[In the following excerpt, Prouty investigates the sixteenth-century literary sources for the characters in Much Ado about Nothing.]

At first glance there seems to be no connection between the two plots [of Much Ado About Nothing] except for the appearance of Hero and Claudio as agents in the tricking of Benedick and Beatrice, and it has been this seeming lack of integration which has been considered a weakness of the play or has led to the suggestion that the quarreling lovers were put in to liven up a rather somber story. If we keep in mind the careful manipulation of plot which has been demonstrated in connection with Dogberry, it should be reasonable to assume that there is some design in the rest of the play. One may object that if there were any such design it should be apparent and should have been noted long ago. As a general premise such an objection is not one to be tossed aside lightly, but in this case there does seem to be an acceptable explanation. Briefly, the reason why the design has not been perceived is that the true nature of Claudio and Hero and their relationship has been misunderstood. Perhaps the truth might be gleaned from a careful reading of the play, but the reader would need to be well versed in the marriage ways of the Elizabethans and well endowed with critical perception. Certainly many who have written about the play have had the requisite knowledge, but they have been misled by their own inclination to identify Hero and Claudio as romantic literary lovers. Such a view is perhaps understandable. Benedick, for example, talks as though Claudio were a conventional lover and endows him with speeches and behavior which the audience never hears or sees. But such tirades are a part of Benedick's humor as an enemy of love and are not necessarily true. A comparison of both Hero and Claudio with their prototypes in the sources will show that these two are not fashioned from the usual literary pattern.

In all those versions wherein the lovers are given any extensive treatment, the hero is a conventionalized lover. [In one source Shakespeare may have used in composing Much Ado About Nothing, Belleforest's Le Troisième Tome des Histories Extraites des oeuvres Italiennes de Bandel, Histoire XVIII (1569)], Timbreo walks before Fenicia's house to gaze upon her beauty and feed the fire of love. He sends letters and embassies. … Belleforest develops the character still further, describing the inception of love through the familiar figure of beauty's blaze entering the eye and traveling to the heart. We are given the full text of a typical love letter and that of a love poem. The entire subject is argued in wearisome detail by Fénicie and her nurse. With Beverley and Whetstone the lovers become the archetypes of conventional Renaissance lovers. Their love sickness is of a unity with that suffered by numberless victims of Cupid's arrow from the Songes and Sonettes through the poetry and fiction of the century. Their secret messages, their clandestine meetings, their happiness, their sorrows, their reconciliation, their love language, the tropes, which describe them are in themselves echoes and are in turn echoed in countless other tales of romantic love. Orlando is of the same pattern, even though he does not measure up to Rosalind's high standard of the necessary marks of a lover.

A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not. But I pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue. Then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbutton'd, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation.¹

Nevertheless Orlando does very well. He mars the bark of trees by scratching out love songs on them; he adorns other trees with manuscripts of very bad poetry; he loves so that “neither rhyme nor reason can express how much,” and he has no desire to be cured of his passion. Of a somewhat more mature nature is Orsino, but he too is a lover who lyrically apostrophizes the “Spirit of Love” and sadly puns on Curio's simple phrase, “The hart.”

Of such simples was a good Elizabethan literary lover compounded, but Claudio, the favorite of Don Pedro, is made of other stuff. Unlike Ariodant who, overcome by the thought of Genevra's falseness, seeks only solitude and death, Claudio seeks the most cruel vengeance in a public defamation of his bride-to-be before the very altar where they were to be married. Timbreo sought no such vengeance; he sent word by an intermediary telling what he had seen and advising Fenecia to marry her lover, for he (Timbreo) would have no further dealings with her. Ariodant was so faithful a lover that in spite of his belief in Genevra's dishonesty, he returned to fight against his own brother in her behalf. Claudio, on the other hand, refrains from a duel with the aggrieved Leonato because of his soldierly scruples about fighting a less worthy and unequal adversary. The only suggestion of sympathy for the sorrowing family is that briefly expressed by Pedro. This same callousness is intensified when, following the departure of Leonato and his brother, Benedick appears. He is greeted with joy because Claudio and the duke wish to jest with him.

Thus it is easy to understand why there is general critical agreement in regarding Claudio as an unpleasant young man who behaves very badly. According to the standards of romantic love Claudio deserves the title of “cad” or “bounder,” but unfortunately for those who wish to hurl opprobrium upon him, the plain fact is that Claudio is not a romantic lover and cannot therefore be judged by the artificial standards of literary convention. For example, how does Claudio fall in love? He tells Pedro

                                                                                                                                  O my lord,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I looked upon her with a soldier's eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love;
But now I am returned, and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying I liked her ere I went to wars.(2)

The verb describing the young man's feeling is significantly “like” not “love.” Indeed, in his own words Claudio differentiates between “liking” and “the name of love.” Cupid's dart has not struck Claudio, nor has the blaze of beauty ignited the usual furious flames.

