Much Ado about Nothing (Vol. 55) | Jonathan Hall (essay date 1995)
Jonathan Hall (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: “From Double Words to Single Vision: Patriarchal Desire in Much Ado about Nothing and Othello,” in Anxious Pleasures: Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995, pp. 170-93.
[In the essay that follows, Hall contends that both Much Ado about Nothing and Othello undermine—through their use and treatment of language—the establishment of any single interpretation of the texts.]
The opening witty dialogue in Much Ado About Nothing between Beatrice and Benedick consists in a deadlocked rivalry, which seeks to deny that there is a relationship between them:
Beatrice. I wonder you will still be talking, Signor Benedick. Nobody marks you. Benedick. What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you still living?
(1.1.107ff.)
This is a rivalry of indifferences. Now, real indifference is impossible in...
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