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:

BENEDICK:

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.