The first indication of his interest in Hero is a question to Benedick directly the company have departed and left these two alone in the first scene of the play.

CLAUDIO
Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?
BENEDICK
I noted her not, but I looked on her.
CLAUDIO
Is she not a modest young lady?(3)

Benedick, refusing a straight answer, is importuned: “No, I pray thee speak in sober judgment”; and “Thou thinkest I am in sport. I pray thee tell me truly how thou likest her.”⁴ Neither Orlando nor Romeo asks other people what they think of Rosalind or Juliet; these lovers know that they have fallen desperately in love. Orlando is struck dumb and cannot even say “I thank you” to “heavenly Rosalind” who has given him the chain from about her neck. Romeo is more loquacious; indeed, his first vision of Juliet is followed almost at once by

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear—
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.(5)

Whatever may be our view of Claudio, it is certain that he is no lover in the sense that these two are. Moreover he is not impetuous. Benedick reveals the secret to Pedro:

BENEDICK
… he is in love. With who? Now that is your Grace's part. Mark how short his answer is: with Hero, Leonato's short daughter.
CLAUDIO
If this were so, so were it uttered.
BENEDICK
Like the old tale, my lord: “It is not so, nor 'twas not so; but indeed, God forbid it should be so.”
CLAUDIO
If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be otherwise.
PEDRO
Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.
CLAUDIO
You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.(6)

It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that romantic lovers do not think or speak of being “fetched in,” nor does it ever enter their minds that their passions may change. This cautious streak in Claudio is still evident when, at the conclusion of his private talk with his patron, he remarks,

But lest my liking might too sudden seem,
I would have salved it with a longer treatise.(7)

Naturally he is cautious. As a young favorite of the duke contemplating matrimony he has many things to think on, if he is to make a proper alliance. As soon as Benedick leaves them, Claudio opens a serious discussion with Pedro. “My liege, your Highness now may do me good.”⁸ In other words, he seeks Pedro's assistance in the marriage, but first there is a most important point that needs to be ascertained before Claudio asks the prince to proceed in his behalf. Unlike Romeo or Orlando, Claudio is a careful suitor with an interest in finances; he inquires, “Hath Leonato any son, my lord?” Don Pedro, also a realist, readily understands, as his answer demonstrates, “No child but Hero; she's his only heir.”⁹ To this is appended the query, “Dost thou affect her, Claudio?” Pedro does not talk of love, for this is not a love match in the romantic sense. Obviously Claudio likes the girl, as he then proceeds to explain in the lines quoted above and that is all to the good; but what Claudio is really interested in is a good and suitable marriage.

The propriety of the match as Shakespeare presents it is in contrast with the situation in the earlier versions. Shakespeare's Leonato is governor of Messina; not so in [in Matteo Bandello's La Prima Parte de la Novelle (1554) or] Belleforest, where the inferior social position of the heroine is advanced as the real reason for Timbreo's letter of rejection. Claudio's social position is, of course, identical with that of Timbreo but is unlike that of Ariodant who is but a knight aspiring for the daughter of a king.¹⁰ Again Shakespeare has altered, and the changes have a definite part in his scheme of things. The elevation of Leonato from the status of mere gentleman to the governorship of Messina has not, I think, been noted as a fact of any importance or significance, but when a favorite of the prince decides to marry he must not choose beneath his station. Margaret of Fressingfield may by sheer virtue ascend from her rustic dairy to share the eminence of her husband, the earl of Lincoln; but in the real world such marriages were honored more in the breach than the observance.

Although deception is one of the themes of his play, Shakespeare did not try to deceive his audience into thinking that Claudio was a romantic lover. The pattern was clear enough, and if the words of the young man were not enough, the matter was further clarified when the prince offered to act in Claudio's behalf. For a later age, particularly one devoted to the premise that true love conquers all, levels all barriers, leads to joyous matrimony and wedded bliss, the facts that have been adduced have little meaning. But such an age should remember that William Shakespeare himself gave evidence in the legal proceedings instituted by Stephen Belott against his father-in-law, Christopher Mountjoy, who had broken his promise to give a marriage portion of £60 and to make a will leaving £200 to his daughter, Belott's wife. Shakespeare was called upon not only because he had been living in Mountjoy's house at the time when the apprentice married his master's daughter but because he helped to arrange the marriage. Urged on by Mistress Mountjoy, Shakespeare persuaded Belott to the fatal step.¹¹

Nor should we forget George Chapman's part in the complicated marital affairs of Agnes Howe, the young heiress. Thanks to Professor Sisson's discoveries¹² we now know that this eminent dramatist abandoned his usual vein and turned to the writing of a domestic drama dealing with the machinations of John Howe to arrange for his daughter a marriage that would be profitable to him. Three principal suitors were betrothed to the girl and from them, and a number of others, the father profited as best he could. Professor Sisson's reconstruction of this lost play, The Old Joiner of Aldgate, gives us a realistic account of a most complicated mariage de convenance.

