SOURCE: “Much Ado about Nothing,” in Shakespeare's Comedies: From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery, University of Delaware Press, 1986, pp. 119-40.

[In the following essay, Ornstein introduces Much Ado about Nothing by examining the characters and changing moods of the play and comparing it to Shakespeare's other comedies.]

If Much Ado is not the most genial of the comedies, it is perhaps the most satisfying in form and substance. It is warm as well as witty, and compassionate in its view of human frailties and limitations. Its chief characters, Beatrice and Benedick, are the most attractive pair of lovers in the comedies—the only ones perhaps who are equally matched in intelligence, humor, and humanity. Except for the morose Don John, the other characters are engaging enough to win an audience's affection. None is as coarse as Gratiano or as ignorant of self as Antonio or as shallow as Jessica. Because all are capable of kindness and some measure of nobility, the community of Messina can be forgiving of rashness. It does not close ranks against an outcast but rather tolerates the turncoat Don John in its midst, and it welcomes back at the close a Claudio who has mistreated Hero but who deserves a second chance at happiness and acceptance among those who gather in Leonato's household. At the same time Much Ado is as unsparing as The Merchant in its revelation of the obtuseness and cruelty with which the self-righteous can act. Its “trial” scene is uglier in its way than the one in The Merchant because it results in the condemnation of the innocent Hero and discloses something about conventional attitudes that we would prefer never to have known.

The rage in this scene is stunning because the early scenes of Much Ado are almost untouched by rancor or discord. Their easy informality and relaxed atmosphere are unique in the comedies, which more often than not open with a strain of antagonism or sorrow: a severe law threatens an old man's life, a would be suitor is held back by a lack of funds, a father would coerce his daughter into a loveless match. In contrast, the first scenes of Much Ado promise nothing but homecoming celebrations, good conversations, and perhaps a marriage or two. A war has ended and the victorious general and his officers are about to return to cordial reunions in Messina. The only threat to public tranquillity is the malcontented Don John, who was defeated in the war and now scowls and mutters of revenge. He is too grumpy, however, to seem very dangerous and he is known to be untrustworthy. The only plots that seem destined to succeed are those that are inspired by friendship and love, and they will unite rather than divide the citizens of Messina.

Although the slandering of Hero is a page out of romantic melodrama and her marriage as a veiled bride to Claudio is a page out of fairy tales, Much Ado has been called the most realistic of the comedies because it comes closest to mimicking the give and take of casual conversations and the daily routine of life in Leonato's household.¹ Here a love match can be arranged without the intervention of goblins, without a choice of caskets, and without the renunciation of monastic vows. The spontaneity of these scenes is both artful and paradoxical, however, because on the one hand the illusion is created that the audience is eavesdropping on conversations that were never planned or rehearsed; on the other hand, these seemingly improvised moments are ingeniously patterned by symmetries and repetitions so that as we eavesdrop on the characters, they eavesdrop and spy on one another—sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally, sometimes lovingly, sometimes maliciously. There is not only much ado about “noting,” but also in this most realistic of comic plots, the acceptance of improbable fictions as undeniable truths by characters who are more sensible, skeptical, and wary of self-delusion than almost any others in the comedies. This is possible only because the twin orchard scenes in which Benedick and Beatrice are hoodwinked are at once gloriously exaggerated and utterly convincing as revelations of their emotional and psychological natures.

One comes away from a performance of Much Ado with a vivid recollection of Beatrice and Benedick, who dominate much of the play, and with fainter impressions of Hero and Claudio, who have less interesting and colorful personalities but are the central figures in the drama of slandered innocence and false accusation that is the main plot of Much Ado. While it is inevitable that Beatrice and Benedick should engross the attention of audiences, it is unfortunate that critics sometimes suggest that the unhappy love of Hero and Claudio is merely a utilitarian scaffolding for the witty badinage and prickly courtship of Beatrice and Benedick. If this is so, the plotting of Much Ado is somewhat peculiar and even a bit fumbling because Shakespeare, who transformed the base metal of Il Pecorone into the gold of The Merchant, failed to place the most interesting and important characters at the center of his dramatic fable. Can we assume, moreover, that Shakespeare merely used the story of Hero and Claudio as dramatic scaffolding when he restages this drama of betrayed innocence and mistaken revenge in Othello, again in Cymbeline, and once more in The Winter's Tale? Those who think Claudio and Hero do not really matter may also find that they are shallow and conventional because, unlike Beatrice and Benedick, they fall in love quickly and easily. But if to love at first sight is to love too easily, God help Romeo and Juliet, Rosalind and Orlando, and Ferdinand and Miranda.²

The problem of responding to Hero and Claudio is similar to the problem of responding to Bassanio, who seems so much blander and less interesting than Portia and Shylock or even Gratiano. Just as Antonio and Portia's love of Bassanio demands that we recognize his quiet virtues, Beatrice's devotion to Hero and Benedick's affection for Claudio deny the possibility that they are superficial or ordinary. Shakespeare could have made the relationship of Beatrice and Hero as one-sided as that between Antonio and Bassanio by depicting the stronger Beatrice as the protector of her more timid cousin. But there is not the slightest intimation that Beatrice is used to guarding Hero against the blows of life or that Hero requires such protection. It is sometimes suggested that if Hero were more like Beatrice she would not be incapable of defending herself when accused by Claudio, but Beatrice is there when Hero is brutally denounced and like Hero she is too stunned to rebut the false accusations. Critics also suggest that if Desdemona were more like Emilia she would not be so easily victimized by Othello, but they forget that Emilia is unable to defend Desdemona's honesty and life; indeed, she is unable to protect herself against her abusive husband, who murders her when finally she insists upon speaking out. In the four plays that deal with sexual jealousy the emphasis falls, not on the heroines' lack of courage, but on the vulnerability of the heroes to vicious insinuations and prurient fantasies.

