Having only read from Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories for more than a year, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy his comedies. In my memory they were slight creations, stop-gaps in between the solid granite of the “real thing.”
And they are slight creations in some respects…but the better to let the wit and wordplay loft over the simple plot, exposing a deep intelligence in characters without the requisite Wagnerian intensity of the tragedies and without the reflection to and from the real historical characters of the histories.
Of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a good choice for returning to the comedies, being arguably the finest example of Shakespeare’s deft, witty touch. Is there any couple whose linguistic feints and jabs–and roundhouse clock-cleaners–rivals that of Beatrice and Benedick?
Like most good comedy, the conversations between Beatrice and Benedick bear a cutting edge of truth. What Leonato characterizes as a “merry war” stems from Beatrice’s bitterness at Benedick leaving her (presumably for another woman)…at least that’s how I read the end of their brilliant exchange in the first scene:
BEATRICE I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick; nobody marks you.
BENEDICK What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?
BEATRICE Is it possible that Disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to Disdain if you come in her presence.
BENEDICK Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none.
BEATRICE A dear happiness to women–they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I think God and my cold blood, I am of your humor for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
BENEDICK God keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall scape a predestinate scratched face.
BEATRICE Scratching could not make it worse, an ’twere such a face as yours.
BENEDICK Well, you are a rare parrot teacher.
BEATRICE A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.
BENEDICK I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way, o’God’s name; I have done.
BEATRICE You always end with a jade’s trick; I know you of old.
Not only is this a wonderful display of verbal precocity that bears re-reading both to enjoy the multiple extended metaphors and the quickness of wit on display, rendering this metaphor and a few meaty (ha!) puns along the way, but it points to something more than playfulness. A “jade” is a horse that bedevils its rider, finding all manner of ways to buck the rider off– obviously a rich sexual metaphor–that Beatrice has experienced, knowing Benedick “of old.”
Later in the play we see the barbs become sharper yet:
BEATRICE That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales.’ Well, this was Signor Benedick that said so.
BENEDICK What’s he?
BEATRICE I am sure you know him well enough.
BENEDICK Not I, believe me.
BEATRICE Did he never make you laugh?
BENEDICK I pray you, what is he?
BEATRICE Why, he is the prince’s jester: a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders: none but libertines delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villany; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet: I would he had boarded me!
In fact, these accusations are razor sharp, products of the war of steel that lays beneath the “merry war.” What could be more hurtful to the once-jilted Beatrice than an attempt to steal from her the qualities most fundamental to her character–her wit and intellect–by attributing them to another source, rendering her a mere imitator?
That this blow has struck deep is evidenced by her characterization of Benedick as a jester and a fool. While the idea of the fool is now the stuff of distant history and fiction (setting aside the plausible contention that most politicians today are essentially jester and fools), in Shakespeare’s time they were real people. Beatrice’s naming of Benedick as a jester and a fool is not just a light, playful aspersion, but an accusation that cuts to his deepest character and agency, that he is fundamentally nothing more than someone only capable of seeking to please.
Compared to the relationship of Beatrice and Benedick, the other plots in the play feel relatively thin, even the false accusation against Hero that is (at least) metaphorical murder. Don John, the instigator of this second significant plot might as well be a silent film villain wearing a black hat, wreaking havoc and disappearing with few lines.
While most elements of Shakespeare’s plays are more compelling on stage than in print, the comedies seem to suffer most. This may be a personal quirk: I am a great fan of stand-up comedy, with somewhat of a reputation as being funny myself, but humorous writing rarely “does it” for me. In Much Ado About Nothing, this weakness of the printed word is epitomized by the tongue-stumbling of Dogberry and his little posse from the moment of their entrance:
DOGBERRY Are you good men and true?
VERGES Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation, body and soul.
DOGBERRY Nay, that were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the prince’s watch.
VERGES Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.
DOGBERRY First, who think you the most desertless man to be constable?
Clearly, Dogberry is the master of the malapropism, at the opposite end of the linguistic spectrum of language in the play from the clever wordplay where Beatrice, Benedick, and others are to be found. But the wordplay comes off as rather flat in the page, a kind of humor I mostly admire in the abstract and in anticipation of how the dialogue might be staged.
In contrast to the dexterous wordplay, Much Ado About Nothing is also a play of silence and the unspoken. We repeatedly see the consequences of characters not speaking to one another when they most should, including the worst offense of one character allowing another to speak for him, as Claudio does when he allows Don Pedro, in disguise, to usurp his voices. Don John, the undisputed villain notes, in opposition to everyone else of importance in the play, that he is “a man of few words,” underscoring his villainy.
Hero is a particularly interesting case. She is not only unable to speak effectively for herself, but is also given relatively little opportunity to do so. Instead, to her great detriment–even death, metaphorically–others speak for her. Even the title of the play hints at silence and the unspoken or, as Wallace Stevens put it, “the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”