But we should not conclude that the custom was limited to London tradesmen such as Mountjoy and Howe; in all classes of society love was a very minor consideration in arranging marriages. For example, Mr. John Stanhope of Harrington in a letter to Sir Christopher Hatton discusses marriage plans for his daughter:

… after two or three days' rest, I took my daughter with me to my brother's house; where leaving her, I came to Carlisle to finish in some sort or other with my Lord Scrope our former agreement touching the marriage of our children, whom I find, as ever, so still desirous to proceed according to our first intent; and therefore have agreed to meet his Lordship again a month hence, in a progress which he intendeth into Lancashire, where the young couples may see one another, and after a little acquaintance, may resolve accordingly.¹³

Here we see two Elizabethan fathers arranging a proper marriage for their children who have not as yet seen one another. Claudio has at least seen Hero, but he has not spoken with her or even written her a letter. A very proper young man, he is proceeding through the proper channels. Obviously he must have the prince's permission, and if he is fortunate the prince may act in his behalf, or, as he says, “My liege, your Highness now may do me good.” This then explains why Shakespeare has Pedro tell Hero of Claudio's affection and arrange the marriage with Leonato.

In Bandello and Belleforest, Timbreo employs a friend to make the necessary arrangements, as is quite proper; but Shakespeare, by transferring this office to Pedro, puts the marriage on quite another basis. Now the alliance is one blessed by royal authority, and Hero's alleged misconduct becomes a very serious matter of which Don John makes the most that he may. When he appears to make the accusation against Hero, the villain addresses himself to his brother because of the prince's share in arranging the match. Claudio may hear what is to be said since it concerns him, and Don John continues: “You may think I love you not; let that appear hereafter, and aim better at me by that I now will manifest. For my brother (I think he holds you well and in dearness of heart) hath holpe to effect your ensuing marriage: surely suit ill spent and labor ill bestowed.”¹⁴ Offered proof of the charge both Claudio and Pedro are prepared for violent action. The former resolves “in the congregation where I should wed, there will I shame her,”¹⁵ while the prince, recognizing his responsibility, says, “And as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her.”¹⁶ And later Pedro's bitter words reveal his revulsion and the blow to his own pride:

                                                                      What should I speak?
I stand dishonored that have gone about
To link my dear friend to a common stale.(17)

Viewed as a mariage de convenance the projected alliance and its breach demand another standard of judgment than that of romantic love. The public denunciation of Hero is an unpleasant affair, but Pedro and Claudio are more than justified, since they accept for truth the evidence which they have seen. Claudio likes Hero in the same way that Mr. Stanhope and Lord Scrope hoped their children would like one another, but Claudio is not madly in love with his bride-to-be. He has hoped for, and the prince has arranged, a suitable match. If Hero has a clandestine lover she has affronted all the proprieties. Unchastity is but one of her sins, the others being a deliberate flaunting of the arrangements of her father and Pedro and an attempt to pass herself off to her proud young husband as undamaged merchandise. In the eyes of the aggrieved she was not only a wanton but an intentional perpetrator of fraud.

Even the most cursory examination of the available evidence emphasizes the businesslike attitude toward marriage in Shakespeare's England. In the proceedings of the Court of Requests, for example, is listed a variety of cases concerning every aspect of marriage arrangements. To cite but a few, these cases comprise a “Reward for bringing about a marriage,” “Gifts promised for negotiating a marriage,” “Expenses of courting defendant's niece, the engagement being broken off,” “‘Gifts and benefits’ promised by defendants on plaintiff's marriage with their daughter,” “Lands … comprised in a marriage settlement,” “Breach of promise of marriage,” and “Money delivered to second defendant under promise of marrying plaintiff.”¹⁸ While the poets sang of love, the real world went about its business of dealing practically with the divine passion. A rejected suitor with a literary flair bemoaned his loss in appropriate verse; his less talented and more forthright brother hied himself to the courts and sued for the “Recovery of gloves, rings, and other presents, made in anticipation of a marriage which was broken off.”¹⁹

The chief thing that could affect contracted marriages, aside from occasional insubordination, was a doubt of legality or any indication of fraud, and there were suits for “Money paid in respect of a marriage which proved illegal.”²⁰ Since business was business, it was, understandably enough, to the interest of fathers and go-betweens to keep a sharp eye out for “pretended” or secret marriages. A secret marriage, therefore, between the earl of Leicester and Lettice, countess of Essex, most emphatically did not satisfy the bride's father. He knew too well the nature of his new son-in-law to be content with anything save a public ceremony which he could witness, and such a second wedding was celebrated.²¹

Against such a background the businesslike, callous, and even vengeful spirit of both Claudio and Don Pedro becomes understandable. A suitable marriage having been arranged, it now seems to them that Hero would trick them if she could, and so her death is not a matter of regret but an instance of wickedness receiving its just reward. They are, of course, repentant when Hero is exonerated, and Claudio is willing to do any penance which Leonato may impose. Even here the new marriage is presented in the same light as the old, for Leonato asks that Claudio marry his brother's daughter and “give her the right you should have given her cousin.”²² The right is, of course, a suitable husband, but there are the usual considerations. The new bride is described by Leonato as “almost the copy of my child that's dead,” and he adds, significantly, “and she alone is heir to both of us.”²³ Claudio's penance is both light and well paid.

