare blurs the lines between truth and fabrication, identity and performance, knowledge and misunderstanding.

Usage terms Monkeys and Cats at a Masked Ball, 1632 (oil on panel) (see 204408), Flemish School, (17th century) / Private Collection / © Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, New York / Bridgeman Images

The masked ball: to 'know me, and not know me'

Rather than moralising on the evils of deception, the masked ball in Much Ado About Nothing encourages us, from the outset, to relish the joy of trickery. With its choreographed couples and theatrical display, the 'revelling' is a sanctioned part of the elegant world of Messina, just as masks were part of the social fabric in Venice and elsewhere in Europe, when Shakespeare was writing. Reassured by the feeling that we're in league with the Prince, we relax and enjoy the confusion from our privileged place on the sidelines. Applauding Shakespeare's masterful use of dramatic irony, we take mischievous pleasure in knowing more than those on stage.

Usage terms

Public Domain in most countries other than the UK.

In this topsy-turvy world, there is a constant sense of paradox and playful contradiction: people tell home truths under cover of masks, and truth is misread as deception. Beatrice insults Benedick, pretending not to know it's him: 'She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince's jester' (2.1.242-43). But we suspect that she said it precisely because she knew who she was talking to. In fact, Benedick notes that it's possible, at the same time, to 'know ... and not know' a person in Messina (2.1.204).

Concealed behind his 'visor' (2.1.86), Don Pedro speaks of love to Hero, and we later learn that she has accepted him 'in [Claudio's] name' (2.1.274). Both Borachio and Don John, 'know' which man is Claudio, but pretend to think he's Benedick. Fooled into thinking his disguise has worked, Claudio says, 'You know me well I am he'. Don John then maliciously claims that Don Pedro wooed Hero 'for himself', saying he 'heard him swear his affection' (2.1.162-74).

'Trust no agent'

In a world where the grounds for knowledge seem so shifting and uncertain, characters rightly mistrust what they see and hear. Convinced that his friend has betrayed him, Claudio vows to 'Let every eye negotiate for himself / And trust no agent' (2.1.178-79). He wants direct, reliable proof, but this very idea is prompted by the unreliable words of Don John.

The terms 'know', 'proof' and 'truth' echo throughout the play, but so do 'fashion', 'show' and 'seeming'. Words and surface appearances are the 'agents' people must use to 'negotiate' their understanding of the world, but they're fraught with double meaning.

As the plot unravels, it becomes more and more clear that the social and verbal graces enacted at the court are a thin and self-conscious performance. Claudio's seemingly honourable character, his stiff proposals of 'love' (1.1.211), seem insincere and empty when we see how willingly he and the Prince will take on their brutal role in publicly shaming Hero (3.2.113).

The parallel garden scenes

In looking for deception, the characters repeatedly get things wrong, seeing trickery where there is none, and proof when they're being deceived. This has near-tragic results later when Hero is wrongly maligned on the basis of Don John's deceptions, but it is brilliantly played for comedy in the parallel garden scenes 'directed' by Don Pedro (2.1.370). Like the masked ball, the concealed arbours of Messina's gardens are part of the Prince's refined world, but a perfect stage for dissembling.

Elizabethan gardening manual with images of mazes, arbours and pleached bowers

A shady arbour on the title page of Thomas Hill's The Gardeners Labyrinth, 1577.

The friends conspire to bring Benedick and Beatrice 'into a mountain of affection' (2.1.367), by convincing them each loves the other but is desperate to hide it. They exploit the idea of deceptive appearances to suggest that Beatrice's feelings are at odds with her 'outward behaviours' (2.3.97). Benedick begins to suspect a 'gull', but dismisses it on the basis that the 'white-bearded fellow speaks it' (2.3.118-19). He mistakes his friends' deceptions for 'truth' (2.3.222) but, convinced that Beatrice loves him, he sees 'double meaning' in her insults, when there is none intended (2.3.258).

The 'same net' is soon 'spread' (2.3.213-14) for Beatrice as she hides in the 'pleached bower' to eavesdrop on Hero and Ursula (3.1.7). There is joy in seeing 'modest' Hero (2.1.375) come to life as a skilled accomplice for Don Pedro, and humour in seeing the cynics give in to the idea of love.

Boydell's Collection of Prints illustrating Shakespeare's works

Beatrice eavesdrops on Hero and Ursula: Much Ado About Nothing, Act 3, Scene 1 by Reverend Matthew William Peters.