A character like Mariana in Measure for Measure can be little more than the jilted maiden of romantic fables who remains loyal to the man who rejected her. We do not know why Mariana continues to love the mean-spirited Angelo, and pleads for his life when he shows not the slightest sign of affection for her or remorse for his mistreatment of her. Because Mariana is a minor character, it is enough if an audience pities her forlorn existence. Because she is a central figure in the dramatic action of Much Ado, Hero's emotional responses are crucial to the resolution of the play. Her acceptance of Claudio as husband is as important to the denouement of Much Ado as Imogen's forgiveness of Posthumus and Hermione's forgiveness of Leontes are important to the denouements of Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale. The first scenes of the play, however, do not lead us to believe that Hero will play a significant role. She speaks just one line in the first scene and not a word to Claudio, although they must be very aware of each other's presence. Indeed, she does not speak to Claudio on stage until Don Pedro announces that she has agreed to be Claudio's wife. Is this not the quintessence of docility: a shy, unspoken girl who obeys her father in listening to Don Pedro's suit and who accepts Don Pedro's proxy wooing for Claudio without a word to her future husband? But Hero and Claudio have no love scene together, not because she is too timid and retiring, but because he is too uncertain and hesitant to woo for himself, and she would never take the romantic initiative. Unlike her cousin Beatrice, she is content for the most part to remain in the background of a conversation, to listen rather than speak. Although not a talker like Beatrice, she can speak out when the occasion demands speaking out; and when she does, she shows her self-confidence and keen perception of others. With a visor to hide behind, she matches wits with Don Pedro at the ball in a way that suggests a readiness to follow her own inclinations in love, not her father's commands. Although primed by her father to encourage Don Pedro's courtship, she does not flutter her eyelids or turn coy at his approach:

Don Pedro. Lady, will you
walk about with your friend?
Hero. So you walk softly, and look
sweetly, and say nothing, I am yours for the walk, and especially when I walk
away.
Don Pedro. With me in your company?
Hero. I may say so when I please.
Don Pedro. And when please you to
say so?
Hero. When I like your favor, for
God defend the lute should be like the case!

(2.1. 86-95)

These are not the responses of a shrinking violet; Hero does not lack wit but her sallies are gentler-edged than Beatrice's, more likely to elicit a smile than a tart reply.

Hero's qualities are more fully revealed in the orchard scene that is intended to bring Beatrice and Benedick together. Hero takes the leading role in the charade that Beatrice overhears, and demonstrates her understanding of her cousin and her willingness to risk Beatrice's anger by speaking plainly of her vanity. Her description of Beatrice's behavior is penetrating and just, and somewhat sharp in its rebuke:

… nature never fram’d a woman's heart
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.
Disdain and scorn ride sparking in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on, and her wit
Values itself so highly that to her
All matter else seems weak …
                                         … I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur’d,
But she would spell him backward …
So turns she every man the wrong side out,
And never gives to simple truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

(3.1. 48-70)

Shocked by Claudio's brutal denunciation on her wedding day, she is unable to defend herself; she can only simply and directly declare her innocence, and that is not enough to convince even her father. But it would not matter what she said because Claudio and Don Pedro have already made up their minds about her guilt and are prepared to believe nothing except a confession of lewdness. After the denunciation scene, she does not appear again on stage until the final scene, in which she enters as Claudio's veiled “second” bride. When she reveals herself to him, she speaks just a few telling lines:

… when I liv’d, I was your other wife,
And when you lov’d, you were my other husband.

(5.4. 60-61)

Should there be more anger or recrimination? Should she demand an abject apology from Claudio before she accepts him again as her husband? The answer depends upon our view of Claudio, and more largely on the way in which the moral and emotional drama of Hero's betrayal is unfolded by Shakespeare so that a happy ending is not only possible but the only appropriate conclusion. At no time in the play is Claudio contemptible or mean-spirited.³ When he denounces Hero he is fully convinced that he has been terribly wronged and has the right to denounce her in public. If he is a gullible fool too easily duped by Borachio and Don John, so too is the noble Don Pedro, who is completely taken in by Borachio's contrivance and volunteers to join Claudio in exposing Hero on her wedding day.

Claudio enters the play a hero celebrated for his gallantry, who has earned the paternal affection of his general Don Pedro. Finding himself drawn to Hero, he discreetly inquires about her prospects, showing the same sensible concern about marrying well that Benedick does when he decides in soliloquy that the woman whom he will marry shall be rich—“that’s certain.” Claudio's questions are not those of a fortune hunter but of a young man uncertain of his judgment of women, and it is his lack of confidence that will make him vulnerable to Don John's insinuations as well as intensify his rage at being duped by an innocent-seeming wanton. Before he declares his love of Hero, he asks Benedick if he has noticed Hero and if she is “not a modest young lady.” Despite Benedick's gibes, he persists in asking for his opinion of Hero. Don Pedro is delighted to hear of Claudio's affection for Hero. “Amen,” he says, “If you love her, for the lady is very well worthy.” Even this commendation does not assure Claudio. “You speak this,” he says, “to fetch me in, my lord.” Claudio's need for assurance seems perfectly genuine; if he does not fear the commitment that love demands, he fears being made a fool by love, and he therefore qualifies almost every statement he makes about Hero. “In mine eyes,” he says, “she is the sweetest lady that I ever looked on”—“that I love her, I feel.” That “I feel” speaks volumes of his inexperience in love and fear of misjudging his own emotions as well as Hero's nature. Although he asks Don Pedro's aid and advice, he does not use his commander to gain an heiress. It is Don Pedro's idea to act as Claudio's proxy and to speak to Hero and Leonato on Claudio's behalf.

