Much
Character analysis: Beatrice
When Don Pedro returns from war to
But it does not take Claudio a month
to fall in love with Hero, Leonato’s lovely daughter:
he discusses his crush with Benedick immediately after their first encounter.
Already in the first scene of the second act, Leonato
approves the marriage between Claudio and his daughter. To kill the time in the
week before the marriage, Don Pedro sets up a plan to match the ‘merry
warriors’ Benedick and Beatrice, both confirmed bachelors who have known each
other since a long time. In spite of Don John trying to thwart the wedding
between fair Hero and Claudio, at the end everything turns out to be much about
nothing: the play unwinds in a double wedding as also Benedick and Beatrice eventually
admit that they love each other.
In this essay, I choose to expand on
the interesting character Beatrice because she’s one of the most intriguing and
strong female characters in Shakespeare’s plays.
I will discuss her personality, how Messina
influenced who she was, the relations between her and the other main characters and finally her function in the play. But firstly I will throw light on
her outward features the text gives us directly.
Beatrice is the niece of Leonato, the governor of
Act II scene 1 BEATRICE:
Just, if he [God] send me no husband; for the which 421
blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and
evening.
Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted
with a husband.
BEATRICE:
Not till God make men of some other metal than 450
earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be
overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? To make
an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?
No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren;
and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. 455
As these anecdotes already point
out, Beatrice is a feisty and sharp lady that speaks straight from the
shoulder. Nevertheless, this behaviour
is not always tolerated from a well-brought-up lady in Elizabethan times: as
Benedick states, ‘you shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel.’ (II i. 234). The parallel that
Benedick makes between Ate, the Greek Goddess of Discord and Beatrice clearly
affirms that although Beatrice might behave and look like a well-educated
woman, her outward appearances disguised her reluctance towards the
conventional docility of women at that time.
The vast majority of the characters in
Much Ado do not go through a personal development. Consequently, one might say
that the play deals with ‘parts’ rather than with ‘characters’. Nevertheless there
is a remarkable change regarding Beatrice: the most striking feature that
Beatrice is accused of is that she is disdainful. What is more, the concept
concerns Beatrice five out of the six times it is used in the play. But when she eavesdrops on Hero and Ursula
having a conversation about her pride and scorn, she is astounded and suddenly
puts aside this disdainful part, admitting herself to love Benedick:
Act III, scene 1
BEATRICE [Coming forward]
What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such. 110
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
115
Believe it better than reportingly.
Also
The enormous difference between
Beatrice’s conduct and the expectations set upon Elizabethan women made her an
extraordinarily intriguing character, not only for Shakespeare’s
contemporaries. When Claudio accuses her niece Hero of being promiscuous, Beatrice
shouts: “O that I were a man for his sake!’, seethed
by the unequal status of women. (IV, i. 313)
The relation between Beatrice and Leonato:
Even though Leonato
sincerely hopes that Beatrice one day will find a husband, he does not impose
his will on her -what cannot be said for his daughter, Hero. Yet, he does play
an important part in Beatrice’s eventual marriage, being one of the accomplices
in the setup to bring together Benedick and his niece. Indeed, he also simulates
a conversation with Don Pedro in which they talk about Beatrice’s supposed love
for Benedick meanwhile Benedick listens in on them.
He loves his niece and does not mind
to horse her around. He knows she is a witty woman and also says so in the
first act of the first scene:
LEONATO: You will never run mad, niece.
BEATRICE: No, not till a hot January.
Beatrice and Hero:
Hero and Beatrice are tremendously
close friends but they could not be more different. Hero is timid and gentle
whereas Beatrice calls a spade a spade and is notorious for her sharp tongue: ‘I
would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer’, states
Benedick in the first act of the first scene. Hero represents everything that Beatrice
repels: she’s submissive to her father -later on to Claudio- and plays a virtually
voiceless part in what happens during the play’s events. She is described as a
jewel; one might say she successfully fulfils the role of ‘sois
belle et tais-toi’. We might say she does not give
much credit to her name. For the male characters, her most estimable possession
is her virginity: it gave her respectability and made her marriageable. When
this treasure, her only power, appears to be damaged, the men –even her own
father- reject her and feel horrendously offended:
CLAUDIO:
All you that see her, that she were
a maid,
By these exterior shows? But she is none: 1680
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.
DON PEDRO:
What should I
speak? 1705
I stand dishonour'd, that have gone about
To link my dear friend to a common stale.
LEONATO:
O Fate! take not away thy heavy hand.
Death is the fairest cover for her shame
That may be wish'd for. 1764
Beatrice rebels against this patriarchal idea in refusing to marry and
give up her liberty to a controlling husband until she finds the perfect, equal
partner. When her niece is accused of this grave sin, she directly believes and
supports her.
Also Hero takes her part in the matchmaking between Benedick
and her niece, simulating a conversation about Benedick
being in love with Beatrice. She gives her niece a hard time saying that she is
too scornful and that Benedick’s love is hopeless.
Beatrice featuring Benedick
The similarity of their names is remarkable: Beatrice means ‘the one
that blesses’, meanwhile Benedick means ‘blessed’. Both their names are derived
from the Latin word ‘bene’, which means ‘good’. For the public, this might already be a hint
to what will happen during the rest of the play...