Marriage as 'merely a dumb-show'

However, at this point in the play, our own trust in Don Pedro might begin to waver. There is a sense of unease when Beatrice talks so quickly of 'taming [her] wild heart' to Benedick's 'loving hand' (3.1.112). The use of hunting imagery - 'angling', 'traps', 'treacherous bait' (3.1.26; 106; 28) - suggests that something strong and free has been captured and constrained. The puns and double entendres, the 'skirmish of wit' (1.1.63) between Benedick and Beatrice somehow seem more genuine than Claudio's stiff clichés as he tries to talk 'like a lover' (1.1.306). We have mixed feelings about the witty pair submitting to those same conventions.

Perhaps more importantly, despite our vantage point, we can no longer be quite sure of what we've seen. Have Benedick and Beatrice been playfully tricked into admitting their true feelings? Or have these merry rebels been duped into marriage for their friends' entertainment? Indeed, the very idea of true love now seems open to question, as it becomes just another role to play. Using theatrical language, Don Pedro hints that their 'dotage' might be 'merely a dumb-show', a strangely silent performance (2.3.218).

Much ado about noting

At the heart of these garden scenes is a trivial exchange which subtly highlights the difficulty of reading outward signs. Preparing to play his song, Balthasar juggles with the word 'note': 'There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting,' and Don Pedro takes up the word-play, 'Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing' (2.3.54-57).

By echoing the play's title, Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare makes us sit up and take notice, revealing the double meaning at the heart of the play. On the one hand, the title suggests that the plot is a fuss about nothing - a series of deceptions which turn out to be untrue. Yet 'nothing' in Shakespeare's England could also be used bawdily for a woman's lack of a penis, and the play involves much 'ado' about women and sex. Most importantly, 'nothing' at this time was pronounced the same as 'noting' - meaning paying attention or taking note.

Broadside ballad in 'Praise of Nothing'

This witty 17th-century ballad takes on the paradoxical task of making something out of nothing.

These puns emphasise the need for us, in our role as observers, to 'note' things carefully, interpreting what we see, not trusting first impressions. But because 'noting' and 'nothing' are so similar, they also unsettle our faith in being able to tell what's meaningful and what's nonsense. Balthasar's song reminds us that 'Men were deceivers ever' (2.3.63). Words and appearances, in the theatre and the real world, are open to manipulation.

Villainous plots: 'What men daily do, not knowing what they do!'

As the mood shifts from comedy to corruption, this becomes all the more crucial - since noting and misreading, seeming and dissembling become a matter of life and death. Borachio talks coldly of his plans to 'cross' Hero and Claudio's marriage by providing 'proof enough to misuse the Prince, to vex Claudio, to undo Hero and kill Leonato' (2.2.28-29). He will stage a scene at Hero's chamber window, with Margaret wooing Borachio while dressed in 'Hero's garments' (5.1.238), to make Hero seem disloyal. Don John directs the performance and his audience falls for it.

As in earlier comic scenes, there is a heavy irony in the characters' misplaced distrust as well as their misplaced conviction. Don John plays on the idea - so common at this time - that women are artful deceivers, and Claudio readily believes that Hero hides her 'cunning sin' beneath a convincing 'show of truth' (4.1.35-36). Aware of the dangers of 'seeming' and 'exterior shows' (4.1.40; 56), he misinterprets Don John's false show as proof of Hero's deception. Having savoured the irony of the characters' errors in previous scenes, we now look on in horror as the innocent Hero is denounced as a 'rotten orange' at her own wedding ceremony (4.1.32).

Niccholes's Discourse of Marriage and Wiving

Alexander Niccholes wryly notes how hard it is to choose 'a good wife from a bad', since women are so deceptive.

Crucially also, Don Pedro is deceived. He confirms his brother's lies, saying, 'Myself, my brother, and this grieved Count / Did see her, hear her ... last night' (4.1.89-90). As the Prince joins in the slander, our former sense of allegiance to him as a well-meaning trickster becomes morally problematic. He seems to be not just the victim of his brother's deceptions but also a guilty party. The failings of the witnesses on stage alert us to our own failings as observers, and we feel we have misjudged things.

The Watch

Through careful 'noting of the lady', the Friar sees the truth, realising that Hero 'is guiltless' (4.1.158; 168). But rather than providing a new model for honesty and integrity, he also uses deception as a means to achieve good ends. Suggesting that they should 'publish it' that Hero 'is dead indeed,' he hopes to prompt Claudio to change 'slander' for 'remorse' (4.1.204; 211). Initially, Don Pedro continues to trust his own eyes, insisting that Hero 'was charg'd with nothing / But what was true, and very full of proof' (5.1.104-05).