Annoyed by Claudio's defection from the ranks of smug bachelorhood, Benedick goes out of his way to rag him. When Claudio asks his opinion of Hero, he jokingly replies, “Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?” This blunt-edged joke is not inspired by any crassness on Claudio's part. It displays the wit of one who by custom is “a professed tyrant” to women and who is both amused and irritated by Claudio's interest in Leonato's daughter. Convinced that Don Pedro woos Hero for himself at the masked ball, Claudio tries to hide his misery by saying, “I wish him joy of her.” Benedick replies, “Why, that’s spoken like an honest drovier. So they sell bullock.” This wrenching of Claudio's words is not amiable or meant to be; it is spoken when Benedick is still smarting from an unpleasant encounter with Beatrice. After being ridiculed and insulted by Lady Disdain, he is ready to enjoy Claudio's misery and add to it. Claudio is a perfect target for such wisecracks because he has no aplomb as a suitor and it took an effort of will to speak of his feelings to others. He tells Don Pedro that before the war, he looked on Hero “with a soldier's eye, / That lik’d, but had a rougher task in hand / Than to drive liking to the name of love” (1.1. 298-300). A fear of surrendering to emotion is implicit in his need to “drive” (that is, deepen) liking to the name of love and makes him susceptible to the nasty insinuation that Don Pedro woos Hero for himself. But he is not more gullible in this respect that Benedick, who reached the same conclusion about Don Pedro's behavior without Don John's slanderous remarks.

When he is convinced of the seriousness of Claudio's interest in Hero, Benedick is generous in his praise of her. Because he has no romantic illusions or anxieties, he is capable of seeing women clearly and can appreciate their qualities. He enjoys most of his encounters with Beatrice and is very conscious of her attractiveness, but he also enjoys the freedom of his bachelorhood and, less sentimental than some critics, he does not mistake Beatrice's barbed remarks for Cupid's arrows. He knows the difference between tenderness disguised as witty banter and a cutting remark that is intended to draw a little blood. Some critics assure us that Beatrice and Benedick are in love with one another from the start and need only the slightest pretext to abandon their pose of independence and confess their true affections. But one can as justly say that the French Princess is in love with Navarre from the beginning of Love's Labor's and needs only the excuse of her sudden departure to discard her pose of satiric mockery. The close parallels between the masking-dancing-wooing scenes of Much Ado and Love's Labor's leave little doubt that Shakespeare was thinking of his earlier comedy as he wrote Much Ado, especially since he uses an eavesdropping scene in both plays as an occasion in which love is openly declared, and in both plays apparent scoffers betray their true affections by the writing of love poems. Beatrice is more like the French Princess than any other romantic heroines; she takes pleasure in her role of Lady Disdain and she abandons it only with great reluctance. Indeed, it is because Beatrice almost sacrifices her love of Benedick to her rage at Claudio that their meeting of minds and hearts in the final scene is so deeply satisfying.⁴

Although Benedick speaks several times of Beatrice's beauty, it is only after Claudio turns lover that he begins to think about marriage and to wonder how long his good sense will protect him from the irrationality of passion and the dullness of married life. He will make a fine husband because he is warm-hearted, gentle, and can laugh at himself; yet he is not, like Romeo or most of the heroes of the romantic comedies, born to sigh and eager to embrace the adventure of love. He could, one suspects, live as happily without a wife as with one, provided that he had enough bachelor friends and occasional invitations to dinner from his married ones. Beatrice is a kindred soul with a sharper satiric tongue. She likes men and she is well aware of Benedick's attractiveness; but she prides herself on her independence and self-sufficiency. Although her society assumes that she must marry to have a place in the scheme of things, she has no need of a man to protect her and she cannot imagine treating any man as her lord and master.

If Beatrice secretly desires Benedick's love, she keeps that desire well hidden and it does not prevent her from making him the butt of stinging remarks. Questioning the messenger about the returning heroes, she makes repeated sneers about “Signior Mountanto's” incompetence as a soldier and swears to eat all the enemies he has slain. Her joking about Benedick's good service at the officers' mess is amusing enough, but she will not admit that her mockery of his valor is a jest, and she refuses to credit the messenger's report of his bravery. Her impatience to have at Benedick is such that she rudely breaks in on the conversation the men are engaged in and gratuitously insults him: “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick; nobody marks you.” Refusing to play the demure maiden, she will trade jests, even off-color ones, with men to call attention to her unconventionality, yet even as she rejects the gentility and propriety that are second nature to Hero, she takes advantage of her femaleness to make the kind of remarks to Benedick that would be intolerable from a man. Thus she has her cake and eats it too; she is a free spirit, emancipated from the conventions of a male-dominated society, who depends on the chivalry of men to license her sarcastic sallies. Her quick wit instinctively looks for a target, but she is not a willing target of other people's jests. She has a thin skin and will not laughingly accept from Benedick the kind of remark that she makes at his expense. She does not feel oppressed by the conventions of her society, and she does not feel superior to her more conventional cousin. She does not urge Hero to rebel against her father's dictates; she would have her insist only that the suitor her father approves be “a handsome fellow.” No railer against marriage as Benedick is, she delights in Hero's betrothal and prompts Claudio to seal it with a kiss. Although she pretends to sigh over her impending spinsterhood, she is not eager for a wooer and finds it hard to imagine herself as a wife. A beardless youth, she remarks, would not do for her because he would be too easily mastered; a Petruchio would appall her. Her idea of heaven is not a rose-covered honeymoon cottage for two, but an eternity spent trading quips with bachelors. Like Benedick she is too gregarious and too fond of good conversation to yearn for the intimacy of marriage.

Don John, not Beatrice, is the malcontent of the play, a creature so tart that his very appearance gives her heartburn. A perpetual scowler, he has a bastard's natural sinistral bent and relishes his role as killjoy, the very death's-head at the feasts of Messina. He tells himself that he would like to play Marlowe's Barabas and poison the whole city; but he is an uninspired villain who requires his henchman's aid to play Iago to Claudio's Othello. Since his treachery is known, he does not make a serious effort to appear a good fellow, and though on parole, he does not pretend to be repentant. His first attempt at creating mischief by slander fails when Don Pedro proves to be a loyal friend of Claudio. His success in defaming Hero depends upon the ingenious “ocular proof” of her wantonness that Borachio conceives and executes. Hardly a masterful poisoner of minds, he is a vain misanthrope, pedantic in thought and speech, who is addicted to slightly comic euphuisms. Advised by Conrade to accept his lot with patience, he announces his credo of sullen “honesty”:

I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man's jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man's leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man's business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man in his humor.

(1.3. 13-18)

While other residents of Messina are warmly interested in the welfare and happiness of their friends and relations, Don John is interested only in his sour ruminations; like Jonson's Morose, he has no taste for anyone else's conversation but is infatuated with his own Lylyan turn of phrase:

I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in [Don Pedro's] grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdain’d of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any. In this (though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man), it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.

