*Note: this week's blog post is a little different. I'm posting in a paper I wrote in graduate school (from November of 2000!) on the play Much Ado About Nothing, but be assured--it's still germane to the film as well :)
The first thing a student of Shakespeare must learn is that the meaning in his plays is not conveyed through plot but through language. Shakespeare’s plots are generally taken from other works, but the uniqueness of his treatment of these old themes–through language–makes his plays classic. As a dramatist, Shakespeare does not have the luxury of narration to describe characters. Therefore, the way the characters speak defines our perception of them. A young lover who speaks “by the book” may seem shallow or immature. A character who constantly uses malapropisms may appear to be a bit of an ass. Even characters who do not speak very often, especially female main characters like Desdemona, may tell us that women in a certain society do not have a real voice. In Much Ado about Nothing, language certainly works in these ways, shaping the audience’s perception of the characters, but language also reflects on the society of Messina just as it reflects on Venice in Othello. Although the critic Ifor Evans wishes to state that the language of Much Ado is characterized by “linguistic indifference,” (109), a closer look reveals that even this so-called “genial laziness” (110) has a purpose in the play. The language in Much Ado that Evans finds so uninteresting reveals that this society’s language is inadequate. The characters in Shakespeare’s Messina use language for decoration rather than communication. Even in cases where simplicity and exactness are essential to the characters’ understanding of events, communicators are unable to get their meanings across. Not even overhearing is trustworthy, although many characters assume it is. The people of Messina have exhausted language by misusing its power; it is worn out and empty, unable to communicate feeling or meaning effectively. The linguistic inadequacy shown in this society creates a crisis which, paradoxically, can only be solved through language, which must be stripped down to undecorated truth. Messina’s society of actors can only renew their language by putting down their scripts and tailoring their speech to suit occasion rather than merely to create social appearance, but only Beatrice and Benedick are truly able to do so.
The characters in Much Ado about Nothing–no matter what their sex or class–are defined solely by their outer appearances, including the way they speak in public. The opening scene of the play immediately sets up the importance of creating an acceptable social image. Even the messenger gets involved in the overflow of wittiness. Describing Claudio’s feats in battle he says, “He hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how” (I.i.13-14). Not to be outdone by one of lesser rank, Leonato sets up an opportunity for a pun by asking if Claudio’s uncle cried when he heard about his nephew’s bravery in battle. Getting the affirmative response he was depending on, Leonato replies, “A kind overflow of kindness. . . How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!” (I.i.22-25). William G. McCollom says “[i]t is as if [Leonato] knew that some witty friends were coming to visit and he had better try out a pun and an antimetabole” (166). Truly, from some characters’ mouths, witty statements seems stale and too planned. Such is often the case with Leonato. Later when he, Claudio, and Don Pedro are setting Benedick up to fall in love with Beatrice, he jokes that Beatrice writes Benedick letters and puts the pages together, finding “Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet” (II.iii.126). In performance, this line often elicits groans from Don Pedro, Claudio, and the audience, as it well should. Leonato obviously needed more time to prepare the “pretty jest” that Claudio asked for (II.iii.123-24).
However, Claudio shows no more wit (in either sense of the word) himself. McCollom notes that Claudio’s comments, witty or not, are often mere repetitions of Don Pedro’s speech. He states, “This echolalia illustrates [a] lack of independence” and that Claudio’s speech “is. . . the perfect expression of action. . . descending toward comic automatism” (168). Even in the beginning of the play it is obvious that Claudio has little voice or mind of his own. He agrees to let Don Pedro woo Hero for him. Maurice Hunt sees the working of patriarchal domination in Don Pedro’s offer to stand in for Claudio, stating, “Don Pedro autocratically wrenches Claudio’s words of courtship away from the young lover” (174), but as is clear throughout the play, Claudio has little capability to speak for himself. Whether this shortcoming is natural or learned is of little consequence. Claudio’s inability to speak well on his own reveals an important fact about his character; he is easily led–a factor which explains his willingness to listen to and trust Don John’s lies not once, but twice.