It will be remembered that just such a general tone of Realpolitik was evident in Bandello. Shakespeare does not make Claudio the straightforward sensualist that was Timbreo, nor does he make Leonato a sagacious father trying to assure his daughter of some or any marriage, even though she must hide in the country for a couple of years so as to deceive potential suitors. Rather the realism of the matter is shown by Shakespeare in the essential mariage de convenance situation. Of this there is no hint in Bandello or in any of the other versions. In Bandello Timbreo is a frank sensualist forced into marriage by his desires. Elsewhere the hero is purely conventional, a romantic lover. Actually such alteration does not require any change in the character of the heroine as she appears in Bandello and Belleforest. Here she is the well-brought-up young girl, the dutiful daughter who knows what deceivers men are and how to behave herself. On the other hand, the heroine in the Ariosto descent is quite a different character. She is impetuous, romantic, and wilful, and Hero does represent a great alteration from such a pattern. Since Shakespeare has changed the fundamental relationship from one of convention to a reality, it seems fruitless to attempt any direct explanation of Hero's origins. She is what she is because of the situation in which she plays a principal part.

The influence of this last fact is easily demonstrable. Whereas Fenicia rejects all letters, messages, gifts, and embassies, Hero is not faced with such trials which are necessary temptations for Fenicia whose suitor is the ardent Don Timbreo; but Claudio, the soul of propriety, will make no such furtive assaults on Hero's virtue. Similarly there is no need for Hero to discuss her suitor as does Belleforest's heroine. Fénicie, in tiresome paragraphs, is forced to expound the whole duty of a virtuous daughter, but this she does as a specific reaction to the immoral suggestions of her nurse. Hero, not being wooed by such a lover and fortunately being without the attendance of such a confidante, has no need to orate. She is involved in quite a different situation: a mariage de convenance wherein she is very simply the dutiful daughter. Unlike Juliet who already has a husband and cannot marry Paris, Hero, perfectly content with her father's choice, does not object to the match, with the result that there is no conflict, no action except that which arises from the deception.

This lack of action clarifies many things, chief among them, Hero's taciturnity. She has remarkably few lines except those connected with the Benedick-Beatrice plot. During the whole first act, although she is on stage for a considerable time, she has but one line, a mere tag, “My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.”²⁴ She is equally reticent during and after her betrothal. Leonato announces the match, but it is Beatrice who speaks and her words are an admonishment: “Speak cousin; or if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss and let him not speak neither.”²⁵ From this we may deduce a bit of stage business involving a maidenly offering of her lips; but the rest is silence, for no words pass those lips that we can hear, although Hero is supposed to be whispering words of love in Claudio's ear. Perhaps modesty may be the rein upon her tongue, but really there is no need for her to say anything. She has not hitherto talked with Claudio nor has she been wooed by him. As Beatrice remarks, “It is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please you’; but yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say, ‘Father, as it please me.’”²⁶ Presumably Claudio is a handsome fellow, and Hero does her duty, but it were the height of folly to imagine her passionately in love as was Juliet. She makes but one reference to her bridegroom on the morning of her wedding when she casually observes, “These gloves the Count sent me, they are an excellent perfume.”²⁷ Maidenly reticence can hardly be offered as an excuse for Hero's failure to talk about her future husband. The conversation which precedes her glove reference is neither maidenly nor modest. No, the plain fact of the matter is that Hero is not emotionally involved; she is an obedient and dutiful daughter, just such a daughter as old Capulet and many another Renaissance father would have wished to have.

Such a character is not too frequent a performer on the stage because, as we have noted, there can arise no action from such passiveness. However, there is an excellent and more loquacious member of the genre in Eastward Ho. Mildred, the dutiful daughter of the goldsmith Touchstone, is presented as a contrast to her willful and socially ambitious sister Gertrude who scorns their father's counsel and marries the bankrupt Sir Petronel Flash. Without any warning Touchstone announces to Mildred that she is to marry his apprentice, Golding. In words that certainly warmed the heart of every father in the audience, she replies: “Sir, I am all yours; your body gave me life; your care and love, happiness of life; let your virtue still direct it, for to your wisdom I wholly dispose myself.”²⁸ As is to be expected, happiness and prosperity are the lot of Mildred and Golding; ruin and disaster the just reward of proud Gertrude and her mountebank knight. Very little is said about Mildred, for there is nothing dramatic in her situation; the main action focuses on Gertrude and Petronel.