(1.3. 27-32)

He proudly describes himself as an ill-tempered dog who is trusted only with a muzzle “and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage.” Although his metaphors are somewhat mixed, his intentions are clear: “If I had my mouth,” he continues, “I would …” He would what? shout? rail? No, he would “bite.” He is no snarling cur; he is the tyrant of the nursery school, the kind of spoiled sulky child who terrorizes babysitters. He makes a peacock display of his malcontent but will not let his followers have a share in it; it is, he remarks, for his use alone. Even so his small band of trusty knaves swear to assist him in his wickedness “to the death.”

The touch of absurdity in Don John's speech and manner anticipates that his success as a conspirator will be short-lived. He plays a small role in the denunciation scene and never appears again on stage. His ability to destroy for a time Claudio and Hero's happiness does not testify to his evil genius but rather to the vulnerability of Claudio and Don Pedro to lies that touch their sense of honor and self. Since Shakespeare has the artistry to stage the twin orchard scenes in which Beatrice and Benedick are duped, he could no doubt have staged a window scene that would be convincing to an already anxious Claudio and Don Pedro. (Iago stage-manages a similar moment with Cassio for Othello to spy on.) But an audience does not need proof of Borachio's ingenuity because it understands why Claudio and Don Pedro are able to think the worst of the innocent Hero. Although they know that Don John is not to be trusted, they cannot reject out of hand his sneering insinuations of Hero's looseness, for he dares them to see for themselves, a dare that engages their manhood. Uncertain before of his judgment of women and tormented now, Claudio listens to Don John and asks, “May this be so?” The older, steadier Don Pedro replies, “I will not think it,” as if he were unwilling to contemplate the possibility of her lewdness but not convinced of her chastity. They have to agree to witness Hero's lasciviousness because it would seem cowardly to refuse; in other words, it would take more courage and confidence in their own judgment than either possesses to laugh at Don John.⁵ They are not the only ones in the play who lose their good sense when their egos are threatened. Angered by Benedick's denigration of her wit at the masked ball, Beatrice describes him as a mere buffoon:

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 villainy, 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.

(2.1. 137-43)

This portrait is not witty; it is grossly unfair and insulting. Beatrice does not speak her mind about Benedick; she strikes back because her self-esteem has been wounded.

If Claudio and Don Pedro are to be despised for believing what they think they see, what shall be said of the sensible, skeptical Beatrice and Benedick, who without ocular proof accept the most outrageous and transparent fictions about each other? Scholars who do not appreciate Iago's brilliance as a deceiver and manipulator of others hypothesize an Elizabethan dramatic convention to explain his corruption of Othello, but their appeal to convention does not explain how Othello is able to move audiences who have never heard of Elizabethan dramatic conventions. What we witness in the orchard scenes is not ingenious hoodwinking or absurd credulities or complaisant self-deception. Common sense dictates that Beatrice and Benedick cannot swallow the preposterous stories they hear about each other's secret passion, and yet they do not turn to the audience with a knowing wink and pretend to believe what they have overheard because they have always desired to confess their hidden love for each other. They listen carefully, weigh what they have heard, and credit it because those who “gull” them know them intimately.

In the first orchard scene, Benedick enters musing over the way love has transmogrified Claudio. He wonders if love can convert him from a talkative scoffer to a silent idolatrous oyster. With Claudio running a fever, he is no longer certain of his immunity to love's infection, and, preparing for the worst, he mulls over the choice of a wife. He does not desire the moon—she need only be rich, wise, virtuous, fair, noble, and mild—not one of Beatrice's chief qualities. She must also be a fine conversationalist and an excellent musician. This shopping list of female excellencies does not bespeak a longing for romantic ecstasy but rather a desire for the enduring companionship of a happy marriage. Siding with the Owl rather than the Cuckoo, Benedick imagines long winter evenings before the fire, not the excitement of Maytime trysts. His friends begin their angling casually and obliquely, first setting the mood with the music he loves but here pretends to find tiresome. They do not appeal to his vanity in having won the heart of a glorious woman who may die of her unrequited passion; they appeal to his decency, which will not allow him to be responsible for another's suffering. Shall his failure to love cause Beatrice to commit some desperate act upon herself? Must she languish in undisclosed misery because she fears to express her love lest he sneer? What makes the scene irresistible is the earnest description of Beatrice's sleepless nights spent pacing her chamber and writing Benedick's name over and over again on papers that she then rips to shreds: “Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses: ‘O sweet Benedick.’ God give me patience!” (2.3. 146-49). Benedick should suspect a device because two of the speakers are Claudio and Don Pedro, who swore not long ago that he would someday see Benedick a lover. The other, however, is Leonato, and Benedick will not stoop to suspect the motives of a reverend, white-bearded householder.

When the playacting is over, Benedick does not step out of hiding to declare that he has always loved Beatrice and is happy now to admit it. What he reveals is his sensitivity to the charge of unkindness:

Love me? why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censur’d; they say I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her; they say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud; happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.

(2.3. 224-30)

Agreeing that the lady is fair, virtuous, and wise but for loving him, he decides that he “will be horribly in love with her”—a stunning penance. He knows that any sign of love will make him a target of gibes because he was so long a scoffer, but he is undismayed, for he knows that he remains true to his individuality and idiosyncratic bent. Although he now joins the mainstream of those who love, he sees himself as marching to his own drum. Benedick's appreciation for the comedy of his situation is endearing. He believes most of what he says and at the same time is as zany in his rationalizations as Launce is in his complaints about his incontinent hound. Although friends may jeer, he is determined to follow his “humor” and to prove that his aboutface is forward march: “When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.” Able now to perceive the loving affection that lurks in Beatrice's sallies, he can espy marks of love in her brusquest responses, whereas Claudio will soon be able to see only signs of luxury in Hero's blushes.