Hunt’s point about patriarchal society is more effective in other instances. Don John reveals that he is “not of many words” (I.i.127), but Hero doesn’t have as many lines as John does. His unwillingness to create a social persona makes him untrustworthy in this society, but Hero’s speechlessness is a badge of honor. Unfortunately, by not constructing herself socially through her own language, she allows others to define her as they wish. The men in the play are all too ready to do so. Male characters continually “read” Hero according to her outward appearance. Nova Myhill shows that these readings of Hero are most clearly shown to their detriment in the repudiation scene. Claudio, Leonato, and even the friar see their own meaning in her blushes. Leonato refers his reading of her guilt to the “story that is printed in her blood” (IV.1.121). The friar sees the same blushes and reads them differently:
By noting the lady, I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth. (IV.i.157-63)
Myhill agrees with Carol Cook that the friar’s accuracy should be attributed to chance (306). In public, under the eye of the patriarchy, Hero is voiceless. However, when in the society of women, her speech is just as lively as that of most of the other characters. Throughout III.i, as Hero and Ursula attempt to gull Beatrice into believing Benedick loves her, Hero’s language transcends the normal level of her speech. In her light invective against Beatrice’s pride, Hero shows her talent for colorful speech, metaphor, and even wit. In fact, her lines in this scene are some of the few that Ifor Evans quotes, saying that they have a “slow-moving charm” (108). Myhill, however, points out that Hero’s speech in this scene is a “narrative” which Don Pedro instructed her to give (306). While Hero was told to gull Beatrice in such a way, her words are still her own. She has a task to do at Don Pedro’s instruction, but she completes the task in her own way. In her comparisons and descriptions in this scene, Hero proves that she too has the power to shape speech. In society, though, she is rarely able to showcase her abilities.
Beatrice, on the other hand, defies patriarchal domination through her speech. Michael D. Friedman points out that wit in this play “is specified as a uniquely masculine weapon which Beatrice has no business brandishing” (353). Friedman illustrates his point by quoting Benedick’s “She speaks poniards, and every word stabs” (II.i.216). Wit, Friedman says “is metaphorically depicted as a piercing weapon” and has a “phallic. . . character” (353). Beatrice’s wonderful wittiness is an affront to the men who are unable to challenge her. She creates a social persona that is unacceptable to the patriarchal order, but she is actually buying into their methods by twisting speech to suit her own purposes. After Benedick replies that only “foul words” have passed between him and Claudio (V. I.42), Beatrice refuses to kiss him, saying, “Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome, therefore I will depart unkissed” (V.i.43-45). Benedick notes that Beatrice has “frighted the word out of his right meaning” with her “forcible wit” (V.i.46-47). However, Beatrice has proved at this point that she is able to suit language to occasion, a lesson that other characters have yet to understand. McCollom suggests that the difference between Beatrice and Benedick and the rest of the society is that they realize who they really are. He believes that in Much Ado, “wit [is] an Erasmian sensitivity to one’s own folly” (172). Unlike other characters, Beatrice and Benedick do not fool themselves into believing that their social persona is their actual character. McCollom shows that, ironically, the ability to accept one’s own foolishness saves one from that foolishness.
While Beatrice, though a woman, is able to harness the power of speech to her own benefit, Dogberry’s attempts fail. In his speech, he attempts to do what the upper classes do: to create an appearance that is better than he actually is. Because of his constant malapropisms, though, his attempts backfire. He takes Leonato’s reference to him as “tedious” as a compliment and says, “if I were as tedious as a king I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship” (III.iv.18-20). Leonato, of course, sees Dogberry as even more ignorant and low than he originally thought. Numerous other examples could be cited to show that Dogberry’s absolutely incomprehensible speech is the most obvious indicator of incommunicative language in the play. His attempts to communicate backfire again and again. He is unable to prevent the public repudiation of Hero beforehand because he cannot express his meaning distinctly. Only through luck is he finally able to convey the message that redeems the play.
As if the characters’ language were not enough to convey the emptiness of speech in Messina, Shakespeare has Benedick mistrusting Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato’s statements in the eavesdropping scene. As Myhill points out, “Eavesdropping, rather than conversation, is established as the accepted model for receiving credible information throughout the play” (296). She shows that in this particular scene, Benedick’s “explicit consideration of what constitutes reliable evidence emphasizes that belief is not a default condition in Much Ado; everything is open to the accusation of ‘counterfeit,’ which must be explicitly refuted” (297). Benedick does go to great lengths to convince himself that the three men are truthful. First he considers that Leonato is involved: “I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence” (II.iii.110-11). He is still convincing himself as the other three are leaving: “This can be no trick. The conference was sadly bourne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady” (II.iii.196-98). Here Benedick effectively conveys that language is an untrustworthy medium in this society. He is able to believe the trick through his own wishful thinking, but his initial mistrust is extremely telling.
Up to the scene of Hero’s public chastisement, Shakespeare consistently presents a society in which language is not a useful tool of communication. Even the rhetorical devices used by characters to show their own wittiness underscore the weakness of words. Puns highlight ambiguity and misunderstanding, and quibbles emphasize “mis-taking” (McCollom 170). In short, all wordplay accentuates the fluidity of language. Until the repudiation scene, this elasticity of language is an asset. But that which makes the play jolly and light in the first half becomes a severe inadequacy in the second half. Many characters reveal themselves unable to convert their witty banter into serious communication, and as such, they appear shallow and much less admirable, despite their earlier command of language.