Similarly there is little or no action implicit in the affairs of Claudio and Hero, and were it not for the deception there could be no play. In the presentation of this one source of action Shakespeare has altered his original. Only in Ariosto and the versions derived from him is there a maid dressed in her mistress's robes, and there we have a very clear explanation of the disguise. There is no such clarity in Much Ado. Margaret's part in the plot is never explained. All we ever hear by way of explanation is Leonato's brief reference:

But Margaret was in some fault for this,
Although against her will, as it appears
In the true course of all the question.(29)

More than this we do not know, and elsewhere there is the same uncertainty. Borachio, first broaching the scheme, advises Don John to tell the prince and Claudio that he (Borachio) is Hero's lover. In the same scene is found the ambiguous reference: “… hear me call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio …”³⁰ In all subsequent accounts of what happened the identity of the lover is unknown and there is no mention of the conversation between the false Hero and her paramour. The prince and Claudio are deceived by their eyes, not their ears, and Borachio's confession gives the same impression: “… how you were brought into the orchard and saw me court Margaret in Hero's garments …”³¹ But it is such contradiction that leads Professor Dover Wilson to posit an earlier play carelessly revised by Shakespeare. Although such an explanation neatly settles the problem by avoiding it, there really seems to be no need to worry the matter too much. There is no logical explanation, as was pointed out by Lewis Carroll in a letter to Ellen Terry:

But even if Hero might be supposed to be so distracted as not to remember where she had slept the night before, or even whether she had slept anywhere, surely Beatrice has her wits about her! And when an arrangement was made, by which she was to lose, for one night, her twelve-months' bedfellow, is it conceivable that she didn't know where Hero passed the night? Why didn't she reply:

“But good my lord sweet Hero slept not there:
She had another chamber for the nonce.
'Twas sure some counterfeit that did present
Her person at the window, aped her voice,
Her mien, her manners, and hath thus deceived
My good Lord Pedro and this company?”

With all these excellent materials for proving an “alibi” it is incomprehensible that no one should think of it. If only there had been a barrister present, to cross-examine Beatrice!

“Now, ma'am, attend to me, please, and speak up so that the jury can hear you. Where did you sleep last night? Where did Hero sleep? Will you swear that she slept in her own room? Will you swear that you do not know where she slept?” I feel inclined to quote old Mr. Weller and to say to Beatrice at the end of the play (only I'm afraid it isn't etiquette to speak across the footlights):

“Oh, Samivel, Samivel, vy vornt there a halibi?”(32)

There can no more be a cross-examination of Beatrice than there can be a confession by Margaret. All that matters is that Claudio and Pedro think the accusation true and behave as they do in the Temple. The deception per se is not important in Shakespeare's play. The significance is the real matter of importance. Shakespeare is not interested in Margaret as a deceived Dalinda; nor is he concerned with the variety of things that happen to Claudio and Hero before they reach the port of matrimony. In other words, those aspects of the story which appealed to Ariosto, Bandello, and the others are not for Shakespeare; his purpose is quite alien to that of other tellers of this tale. From what we have seen of Claudio and Hero, the significance of the deception is apparent. This is not a love match in the conventional sense; it is a proper marriage which is wrecked as easily as it is arranged, when there is a hint of fraud. The reaction of both the prince and Claudio to Hero's death and their behavior to both Leonato and Benedick are explicable on no other grounds. It is as though Shakespeare were saying to us, “Here is the fashion in the real world where marriage is essentially a business arrangement.” The literary ideal and the reality are at variance, or as Rosalind observes: “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”³³

It may be that, according to modern standards, Shakespeare should have so plotted his play that there could be a ready and easy explanation for Margaret's complicity and her silence, but again I would suggest that neither Shakespeare nor his audience bothered about motivation and logical explanation in the sense that we do. After all, the scene does take place off stage and is reported with a dearth of detail. It is not the subtle trick of a Polynesso; it is merely the source of the only action that can arise in the Hero-Claudio plot. As such it happens, and that is all we need be concerned with. There is no rival; Hero's affections are not engaged; action results from an external event. Viewed as a most necessary cog in the plot the deception should perhaps be acted out and not reported; but aside from the difficulty of representing the disguised Margaret, the reporting is not a fault, for it emphasizes the fact that the scene is external—a mere device which the dramatist uses but does not consider important for its own sake.