Benedick takes an active role in his orchard scene; he opens and closes it with lengthy soliloquies and he comments in asides on the speeches of his friends. In the second orchard scene, Beatrice silently eavesdrops until Hero and Ursula exit, and her response consists of just sixteen lines of formal, rhymed verse. Thus the emphasis falls, not on Beatrice's responses to the charade she witnesses, but on the rehearsed conversation between Hero and Ursula. They do not invent a tale of Benedick's love-lorn suffering; they speak of defects of character in Beatrice that trouble those who love her best. Where Benedick's friends play on his generous sympathy, Hero dwells on the pride and disdain that prevent Beatrice from loving Benedick or even acknowledging his virtues. Where Benedick responds to his friend's hyperboles with a whimsical determination to be horribly in love, Beatrice is too pained by the frank recital of her faults to joke about herself:

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.

(3.1. 107-10)

Benedick will become a comic casuist to save a sweet lady's life; Beatrice is dismayed by Hero and Ursula's criticism of her arrogance. It is especially painful that they condemn the clever ripostes that she thinks are her chief ornament. Unlike Benedick, she does not welcome the role of lover or give herself wholeheartedly to it. He jokes when he says that he will be horribly in love; she is absolutely serious when she says that she will requite him, “Taming [her] wild heart to [his] loving hand.” Her words suggest that it will take a conscious effort on her part to stoop to any man's embrace. Her commitment, moreover, is somewhat conditional; if he loves, she says, her kindness will encourage him to win her for his wife. She will not drop her handkerchief when next he walks by, but at least she will not tell him again that she takes as much pleasure in seeing him “as you may take upon a knife's point and choke a daw withal.”

Immediately after the second orchard scene, Don John invites Claudio and Don Pedro to witness an exhibition of Hero's lewdness, and in the very next scene, the Watch apprehends Borachio and Conrade. Thus the crime is discovered almost as soon as it is committed and before the denunciation of Hero at the altar. Yet the denunciation takes place and is watched by an audience which knows that before long the truth of Hero's innocence will be known by all. Earlier scenes juxtaposed the vicious deception of Claudio and Don Pedro against the loving deceptions of Benedick and Beatrice. Now the merciless denunciation of Hero is juxtaposed against the incompetent but very polite and scrupulous interrogation of Borachio and Conrade by Dogberry. Unlike Bottom, who convinces us that he has the energy and ambition to be a successful weaver, Dogberry and Verges seem rather odd pillars of the community. They may own property and pay taxes; they may even have suffered commercial losses, but if they succeeded in any kind of business it was despite a magnificent inability to concentrate on the matter at hand. With the aid of Verges, Dogberry raises maundering to the level of art and is apparently unable to put together two sentences without savaging the king's English. His command of proverbial sayings and pointless ejaculations does not breed confidence in his acuity, but it does signify his tolerant acceptance of things as they are—of human frailties and infirmities. His truisms celebrate the patient forebearances and petty compromises that make civility possible. Afraid that Verges, who is far more capable of direct communication than he is, will seem simple to Leonato, Dogberry explains:

A good old man, sir, he will be talking; as they say, “When the age is in, the wit is out.” God help us, it is a world to see! Well said, i’ faith, neighbor Verges. Well, God's a good man; and two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.

(3.5. 33-37)

An original like Bottom, Dogberry is a mixture of ignorance and sagacity, self-importance and unself-consciousness. Where others in the play are busy noting, espying, eavesdropping, and interfering in the lives of friends and enemies, Dogberry and Verges take a Jeffersonian approach to the problem of keeping the peace; they believe that the least watch is the best watch. They know better than Borachio that it is wiser to sleep than to talk, and while their sworn duty is to safeguard the city, they are realistic about their limitations as an amateur constabulary. They would avoid the presence of rogues lest they be defiled—would that Claudio and Don Pedro were of the same mind! If they are lucky, they will have a quiet night; if it is raucous, they will not add to the noise and uproar by attempting to arrest drunks and vagroms. They are too shrewd to waste their time with anyone who does not recognize their authority. It is only by accident that they overhear Borachio gloating over his wicked success as they sit on the church bench waiting for their tour to end, but they are experienced watchmen who know how to sleep without having their weapons stolen, the true and ancient art of standing sentry.

It is a great pity that Dogberry does not come to the point and tell Leonato what the watch learned the night before, yet who would have him talk less, especially when he is concerned that Leonato be patient with Verges, whose wits are not as blunt as Dogberry would have them. Kindly himself, Dogberry inspires kindness in others. Although he is very busy preparing for his daughter's wedding, Leonato takes time to hear the constables, and after apologizing for not being able to join in the interrogation of Borachio, he bids them drink some wine before they leave his house. Inevitably the examination of Borachio and Conrade is a masterpiece of irrelevancies, interjections, and pointless digressions. It is also courteous and fair-minded, almost too much so. Dogberry would discover the better nature as well as the criminal acts of his prisoners. “Masters,” he asks, “do you serve God?” “Yea, sir, we hope,” they answer. “Write down that they hope to serve God,” Dogberry tells the sexton. His inclination to take Borachio and Conrade's word for their innocence unnerves the sexton, and his bumbling manner exasperates Conrade, who calls him an ass. Although wounded by this insult, Dogberry speaks more in sorrow than in anger of this discourtesy:

Does thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down as ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be prov’d upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to, and a rich fellow enough, go to, and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gowns, and every thing handsome about him.

(4.2. 74-86)

Dogberry is never more appealing than in his earnest desire to be writ down an ass. Claudio's display of indignation in the preceding wedding scene is repellent, however. He too publicly declares that he was made an ass—that is, duped by the cunning whore of Messina whom he almost married. Dogberry expresses a heartfelt sense of wrong; Claudio's denunciation of Hero is self-righteous and premeditated, not a spontaneous outcry from the heart. As soon as he hears Don John's sneering accusation of Hero, he thinks of taking his revenge: “If I see anything to-night why I should not marry her, to-morrow in the congregation, where I should wed, there will I shame her” (3.2. 123-25). Galled by the possibility that he wooed a trollop for his noble friend, Don Pedro says he will join with Claudio in disgracing Hero if he sees proof of her lewdness. The outrage at being victimized is understandable; the manner of the denunciation is appalling. They never think of accusing Hero privately, and they give no warning that her wedding will become a public inquisition. Since they have no doubt of Hero's guilt, they need not scruple about their methods, for what they intend is not a trial but rather a public whipping, the appropriate punishment for a whore, especially one who dared pretend to be a modest virgin. With astonishing speed an adored woman becomes an object of scorn and abuse here as in Othello, and neither Claudio nor Othello questions whether he has the right to take a cruel revenge on the woman who wronged him because both assume that they are defending the cause of public morality, not soothing a tormented ego. It may not be quite fair to humiliate Leonato, whose only crime is a confidence in his daughter's virtue and a desire to have a brief wedding ceremony, but perhaps Leonato deserves a few lashes too, for if Hero is a common stale, Leonato may be unscrupulous enough to try to palm off what he knows is damaged goods as first-class merchandise.