Beginning with the repudiation scene, the inadequacy of speech in conveying feeling or meaning reaches a furious intensity. In this scene, Don Pedro and Claudio continue to use witty rhetorical devices in anger, and the effect is sharper than it would be if they spoke with seriousness. Similarly, McCollom sees this scene as “a distortion of wit,” a “grim sequel to the opening scenes” (167). As the wedding ceremony begins, Claudio, after his first outburst, says to Leonato, “And what have I to give you back whose worth / May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?” (IV.i.25-26). Don Pedro answers, as if according to a script, “Nothing, unless you render her again” (IV.i.27). Later, when Claudio rhetorically states, “But fare thee well, most foul, most fair, farewell / Thou pure impiety and impious purity”(IV.i.101-02), he heightens the sense that his speech has been rehearsed carefully in order to publicly shame Hero to the fullest. In fact, the sense of their playing parts is heightened by the fact that even before Claudio and Don Pedro saw “Hero” at the window, they agreed to shame her in front of the church:
Claudio: If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her, tomorrow, in the congregation where I should wed, there will I shame her.
Don Pedro: And as I wooed for the to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her. (III.ii.103-07)
The two gallants have been intending to shame Hero, practicing their lines to appear to the greatest advantage.
Conversely, the two characters who have spoken the most up to this point in the play say very little in this scene. Beatrice and Benedick’s verbal sparseness in the church scene is set up as a contrast not to their own substantial speech before, but to Claudio, Don Pedro, and Leonato, who cannot express themselves succinctly. While Claudio, Don Pedro, and Leonato are still mostly concerned with their own public appearances and their semblances of honor, Beatrice and Benedick are concentrating on helping Hero. Benedick even admits that he is speechless: “For my part I am so attired in wonder / I know not what to say” (IV.i.143-44). Through silent observation, Beatrice and Benedick are able to grasp the entire situation. Beatrice is the first to take Hero’s part: “O, on my soul, my cousin is belied” ( IV.i.145), and Benedick even figures out how the mistake occurred: “The practice of it lives in John the bastard” (IV.i.187). After Leonato, the friar, and Hero leave, both the verbal sparseness and lack of self-consciousness continue. Both Beatrice and Benedick reveal their love to each other, much more haltingly than one would have expected from the two. Benedick tells Beatrice to ask anything of him, and she responds with one of the strongest lines in the play: “Kill Claudio” (IV.i.287). Her succinctness reveals feeling that no amount of wordplay could. Where Claudio showed his suffering through lines and lines of punning on Hero’s name and oxymorons, Beatrice’s two word sentence is indicative of genuine grief. She explodes against her new awareness of the emptiness of language:
O that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie and swears it. (IV.i.312-17)
Benedick swears by his hand that he loves her, but she will not accept his oath, since it is made only of words: “Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it” (IV.i.320-21). He agrees to challenge Claudio. At this point, both Beatrice and Benedick have learned an important fact about the use of language, and they carry that awareness through the rest of the play.
Luckily, Beatrice and Benedick do not completely throw off their wittiness.. They do however, learn to suit their speech to occasion. Hunt suggests that Benedick’s “love for Beatrice makes him realize, perhaps for one of the first times in his life, that he can have feelings that the most clever playing with language cannot convey” (189). He goes on to point out that the sonnet “Benedick finally manages to write is valuable as inscribed public proof of his love rather than as an adequate conveyor of that love” (189). Indeed, in writing his sonnet, Benedick is, for probably only the second time, unable to find words. As was pointed out earlier, Benedick even chides Beatrice for jesting about “foul words,” “fright[ing] the word out of his right sense.” However, at their exit, Benedick jokes, “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” (V.ii.86-87), so we can be relieved that he has not completely lost his sense of humor. But we do see that his humor has changed, losing its tinge of bitterness.
In the previous scene, Don Pedro and Claudio show themselves to be up to their old tricks. McCollom states that in V.i, Claudio and Don Pedro “struggle to revive the tone of Act 1.” He continues, saying that “[a]s word-play, their language is much the same as ever, but neither Benedick nor the reader is in the mood for jocose references to ‘the old man’s daughter’” (168). In this particular context, their wit denotes shallowness. As they try to pick on Benedick about Beatrice and downplay their confrontation with Antonio and Leonato, their already downgraded status with the audience falls even further, making it harder and harder to forgive them and participate in the happy ending.