Although we have been concerned with the realism of the Hero-Claudio plot, we should not conclude that Much Ado is a satiric or problem comedy. It has been necessary to emphasize the realism of this plot because a failure to do has confused Shakespeare's intent. There is a real difference between the nonserious presentation of a realistic situation and the serious presentation of the same thing, and this play, unlike Measure for Measure or All's Well, is certainly not to be taken as a serious portrayal of unpleasant realism. If we think for a moment of the changes that are rung on the theme of deception, we will realize that the comic spirit has the upper hand. At the end of the opening scene Pedro decides to make use of the night's masking to hide his identity and, pretending to be Claudio, to woo Hero. The next two scenes are concerned with nothing but the overhearing of this. Antonio reports an incorrect version to his brother Leonato, while Borachio has the correct story for Don John. The first scene of Act II has yet more deceiving. Benedick, hiding his identity under a mask, must bear in silence a tongue-lashing from Beatrice. Claudio, pretending to be Benedick, receives from Don John the unpleasant and false information that the prince intends to marry Hero. No sooner is this matter set right and the betrothal of Claudio and Hero performed than Pedro plots the deception of Benedick and Beatrice. Even the Watch are part of the pattern, for they create out of their own misunderstanding that renowned thief “one Deformed.” All this deceiving springs from but a single cause: various people are guilty of eavesdropping. Certainly the prince and Claudio are eavesdroppers when they secretly witness the false assignation, and both Benedick and Beatrice are brought to the altar by their sin of overhearing, or as Hero says:

                                                                                Of this matter
Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made,
That only wounds by hearsay.(34)

Of all this eavesdropping and deceiving there is no hint in the sources; both are original with Shakespeare who uses the theme to achieve his comic purpose.

Thus has Shakespeare adapted the Hero-Claudio story to suit his nonserious treatment of it; but this plot cannot stand by itself as comedy nor as a reflection of contemporary attitudes toward marriage. The comedy is made by Benedick and Beatrice whose love is another aspect of the nonromantic and whose marriage balances that of Claudio and Hero.

BENEDICK AND BEATRICE

As with Claudio and Hero, it is necessary to understand Benedick and Beatrice in contemporary terms if their place in the structure of the play is to be comprehended as part of an organic unity. Here in a strictly literal sense we abandon the sources, for no such characters are there to be found. A moment's reflection, however, may show us that a comparison of Shakespeare with his originals has led us to a point where something like the Benedick-Beatrice plot is an absolute necessity. With the Hero-Claudio affair a mariage de convenance whose only action is based on deception, there must be some sort of counterplot wherein deception is definitely comic. For such a contrast Benedick and Beatrice are admirably suited. But these two have a relevancy to the ideas of the play as well as to its plot. There is reason behind Shakespeare's creation of them, and this we may notice if we expand our study of sources to include previous literary appearances of such characters and the ideas which they propound.

Miss Mary Augusta Scott³⁵ pointed out certain parallels between Benedick and Beatrice on the one hand and Lord Gaspare Pallavicino and the Lady Emilia Pia on the other. The principal likenesses which Miss Scott observes are of a general nature. First, the Italian pair are witty and they speak in dramatic dialogue. Second, there is antagonism between them because Lord Gaspare is essentially antifeminist and as such is teased by the Lady Emilia who defends her sex. When it is suggested that the group define “a gentilwoman of the Palaice so facioned in all perfections, as these Lordes have facioned the perfect Courtier,”³⁶ Lady Emilia expresses the pious hope that her adversary have no part in such a discussion, for he will surely fashion “one that can do nought elles but looke to the kitchin and spinn.”³⁷ Resemblances of this sort there are between Castiglione and Shakespeare, but the frequency of the literary appearances of such characters throughout the century testifies to a widespread convention rather than to direct imitation.

It is likewise something of an oversimplification to regard, as does Mr. D. L. Stevenson, Benedick and Beatrice as participants in the conventional “sex-duel,” “quarreling over the nature of love.”³⁸ Thus these two are viewed as a sort of culmination of “the amorous conflict” which began “in the poetry of Wyatt.”³⁹ Such constant application of a thesis leads to an erroneous interpretation of the love relationship of Hero and Claudio and their function in the play, as well as to the questionable generalization that “Shakespeare's comedies of courtship … resolve a quarrel over the nature of love which had been current in English literature for about four centuries.”⁴⁰ It is quite true that Benedick and Beatrice have perfectly obvious relations to the tradition of quarreling lovers, but an examination of what these two actually do and say precludes any attempt to make them sophisticated in the sense that the Lord Gaspare and the Lady Emilia are. Similarly there is a world of difference between Berowne and Rosaline, and Benedick and Beatrice, even though there are certain resemblances. The patterns of Elizabethan love behavior cannot be easily separated and analyzed according to strict definition.⁴¹ Aside from this, the fact is that Benedick and Beatrice are characters in a play and their function within that framework limits and modifies so that they are something more than symbols of a convention.