Like many who lack spontaneity of feeling or are afraid of it, Claudio melodramatizes his outrage. When Leonato makes the innocent mistake of declaring that there is no impediment to the marriage known to Claudio, Claudio seizes on his words as if he has caught the old man red-handed: “O, what men dare do! What men may do! / What men daily do, not knowing what they do.” This strained attempt at irony merely puzzles Benedick, who does not see the point: “How now? Interjections?” Claudio's desire to play the satiric scourge of villainy falls flat, and he approaches the ludicrous when he refuses to accept Hero as his wife:

There, Leonato, take her back again.
Give not this rotten orange to your friend.

(4.1. 31-32)

Claudio's gift of phrase reduces his outrage to that of a shopper who finds that he has paid good money for spoiled fruit and wants the grocer pilloried.

Shameful as Claudio's behavior is, it does not condemn him as singularly brutal or insensitive. Every statement he makes is silently approved or actively seconded by Don Pedro, who, when asked to speak by Leonato, says:

                                        What should I speak?
I stand dishonor’d, that have gone about
To link my dear friend to a common stale.

(4.1. 63-65)

Don Pedro and Claudio have seen the proof of Hero's lewdness. Leonato's belief in his daughter's innocence quickly disintegrates when she is accused by two noble gentlemen. He is not outraged by Claudio's attack on Hero, and he does not respond with angry denials and counteraccusations. His first thought is that Claudio wishes to reject Hero after having seduced her, a behavior not unknown to gentlemen. If so, Hero may well be damaged goods, but Claudio is the one who tampered with her and therefore he should marry her. This possibility does not alter Leonato's view of Claudio, whom he addresses as “dear my lord,” because one expects men to be men. After all, it is a virgin's responsibility to deny her lover's importunities and her own sexual desires until her wedding night. In a reasonable conciliatory tone, Leonato tries to salvage the marriage as best he can. Hero, Beatrice, Benedick, and the Friar are too stunned to say very much. Nothing that could be said, however, would change Claudio and Don Pedro's minds. They do not give Hero a chance to defend herself; all they offer is an opportunity to confess her guilt. What man, they ask, did she speak with last night at her window? If she admits that she spoke with a man, she stamps herself a whore: if she denies she spoke with a man, she proves that she is a lying whore. Her denials settle the issue for Don Pedro: “Why, then are you no maiden.” Unlike the interrogation of Borachio and Conrade, the trial of Hero is without civility, and yet it is what honorable men think appropriate to her treachery. This offense cuts deep; it insults a man's offer of love and makes him an object of contempt to other men, who might find his gullibility amusing but would feel justified in behaving exactly as he behaves. In this matter, men take their stand with other men against women.

If Hero had been seduced and abandoned, Leonato would feel compelled to seek satisfaction from Claudio. When it appears that she has deceived him as well as Claudio by being a cunning wanton, he abandons her because he feels the wound to his reputation as deeply as Claudio and Don Pedro do. Indeed, the blow to his honor erases all pity for Hero. When she faints, he wishes her dead, for he sees, as do her accusers, the very proof of her guilt in her maiden blush:

Do not live, Hero, do not ope thine eyes;
For did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,
Strike at thy life …
Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?
Why had I not with charitable hand
Took up a beggar's issue at my gates,
Who smirched thus and mir’d with infamy,
I might have said, “No part of it is mine;
This shame derives itself from unknown loins”?
But mine, and mine I lov’d, and mine I prais’d,
And mine that I was proud on …

(4.1. 123-37)

Leonato's self-dramatization is similar to Claudio's; obsessed with his shame, he has no compassion for Hero, who just before had been his most prized possession—five times in the last four lines quoted above he speaks of her as “mine.” Even when Benedick voices his disbelief and Beatrice explains that every night except the last one she was Hero's bedfellow, Leonato is unmoved. It stands to reason that Hero would lie about her lewdness, but “would the two princes lie?”

As he abuses his once-beloved daughter, Leonato blusters in the manner of Capulet browbeating Juliet when she refused to marry Paris. The echo of Romeo and Juliet grows more immediate as the Friar steps forth to play Friar Lawrence's role by offering a solution that involves the heroine's seeming death. Where the timid Lawrence evades his responsibility by refusing to reveal Juliet's secret marriage to Romeo, the Friar in Much Ado is courageous enough to take Hero's part. His is a welcome voice of sympathy and reasonableness after so much emotional and rhetorical extravagance. He points out what should be obvious to all, Hero's speechless anguish and innocence. Leonato still mutters but the tide turns when Hero recovers and swears her innocence. Benedick, who never doubted her, shrewdly guesses at Don John's villainous part in all this, and Leonato, who just before was ready to strike his guilty daughter down, is ready to revenge her, to which end he pledges his blood, invention, means, friends, “strength of limb and policy of mind” in a bragging Polonian speech. Once again the Friar must intervene to bring Leonato back to reason. His cautious pragmatism opposes any violent action, any challenge to conventional attitudes, even any public defense of Hero's innocence. Such a course would probably not succeed and only spread the scandal more widely. Since Claudio and Don Pedro's accusations have mortally wounded Hero's reputation, the Friar would counter the false report of her lewdness with a false report of her death. Given the way of the world, it does not really matter that Hero is chaste; the only hope now is that Claudio, believing she is dead, will regret his actions and realize what he has lost. In any event, Hero's death

Will quench the wonder of her infamy.
And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,
As best befits her wounded reputation,
In some reclusive and religious life,
Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.