Beatrice and Benedick are maybe the wittiest
and most sparkling duo ever in Shakespeare’s plays. The public loved them, even
to that extent that in 1613 at the wedding celebration of Princess Elizabeth
and Frederick V the play was given the alternative title ‘Benedict and
Beatrice’. Also Hector Berlioz’s comic
opera in 1862 was called ‘Beatrice and Benedick’, instead of Much Ado About Nothing. The display of fireworks between the two is
the main source of humour in the play.
They are Hero and Claudio’s comical pendant, impressing the public with
their witty verbal sparring matches. They might be saying that they hate each
other, but the way how they anticipate on what the other is going to say and
the nicknames they have for each other illustrate the strong connection there already
is between them before the play even begins. Also Beatrice’s questioning the
messenger about him in the first act of the play gives away a greater interest
than she might want to admit. A lot of similarities between the two can be
observed. They appear to be so alike that for the public -and their entourage-
they are predestined to end up together.
They both have the tendency of making fun of ceremonials. When the
messenger comes back with good news from the battlefield, Beatrice immediately pricks
that balloon and makes it sound as if it only concerned a squabble. Also
Benedick pokes fun at allegiance, a very important Renaissance value, by using
the concept ironically in a love context.
Benedick, like Beatrice, strongly expresses his opposition to marriage;
in the first act of the first scene, he expresses that he’d rather drop dead
than ever being caught as a married man:
That a woman
conceived me, I thank her; that she
brought me up, I likewise give her most humble 215
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 220
I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.
DON PEDRO:
I shall see thee, ere I die, look
pale with love.
BENEDICK:
With anger, with sickness, or with
hunger, my lord,
not with love: prove that ever I lose more blood
with love than I will get again with drinking, pick 225
out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen and hang me
up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of
blind Cupid.
DON PEDRO:
Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou
wilt prove a notable argument. 230
BENEDICK:
If I do, hang me in a bottle like
a cat and shoot
at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on
the shoulder, and called Adam.
DON PEDRO:
Well, as time shall try: 'In time the savage bull
doth bear the yoke.' 235
BENEDICK:
The savage bull may; but if ever
the sensible
Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set
them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted,
and in such great letters as they write 'Here is
good horse to hire,' let them signify under my sign 240
'Here you may see Benedick the married man.'
His utterances are always very strong and hyperbolic, especially
concerning Beatrice, proving that there is ‘a kind of merry war betwixt them’.
(Leonato in scene 1, act 1) Benedick takes the
biscuit in the masked ball, forcefully expressing his unwillingness to talk to
her:
BENEDICK:
I will go on the slightest errand now 645
to the Antipodes that you can devise to send me on;
I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the
furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of
Prester John's foot, fetch you a hair off the great
Cham's beard, do you any embassage
to the Pigmies, 650
rather than hold three words' conference with this
harpy. You have no employment for me?
Nevertheless, we should have in mind that this is ‘a play much concerned
with the ways in which people perceive one another, with our tendency to see in
other people whatever by character and experience we are predisposed to see’,
as John Wilders states in his New Prefaces To Shakespeare. For the
sixteenth-century audience this was more obvious as the word ‘nothing’ in the
title was pronounced identically to ‘noting’. Benedick
is a histrionic character; he does not show his real self: he puts up an
outward image to entertain or shock his company.
When Benedick overhears that Beatrice loves him and that her scornful
behaviour is a proof of her love to him, he also suddenly succumbs though.
Beatrice
asks Benedick to kill Claudio, to avenge the wrong
that he did to her beloved niece, whereas he is just trying to declare his love
to her. Their declaration of love cannot be substantiated because Hero’s
marriage has been disturbed. Fortunately it does not come that far as Don
John’s trap is revealed in time.
An interesting way to give a rough sketch of her function in the play
can be given by applying Greimas’ actantial
model, based on Propp’s theory. His method allows us
to break down an action into six facets: the subject, object, sender, helper,
receiver and opponent. It was originally used for the analysis of folk tales
but is also very useful to analyze fiction in general. Both Beatrice and Benedick are subject and Object: the aim is namely to bring
them together. The senders who instruct the connection between subject and
object here are Leonato and Don Pedro as they came up
with the idea of the matchmaking. It is interesting to see that Benedick and Beatrice not only are the subject and object
of this plot, but also the opponents as they strongly deny and scorn each other
in the first part of Much Ado. Hero and ursula
Ursula, but also Leonato and Don Pedro are helpers:
thanks to their words, Beatrice and Benedick finally
are brought together.
After this character analysis, we can conclude that Beatrice enriches
the play considerably. Looking at the plot keywords of Kenneth Branagh’s cinema version of Much Ado About
Nothing on the imdb-website, we can see that many of
the keywords concern Beatrice and would not have been on the list if it was not
for her. What is more, her character is invariably played by one of the
company’s leading members. At first glance, it might look as if the two marry
warriors are a subplot to kill the pastime meanwhile everybody is waiting for
the marriage between Hero and Claudio, but as this analysis points out it is
abundantly clear that Much Ado About Nothing would not be a comedy anymore without
Beatrice and the witty sparring matches between her and Benedick.
Bibliography
Shakespeare, William: Much
Pieters, Jürgen: Beste Lezer. Gent: Academia
Press, 2006.
Sales, Roger: Penguin Masterstudies –
Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing: a critical study.
Wilders, John: New Prefaces To Shakespeare.
http://www.elizabethi.org/us/women/
http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/e1r/eliz_women.html
http://mural.uv.es/dalabar/women.htm