But the tragedy is deflected by the naïve 'Watch', whose name suggests their important role in observation and noting. The truth of Hero's innocence is uncovered by those who appear the least discerning. Borachio confesses, 'I have deceived even your very eyes: What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light' (5.1.232-34).

So the Friar's plan is successful, but perhaps the damage is done. It's hard to accept Claudio's claim that he 'sinn'd' only in 'mistaking' (5.1.273-74). Misinterpretation no longer seems a simple error but a potentially murderous action.

'Let's have a dance ere we are married'

Even as these things come to light, there is one final deception. Hero's father Leonato offers Claudio a second chance at marriage, saying 'My brother hath a daughter/ Almost the copy of my child that's dead' (5.1.288-89). Hero is instructed to 'come hither masked' (5.4.12), pretending to be her own cousin. The comic resolution promised by a wedding will be no more authentic than the rest of the play.

Claudio first chose Hero by noting her looks: 'In mine eye, she is the sweetest lady that ever I look'd on' (1.1.186-87; 162). He then misjudged her as a 'common stale' (4.1.65) by relying on appearances. As a punishment, he must now commit to his bride without seeing 'her face' first (5.4.54-55). Rather than being revealed in all her innocence, Hero is accepted on the basis that she's someone else. This marriage seems uncomfortably close to the earlier masked ball, where Hero agreed to a proposal from a man in disguise - perhaps Claudio, perhaps Don Pedro. And it highlights the fact that nuptial arrangements in Messina revolve around a polite pretence. Words said in 'the name of love' (1.1.300) disguise the need to secure a profitable 'alliance' (2.1.318).

Although it is a stage-trick, the wedding is also very much like a real marriage in early modern Italy. Cesare Vecellio's costume guide (1598) shows how brides in Venice were masked by a black veil before their wedding. Marriage - Don Pedro's excuse for all the benign deception - seems tainted by the idea of duplicity and theatrical double dealing.

16th-century costume guide

A Venetian lady masked by a black veil before her wedding, in Vecellio's guide to global fashions, 1598.

'The author of all' deception

The comedy is also compromised by the fact that 'Don John', the supposed 'author of all' the deception, is 'fled and gone' from Messina (5.2.98-99). The villain is still at large, reinforcing Balthasar's warning that men are 'deceivers ever'.

Perhaps more disconcertingly though, the word 'author' might remind us that it is not Don John, but Shakespeare who planned the deceptions in the play. Theatre itself is implicated in the many false shows we've witnessed. Through dramatic irony, we were lulled into believing that we could see beyond the costumes. But as the play draws to a close, it's hard to feel so confident that we can tell proof from performance.

Andrea Varney has a PhD on the dictionaries of Shakespeare's day and the culture of translation. She is an experienced sixth-form English teacher and now works on Discovering Literature in the Learning Team at the British Library.

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Deception and dramatic irony in Much Ado About Nothing

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Although the characters might be fooled by the many deceptions in the play, the audience seems to know better, but Andrea Varney suggests that our role as observers is more complex and uncertain. In Much Ado About Nothing , Shakespeare sets up a fairy-tale contrast between two half-brothers - Don Pedro and the illegitimate Don John.

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Marriage and Courtship in Shakespeare's England_British Library article

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Marriage and Courtship in Shakespeare's England_British Library article

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Benedick and Beatrice: the 'merry war' of courtship_British Library article

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Benedick and Beatrice: the 'merry war' of courtship_British Library article

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Penny Gay sees Benedick and Beatrice as the witty stars of a Shakespearean rom-com. She explores both their modernity and their conformity to traditional gender roles and marriage.

Much Ado About Nothing features the most obviously modern of Shakespeare's courting couples, Beatrice and Benedick. They are the direct ancestors of the 'rom-com' couple - the staple of Hollywood comedies since (at least) the 1930s heyday of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and of television series like the 1990s' Friends or 1980s' Moonlighting, where the audience is kept intrigued by the unresolved sexual tension between the sparring, apparently unsuited couple. There is no known source for Beatrice and Benedick and their unconventional courtship, whereas Shakespeare used identifiable literary sources for the more serious Claudio and Hero story. Despite there being some examples of witty banter between young men and women in earlier Shakespeare plays ( The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost) and in some other 16th-century texts, Beatrice and Benedick are definitively new: they refuse to abide by the conventions of genteel decorum, they know their own minds (or think they do), they are not particularly respectful of authority (unlike the younger couple Claudio and Hero) and they are the couple who talk, and bicker, endlessly - thus displaying to each other their intellectual energy and their compatibility. Perhaps their banter is also a type of self-defence against the appearance of any emotional vulnerability. Here is their extraordinary opening dialogue, full of cheerful insults:

BEATRICE I wonder that you should still be talking, Signor Benedick. Nobody
marks you.