(4.1. 239-43)

Although the Friar does not accept Claudio's view of Hero, he implicitly agrees with Claudio that she is damaged goods and unmarriageable unless Claudio will have her.

Benedick thinks the Friar counsels well; Beatrice is not satisfied by this solution, however. Enraged by Claudio's behavior, she wants the kind of satisfaction one man can have of another in a duel. She weeps out of frustration because she feels incapable of striking back:

O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and then with public accusation, uncover’d slander, unmitigated rancor—O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.

(4.1. 303-7)

Even here Beatrice is not a rebel who storms against the hypocrisies of her society. She is enraged by men who are unmanly—that is, unchivalrous, ungentle in their treatment of women. Instinctively, she seeks a man to champion Hero's cause, one who will use his strength and valor to prove her cousin's innocence and punish those who have defamed her. Since Beatrice never pretended to scoff at romance, she does not seem to step out of character when she becomes the quintessential romantic of the play, one who wants a knight in shining armor to avenge her cousin's shame. When Benedick declares his love, she is so absorbed in her anger that she cannot think of him or of how she feels about him, although she half-confesses her love. Exhilarated by her declaration, Benedick would have her command some service of him; without hesitation, she tells him to kill Claudio and when he draws back in shock, she does not allow him to renege on his offer.

Her rage at Claudio is as blind and unreasoning as Claudio's treatment of Hero. She ignores the fact that Benedick did not take Claudio's side and remained behind when Claudio and Don Pedro left, even though they are his closest friends. She does not see the terrible unfairness of her demand that Benedick kill Claudio to gain her love. Before this, the apprehension of Borachio by the Watch seemed to set limits on the tragic consequences of Don John's schemes; after Claudio's actions in the wedding scene, and after Beatrice's fury, one is no longer certain that all will be well. Very soon Hero's innocence will be proved, but the question will remain whether Claudio deserves to be forgiven because Beatrice insists he does not deserve to live, and she will not be satisfied until Benedick matches swords with him.

The change in the emotional weather of Much Ado from its first genial scenes to the furious passions of the wedding scene is astonishing. As in The Merchant, the outpouring of hate is counterbalanced by the triumph of love: the perversion of Hero's nuptial by the coming together of Beatrice and Benedick. But in Much Ado all will not be well when the villain is defeated because the ugliness of the wedding scene and its aftermath of bitterness must be dealt with before a happy ending is possible. Since Beatrice's reaction is as excessive as Claudio's, Shakespeare could have resolved the conflict by having one or the other retreat from his extreme position, but neither does. Claudio does not walk out on stage to regret his fury; Beatrice does not withdraw her demand that Benedick kill Claudio. When she next appears on stage, she does not speak of Claudio to Benedick, and need not speak of him, because Claudio, stunned by Borachio's confession of guilt, has already put himself into Leonato's hands and the denouement is at hand.

The happy ending of The Merchant demands that those who return to Belmont put out of mind all that happened in the Venetian courtroom. The denouement of Much Ado is more profoundly satisfying because nothing that is painful is forgotten; on the contrary, the resolution of anger and conflict comes through the reenactment of the wedding that had turned into a heartless denunciation of Hero, so that even as Hero and Claudio are reunited in love and marriage, all who are present at the ceremony and who watch in the audience must remember the pain of the aborted wedding. The Friar predicted that all would be well when Claudio's heart softened toward the “dead” Hero, but Leonato, who assented to the Friar's plan, finds it humiliating to have to wait for a change of heart in the man who mistreated his daughter. Reliving the bitterness of the aborted wedding, he rejects his brother Antonio's counsels of patience because he finds no comfort in platitudinous consolations. Like Claudio, he takes pleasure in being aggrieved, and his sense of outrage is the greater when he imagines Hero as not only defamed but also robbed of life by vicious slander. Confusing fiction and fact, he tells Claudio that he has

                                        belied mine innocent child!
Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart,
And she lies buried with her ancestors—
O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,
Save this of hers, fram’d by thy villainy!

(5.1. 67-71)

Having heard the false report of Hero's death, Claudio and Don Pedro do not want to speak to Leonato and Antonio. They are embarrassed and regretful, however, not stricken with remorse. In response to Leonato's accusations, Don Pedro replies:

My heart is sorry for your daughter's death;
But on my honor she was charg’d with nothing
But what was true, and very full of proof.

(5.1. 103-5)

Perhaps this reply is a bit facile, but Leonato's indignation is not entirely noble; he must know that these soldiers will have to bear his taunts and insults because they could not accept a challenge from an aging man. Before long, Antonio, the voice of patience, is swept up in Leonato's passion; he is ready to second his brother in a duel and, carried away on the tide of his invective, he shouts that Claudio and Don Pedro are

Scambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys,
That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander,
Go anticly, and show outward hideousness.

(5.1. 94-96)

At this point, it is Leonato's turn to restrain Antonio, who also speaks of Hero as “slandered to death by villains.” If it is not quite fair for old men to challenge those who cannot defend their honor against them, there is nevertheless a rough justice in the denunciation of Claudio and Don Pedro, who denounced the helpless, defenseless Hero.

Once the heroes of Messina, Claudio and Don Pedro are now its outcasts. They rejoice in Benedick's entrance, thinking he will take their side and laugh with them about their aged adversaries. They cannot believe his pale-faced anger and readiness to draw his sword. He too accuses them of killing a sweet lady and promises that her death will fall heavy on Claudio. Thus the self-appointed preservers of public morality find themselves publicly denounced for a murder that never occurred. Their nadir comes when the Watch brings in Borachio, who remorsefully confesses all. Although stricken, Claudio and Don Pedro do not openly admit or perhaps even recognize how shamefully they treated Hero. They erred, they say, only in “mistaking.” Claudio's speeches hint, nevertheless, of a deeper sense of guilt, because he offers himself as a sacrifice to Leonato's anger:

                    Choose your revenge yourself,
Impose me to what penance your invention
Can lay upon my sin.