Traditional elements are, in part, responsible for the dramatic popularity of Benedick and Beatrice, since the audience recognizes with pleasure that which is familiar, and there is exemplified in these two still another convention which has hitherto escaped notice, although a clue was offered when Miss Potts noted parallels between the persons of Much Ado and characters in The Faerie Queene.⁴² Of these parallels, the late Professor Tucker Brooke remarked with characteristic irony, “Only a very clever person could have noted them, or could have left it, as Miss Potts does, to some strangely gifted reader to decide what they imply.”⁴³ With an acute awareness of both possible and probable foolhardiness, I venture to suggest that at least one of the likenesses may be said to have apparent significance. There is a definite affinity between Beatrice and Mirabella, who is doomed by Cupid to a penance of two years' duration. She is mounted on “a mangy iade” led by “a lewd foole” and followed by another,

                                                  … who hauing in his hand a whip,
Her therewith yirks, and still when she complaines,
The more he laughes, and does her closely quip,
To see her sore lament, and bite her tender lip.(44)

The purpose of this unhappy wandering through the world is to afford Mirabella the opportunity to redeem herself by saving “so many loues, as she did lose.”⁴⁵ For Mirabella the quest was difficult, since she had “through her dispiteous pride, whilest loue lackt place” destroyed some “two and twenty.”⁴⁶ Though of mean parentage, the lady had “wondrous giftes of nature's grace”;⁴⁷ such beauty was hers that

          The beames whereof did kindle louely fire
In th' harts of many a knight, and many a gentle squire.(48)

But to all her suitors Mirabella was indifferent, and the more she was praised “the more she did all loue despize,” saying,

          She was borne free, not bound to any wight,
And so would euer liue, and loue her owne delight.(49)

Arrogant in the power which her beauty gave her, she

          Did boast her beautie had such soueraine might,
          That with the onely twinckle of her eye,
          She could or saue, or spill, whom she would hight.
What could the Gods doe more, but doe it more aright?(50)

Naturally such effrontery led to heavenly displeasure with the result that Mirabella was brought a captive unto the bar of Cupid's Court where she was examined and sentenced. Her guards on the journey are “Disdaine” who leads the horse and “Scorne” who scourges her.

These same two abstractions are used by Hero in describing her cousin:

But Nature never framed a woman's heart
Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.
Disdain and Scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on, and her wit
Values itself so highly that to her
All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.(51)

Hero's description seems to suit Mirabella quite as well as Beatrice; both misprise and both are self-endeared. Other comments on Beatrice confirm the resemblance. Benedick addresses her as “Lady Disdain.”⁵² When Pedro observes, “She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband,” Leonato replies, “O, by no means. She mocks all her wooers out of suit.”⁵³ This same theme of obduracy is mentioned again in the scene gulling Benedick; the prince feigns amazement at the news of Beatrice's love: “I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.”⁵⁴

There can be little doubt that these two ladies have a great deal in common, although there are equally obvious differences between them. But should we conclude that Shakespeare is imitating directly from Spenser or that both are imitating a common, nonextant source? The simple answer seems to be that both are writing about the same object—the conventional “Disdainful Woman.” Such a personage appears as a constant in the literature of the period. When, for example, Giletta wished to hide her love from Frizaldo, she adopted just such a conventional attitude. When Rinaldo, quite unaware of her dissembling, “saluted her by the name of his mystresse, very disdainfully and scornefully, or not at all she aunsweared him: On him shee frowned with a curst countenaunce.”⁵⁵ Not only do the terms “disdain and scorn” appear, there is as well the adjective “curst” which Antonio applies with exactly the same significance. When Leonato advises Beatrice, “By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue,” Antonio adds, “In faith, she's too curst.”⁵⁶ Here again there is no question of direct influence: both Whetstone and Shakespeare are using the well-established clichés in connection with a stereotype.⁵⁷ The pattern appears again and again. Colin Clout, like many another, loved a maiden who scorned him, and Rosalind, the widow's daughter of the glen, like Beatrice, Mirabella, and many another, fed her suitor with disdain. The Elizabethan Miscellanies abound with harsh descriptions of disdainful ladies, and the verses of such poets as Turbervile, Gascoigne, and Whetstone frequently upbraid the stony hearts which scorn them.

Although Beatrice may be reasonably classified as a “Disdainful Dame,” she is not identical with Mirabella or any other woman we have noted, and if we are to avoid the dangers of generalization, we must realize her composite nature. In point of fact Benedick's behavior is in some ways closer to that of Mirabella. Whereas we have only the one slight reference to Beatrice's mocking her suitors, Benedick himself boasts of his cruelty to the sex: “But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none.”⁵⁸ When Claudio asks his opinion of Hero, our masculine Disdainer reveals the same attitude. “Do you question me as an honest man should do, for my simple true judgment? or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?”⁵⁹ This avowed custom of cruelty to women, while talked of, is never demonstrated, for none of the many who love Benedick appears in this play. Benedick, too, is really a composite of several conventions brought to life by Shakespeare's genius. Generically he is a disdainer and a quarreling lover, but certainly he is not to be equated with Berowne, that eloquent defender of “the right Promethean fire,” simply because he engages in jesting with a woman for whom he finally admits love. The diversity of the character is pointed further by Miss Potts's notation of parallels between him and Spenser's Braggadochio.⁶⁰ Beatrice, in the opening scene, jests at his martial exploits; later Pedro observes, “… in the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise, for either he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christianlike fear.”⁶¹ Braggadochio exhibits the same characteristics, but again there is no question of direct indebtedness; instead, Spenser and Shakespeare are both using a familiar stereotype and in describing it they both use familiar tropes.