BENEDICK What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living? (1.1.86-88)

Shakespeare's Collected Poems, 1640

'Let but Beatrice and Benedicke be seene': In his tribute to Shakespeare, Leonard Digges reveals that audiences preferred the unconventional pair, even in 1640.

What makes these lines and this attitude stand out is that they are spoken in a large assembly onstage of the community in which this story will take place. This is a very precisely delineated social group, with its hierarchies, its gentry and servants, its young people and elders and its surrounding village folk, set (notionally) in the Sicilian city of Messina. More to the point is that the whole play takes place in the governor Leonato's great house and garden, where the military visitors of Don Pedro's army arrive in Act 1, Scene 1 for a short period of rest and recreation. This very specific social situation can be set in any time and place where there is a similar situation: the excitement of the soldiers arriving in a large (bored?) household of old men and young women; the anticipation of flirtation and more serious courtship. The characters do not meet by chance; they are part of a wider, familiar community. There is a backstory to Beatrice and Benedick's relationship, a suggestion that they have known each other for a long time, and that they were once, perhaps, lovers: 'Marry, once before he won it [her heart] of me, with false dice,' says Beatrice (2.1.211). This is a rich and complex set-up for the developments that follow, which depend upon the contrast between the two courting couples: the conventional pair Claudio and Hero (who never speak to each other onstage before the disastrous confrontation of Act 4, Scene 1's wedding scene), and the gloriously unconventional talkers Beatrice and Benedick.

Usage terms

Public Domain in most countries other than the UK.

Language and decorum

At all points, we see Beatrice and Benedick's linguistic vitality. For example, in Act 1, Scene 1 Beatrice's opening enquiry of the Messenger is bizarre to the point of indecorum: 'I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? For indeed, I promised to eat all of his killing' (1.1.31-33). Leonato has to intervene, explaining that she's engaged in 'a kind of merry war' with Benedick: 'they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them' (1.1.45-47). His military metaphors can be seen as an attempt to normalise Beatrice's behaviour by referring to a standard 'masculine' activity. Men are soldiers, women - what? Domesticated bodies, but Beatrice isn't having that; she'd rather be 'where the bachelors sit' (2.1.37).

Both declare that they won't marry - since, implicitly, that is to behave 'normally', to submit to the patriarchal myth and deny their determined individuality. They are thus set up for the fall which both the theatre audience and the onstage audience to their outrageous behaviour are waiting for.

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1628

Robert Burton sees Benedick and Beatrice as the supreme example of a couple who continually disagree but should be pushed into marriage.

Language and truth-telling

The two 'gulling' scenes, Act 2, Scene 3 and Act 3, Scene 1, are very different. Benedick, in stand-up monologues and clown-like pratfalls and physical gags as he tries to hide and overhear his friends' staged discussion, endears himself to the audience even as his self-assurance is punctured. His last speech is as long and ultimately as cocky as his first in this scene - yet they come to very different conclusions. The men's amateur performance of an improvised riff on 'Did you know Beatrice is madly in love with Benedick?' has forced him into a new understanding of himself; and he declares to the audience, in his characteristic extravagant manner, 'I will be horribly in love with her ... Shall quips and sentences, and these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled!' (2.3.235-42)

1901 edition of Anna Jameson's Shakespeare's Heroines, illustrated by Robert Anning Bell

Bell's illustration of Beatrice appears in Anna Jameson's chapter on 'Characters of Intellect'.

Beatrice, by contrast, is given much less opportunity for humour in the equivalent scene in which she overhears her friends' performance of concern. The whole scene is in blank verse - a more serious and emotional style than Benedick's freewheeling prose; and her final soliloquy in this scene constitutes the last 10 lines of a Shakespearean sonnet - thus signalling her interior emotional life. It is a far cry from witty banter:

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. (3.1.107-16)

Benedick continues to appear as a clownish figure in Act 3, Scene 2, aping the conventional lover in his fashionable clothes and haircut (and male fragrance!). Beatrice, similarly, develops a psychosomatic cold in Act 3, Scene 4, and is teased by her girlfriends. It looks as though their separate realisations that they are in love have baffled them, and they don't know how to behave in this new situation. But there is at least an unacknowledged bond now binding them.