(5.1. 272-74)

As Benedick put himself in Beatrice's hands by asking her to command some service of love, Claudio puts himself in Leonato's hands, bidding him impose a penance fit for his sin. Leonato's response is nobler than Beatrice's in that the only satisfaction he demands of the man he just before maligned and challenged is to marry his “niece,” a maiden as fair as Hero was and heiress now to two family fortunes. This sudden reversal is not at all perplexing because Leonato's anger was strained and hyperbolic. He is by nature kindly, hospitable, and considerate of others, a leading householder who will invite the officers of the Watch to take a cup of wine. He may indulge his sense of wrong but he will not sacrifice his daughter's happiness to satisfy his personal honor. Thus the customary civilities of Messinian life exert their influence. Just as Claudio expresses his confidence in Leonato by putting himself in his accuser's hands, Leonato expresses his confidence in Claudio's nature by a willingness to accept him as Hero's husband despite all. Borachio also wants to do the right thing and make certain that Margaret is not blamed for her part in the deception at the window.

With the crisis past, Benedick has the opportunity to enjoy his role of lover. He can trade greasy jests with Margaret and try his hand at love poems. He can also wear his heart on his sleeve when he speaks to Beatrice. They do not dream of eternal Petrarchan bliss; they look forward to years of mutual affection and loving raillery. Benedick is his old self again, or rather he is his old self with a tincture of Dogberryan sagacity. His parting to Beatrice, who claims to feel ill, is “Serve God, love me, and mend.” With the prospect of a lifetime with Beatrice before him, Benedick cannot pay much attention to the news that Don John's villainy has been uncovered. His universe, Donne would say, is contracted to his love of Beatrice. “I will live in thy heart,” he tells her, “die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes.”

Benedick's high-spirited amorousness contrasts with the solemn ritualism of Claudio and Don Pedro's pilgrimage to Hero's “tomb.” The mourning scene is brief and the epitaph and song conventional because the true act of penance is to come on the morrow when Claudio will take as his wife a woman he is not allowed to see before the ceremony. This denouement will leave an unpleasant aftertaste if marriage seems to become a form of expiation or indeed of punishment, as it does in the last scene of Measure for Measure. Claudio, of course, believes that he is sacrificing his chance of happiness in marriage and expects the worst. Everyone else (except Don Pedro) knows that his marriage to a bride he is not allowed to see is, like the gulling of Beatrice and Benedick, a loving practical joke as well as a proper humbling for one who wrongfully rejected his first bride at the altar. If Claudio is to deserve a second chance at love and happiness, he must be able to trust, where before he was too ready to doubt; he must also keep his word however fearful he is of what his bride is like behind her veil. His situation is that of the folktale hero who, having sworn to marry the ancient hag who helped him, discovers on his wedding night that his bride is young and beautiful.

Claudio comes to the wedding grimly determined to marry even an Ethiope. When he tries to relieve his misery by some broad jokes about Benedick's impending fate as a cuckold, he is stung by remarks about his own bovine ancestry. When he asks which of the veiled ladies he must seize on, he is told he cannot see his bride's face until he has sworn to marry her. The testing of Claudio is only a ritual, however, because he has already been approved by Leonato. Like her father, Hero does not demand the satisfaction of humiliating Claudio as he humiliated her. She is content to make clear that she is not “another Hero.” Claudio, she says, was her “other husband” when he loved her. Their reconciliation, like their falling in love, is expressed in silent looks and embraces, not in words. The lovers' dialogue belongs to Beatrice and Benedick, who express their mutual affection with mock dismay and teasing questions and answers. They will not admit that they love “more than reason” or other than “in friendly recompense,” but they cannot deny the evidence of the sonnets they wrote about one another. Reluctantly Benedick agrees to marry because he pities Beatrice, and she will become his wife, she says, to save him from a reported consumption. Benedick is glad not to have to duel Claudio for Hero's sake; and Claudio is relieved that Benedick did not jilt Beatrice because he was ready to play her champion. Over Leonato's objections, Benedick decrees dancing before the weddings are solemnized, and he promises to devise brave punishments for the captured Don John. One doubts, however, that he will find the necessary thumbscrews and strappados in Messina.

In different ways Much Ado and The Merchant deal with the relationship between a society and those it makes its outcasts: a fallen woman, a disgraced hero, a money-lending Jew. The difference between Leonato and the Venetian Antonio is that between a man who treats all with simple courtesy and one who is convinced that he has the right to spit on Shylock's beard. While Much Ado reveals the obtuseness of conventional attitudes, it also reaffirms the preciousness of very ordinary virtues. When an assumption of moral superiority can lead to contempt for others and acts of cruelty, there is much to be said for unassuming decency, even when it is as bumbling as Dogberry's.

Notes

1. The social realism of Much Ado is discussed by Barbara Everett, “Much Ado About Nothing,” 319-23, and by David Stevenson in the introduction to the Signet Classic Shakespeare edition (New York: New American Library, 1964) xxii-xxv.

2. Among those who emphasize the conventionality of the portraits of Claudio and Hero are Leggatt (Shakespeare's Comedy of Love, 157-58), and Nevo, who suggests that theirs is a “courtship of convenience” that produces a counterfeit match (Comic Transformations, 164-66).

3. Critical revulsion at Claudio reaches a climax in Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's Comedies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 80-86.

4. There is a close parallel between Beatrice's stunning response to Benedick's request, “bid me do anything for you,” and Rosaline's stunning response to Berowne's request, “Impose some service on me for thy love.” Shakespeare, it would seem, had the moment in Love's Labor's in mind when he wrote the later scene—an intimation of the possible connection he made between Beatrice and Rosaline, a connection broken by Beatrice's willingness to give up the pleasure of baiting Benedick. See Nevo's comments on the parallels between Much Ado and Love's Labor's (Comic Transformations, 92).

5. Palmer's usual appreciation of the psychological realism of Shakespeare's portrayal of character does not extend to Claudio and Don Pedro, who he thinks are sacrificed as characters to allow the melodrama of the denunciation scene (Comic Characters, 113).