Much Ado about Nothing (Vol. 55) | Phoebe S. Spinrad (essay date 1992)
Phoebe S. Spinrad (essay date 1992)
SOURCE: “Dogberry Hero: Shakespeare's Comic Constables in Their Communal Context,” Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 2, Spring, 1992, pp. 161-78.
[In the following essay, Spinrad argues that the constables are reassuring figures—despite and due to their ineptitude—within the more sinister power dynamics in Much Ado about Nothing and Measure for Measure.]
Dogberry and Elbow, Shakespeare's most famous comic constables, have long been recognized both as satiric commentary on the corruptions in Elizabethan local law-enforcement systems and as thematic commentary on the judicial or social systems within the larger scope of their plays. Of course, beyond their historico-thematic functions, the constables are also some of the choicest bits of Shakespearean humor, with their malapropisms, their inability to articulate what the charges against a malefactor are, and in general their bumbling,...
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