In the 'church scene' (Act 4, Scene 1), after the horrendous scene of the public breakdown of the wedding between Claudio and Hero, where he speaks so vilely to her that she is left for dead, Beatrice and Benedick are finally alone together on stage, for the first time in the play. The dialogue that then takes place is a dramatic scene between an adult woman and man unmatched in any previous writing - at once a love scene and a spelling-out of the unavoidable imperatives of gender as they were at that time formulated: men must fight, and women must weep. 'Oh God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace,' cries Beatrice (4.1.295) - but it is Benedick who goes off to challenge Claudio. There doesn't seem to be any alternative.

Usage terms © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Held by© Victoria and Albert Museum

'Man is a giddy thing' (5.2.104)

After the tension of Act 4, Scene 1, the audience needs reassurance that this relationship that we've put faith in as the new and better model is actually going to work. Beatrice and Benedick have another scene in which they are briefly alone together on stage. Their bantering and mutual insulting is now resumed, but it is clearly affectionate:

BENEDICK ... And, I pray thee, now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst
thou first fall in love with me?

BEATRICE For them all together, which maintained so politic a state of evil
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?

BENEDICK 'Suffer love', a good epithet. I do suffer love indeed, for I love
thee against my will.

BEATRICE In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart; if you spite it for
my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never love that which my
friend hates.

BENEDICK Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably. (5.2.44-54)

We expect them to kiss at the end of this scene, but they are interrupted by Ursula with the good news of Hero's proven innocence. Thus in classic rom-com fashion, their final encounter, in Act 5, Scene 4 - mirroring the public gathering of the play's opening scene - continues the repartee their onstage audience expects of them (and it is only at this point that they find out their more conventional friends have duped them). With line 96, 'Peace, I will stop your mouth' we finally get the kiss that we've been waiting for. But its connotation is ambiguous: Beatrice's mouth is literally stopped - she doesn't say a word after this. Benedick talks on to the play's end, very much taking his place as the newly dominant male - no longer an outsider, or the Prince's clown, but the potential father-figure: ordering dancing (despite Leonato's objection), telling the Prince to 'get thee a wife' (5.4.122), and saying he (not Don Pedro) will devise 'brave punishments' (5.4.128) for Don John. Much depends on the mute reactions of Beatrice during these final moments: can she, like Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, indicate that she retains her reservations about the way men run things?

Romantic comedy is essentially a conservative form: it always ends with marriage, and the status quo, though perhaps somewhat tarnished, is reaffirmed. The community may have learnt a little, but nothing has really changed. It has triumphantly incorporated the unconventional energy of rebellious figures like Beatrice and Benedick into its fabric, and it looks forward to replicating itself in the next generation: 'The world must be peopled!'

Penny Gay is Professor Emerita in English and Drama at the University of Sydney, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has published extensively on Shakespeare, particularly on the comedies. Her book As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women was published in 1994, and The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedies in 2008. She has also written a substantial new Introduction to the New Cambridge Shakespeare Twelfth Night. Her ongoing research interest is in the performance history, both historical and contemporary, of Shakespeare and other English drama, particularly as regards women's roles.

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Benedick and Beatrice: the 'merry war' of courtship

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Penny Gay sees Benedick and Beatrice as the witty stars of a Shakespearean rom-com. She explores both their modernity and their conformity to traditional gender roles and marriage. Much Ado About Nothing features the most obviously modern of Shakespeare's courting couples, Beatrice and Benedick.

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View an 'Woodcut of a harpy', on the British Library's website.

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The fact that father and son share the same name in Hamlet is used to investigate the play's nostalgia, drawing on biographical criticism and the religious and political history of early modern England.

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The fact that father and son share the same name in Hamlet is used to investigate the play's nostalgia, drawing on biographical criticism and the religious and political history of early modern England.

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How does Shakespeare persuade us that his characters are using real speech? pt1

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The English Faculty - University lectures for secondary schools Find more videos at www.TheEnglishFaculty.org

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How does Shakespeare persuade us that his characters are using real speech? pt2

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The English Faculty - University lectures for secondary schools Find more videos at www.TheEnglishFaculty.org