In fact, this ability to forgive is major problem for audiences. Paul and Miriam Mueschke go to great lengths to try to explain how the penance scenes use language to express Claudio’s mourning in a way that enables the audience to forgive:
The intensity of Claudio’s remorse atones for the cruelty of the public repudiation at the altar. Staged in retarded tempo, embellished by stylized movement, haunting music, and appropriate lighting, the recantation scene not only ennobles Claudio, who lost stature in the repudiation scene, but also sanctifies his delayed union with Hero. (62)
No matter what kind of lighting or music are used in a production, Claudio’s language does not convey enough remorse. Again, he is performing a staged public action, and again, he is using stylized speech, making his penance seem less sincere. Arguably, playing the scene in such a stylized manner makes it seem even more disingenuous. The poem and the song are written in overused sentimental verse which again points to the weakness of language to atone for what Claudio has done. On the other hand, the low quality of the verse may work in the way Benedick’s sonnet does–as an expression of true sorrow that cannot be fully expressed through words. It is to some extent a matter of perception, but one seems to feel that Benedick’s bad writing comes from a true inability to express feeling in words, whereas Claudio’s bad verse is a planned public ritual in atonement for another planned public ritual.
In the final scene, Benedick and Beatrice still have one more obstacle to overcome, for while they have proclaimed their love to each other in private, they have yet to admit it publicly. At first, they do seem to feel an unwillingness to show their feelings in public, bringing back their infamous witty banter from the first scenes of the play. But they are outwitted by themselves, as Hero and Claudio bring out the “ocular proof” of Beatrice and Benedick’s love for each other. Once the poems are revealed, Beatrice and Benedick still joke with each other, Benedick saying “by this light, I take thee for pity” (V.iv.92) and Beatrice replying that she “yield[s] upon great persuasion and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption” (V.iv.93-95), but their gibes contain none of the sharpness that characterized the language of the early scenes. Hunt makes a point very similar to McCollom’s perception of wisdom in the recognition of folly:
[A] person may with genuine impunity contradict one of his or her previous statements, as long as the speaker understands that the fault lies not in language but in the essentially inconstant humanity of the speaker. This inconstancy–this “giddiness”–will always preclude the ideal tempering of one’s speech. Nevertheless, a less-than-perfect tempering of speech and the kind of verbal contradiction represented by Benedick can be harmless and blameless as long as the speakers’ self-awareness of their own inconstancy breeds the humility in everyone not to make too much of a linguistic inconsistency or fault. (190)
Hunt is identifying the change in Benedick’s perception (and Beatrice’s as well) as a self-awareness, a knowledge that “man is a giddy thing” (V.iv.104).
At the end of Much Ado about Nothing, Messina may not yet be a cured society. But they are much wiser for the experiences they have had. While the language may still be infected with some decoration (one feels that Claudio may never learn, as he makes a final crack at Benedick about adultery), that decoration has been tempered with an awareness of what can happen when language breaks down completely. The inadequacy of language grows to a point at which it can do nothing but explode, and the consequences of this explosion touch every character in the play. While McCollom argues against James Smith’s interpretation–that Much Ado presents “a shallow society whose superficiality is finally transcended by Benedick and Beatrice”– believing that this argument makes the play too satirical (165), Smith has a point, although he may be pushing it too far. Beatrice and Benedick have managed to strike a balance between wit and seriousness that may perhaps provide a model for others. Seen in the light of this new awareness of language, Beatrice’s quietness throughout the last lines of the play need not be seen as her submission to male authority; instead, she may have learned that sometimes, silence is “the perfectest herald of joy.”
Works Cited
Evans, Ifor. The Language of Shakespeare’s Plays. London: Methuen, 1952.
Friedman, Michael D. “‘Hush’d on Purpose to Grace Harmony’: Wives and Silence in Much Ado about Nothing. Theatre Journal 42 (1990): 350-63.
Hunt, Maurice. “The Reclamation of Language in Much Ado about Nothing.” Studies in Philology 97 (2000): 165-91.
McCollom, William G. “The Role of Wit in Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Quarterly 19 (1968): 165-174.
Mueschke, Paul and Miriam Mueschke. “Illusion and Metamorphosis in Much Ado about Nothing. Shakespeare Quarterly 18 (1967): 53-65.
Myhill, Nova. “Spectatorship in/of Much Ado about Nothing.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 39 (1999): 291-311.
Shakespeare, William. Much Ado about Nothing. The Norton Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt, et al., eds. New York: Norton, 1997.
(Episode 24: Much Ado About Nothing, released March 18, 2022)