Another familar idea which appears in The Faerie Queene, The Shepheardes Calendar, and in other poetry and prose works helps to explain the dramatic popularity of Benedick and Beatrice, as well as to emphasize Shakespeare's use of ideas current in his own age which would have an easy and definite appeal for his audience. Here again it is necessary to abandon sources in any strict sense, in favor of study which will reveal something of the background of ideas and behavior patterns familiar to the dramatist and his audience. After the rescue of St. George from the dungeons of Orgoglio, there is a brief interlude when, at Una's request, Prince Arthur tells of his loves and lineage. In youth, the usual time for love to burgeon, Prince Arthur avoided the infection because of the good advice given him by old Timon.

That idle name of loue, and louers life,
          As losse of time, and vertues enimy
          I euer scornd, and ioyd to stirre vp strife,
          In middest of their mournful Tragedy,
          Ay wont to laugh, when them I heard to cry,
          And blow the fire, which them to ashes brent …(62)

Such arrant defiance of Cupid can have but one result as the prince ruefully admits:

          Nothing is sure, that growes on earthly ground:
          And who most trustes in arme of fleshly might,
          And boasts, in beauties chaine not to be bound,
          Doth soonest fall in disauentrous fight,
And yeeldes his caytiue neck to victours most despight.(63)

The blind god has triumphed over the rebel

Whose prouder vaunt that proud auenging boy
Did soone pluck downe, and curbd my libertie.(64)

Equally defiant is Benedick as we are told by Beatrice who, learning that he has returned safely from the wars, defines him as rebel against Cupid. “He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge subscribed for Cupid and challenged him at the burbolt.”⁶⁵ Later in the play when both Beatrice and Benedick have been deceived, Pedro refers to Benedick's opposition to the god of Love. “He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bowstring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him.”⁶⁶ The prince is here speaking in ironic vein because he and Claudio feel certain that they have succeeded in their deception, but the irony and humor are perfectly obvious to the audience for whom this aspect of Benedick's character has already been well established. The parallels with Prince Arthur may, however, be observed in further details. Benedick, like the prince, scorns “that idle name of love.” When Claudio first asks an opinion on Hero, Benedick must at once attack conventional love language. “But speak you this with a sad brow? or do you play the flouting jack, to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter?”⁶⁷ Similarly Benedick joys “to stirre up strife” for lovers. It is with evident pleasure that he teases Claudio with the quip, “the Prince hath got your Hero.”⁶⁸ Using the willow, the conventional symbol of the forsaken lover, the disdainer exploits the situation to the full.

It is this use by Benedick of conventional literary love jargon in speaking with or about Claudio that has led to misunderstanding of this particular character. As we have observed, Claudio does not qualify as a romantic, even though Benedick talks as if he were, practically putting the clichés in his mouth. As Cupid's foe and a scorner of “the idle name of love,” Benedick is always ready to ridicule the subject whether he has just cause or no. All he needs is the suggestion of fashionable love talk to send him into a tirade wherein he attacks such jargon. Claudio mentions his liking for Hero, and Benedick is off; Pedro observes that someday he will see Benedick look pale with love and the accused replies as we know he will. In just such a vein is Benedick's soliloquy which immediately precedes his deception. Ranting on at a great rate against love and Claudio as a lover, Benedick's words are wondrously ironic in view of what is to happen. Like Prince Arthur's, “his prouder vaunt that proud auenging boy [will] soone plucke downe.” This is the stuff of comedy and should be understood in this as well as in its conventional sense.

It may, I think, be demonstrated that an Elizabethan audience would, early in the course of the play, realize what is going to happen to Benedick and Beatrice. As rebels against love their fate is sure and certain; they are destined to meet before the altar at the conclusion of the play. Whereas Mirabella is forced by Cupid to do penance, the usual rebel was treated as was Prince Arthur. Mirabella is punished because of her discourtesy and her story is therefore part of Book VI. The more usual pattern is exemplified by Arthur's fate. That Cupid's vengeance on the prince was in the familiar vein may be ascertained by reference to practically any of the poets of the time. In the March eclogue of The Shepheardes Calendar, Thomalin boasts how he discovered Cupid hiding in a bush and shot him with a burbolt. In revenge the god has shot him in the heel and now his wound festers sore. The preface to the eclogue makes it clear, though Thomalin's words are plain enough, that “… in the person of Thomalin is meant some secrete freend, who scorned Loue and his knights so long, till at length him self was entangled, and vnwares wounded with the dart of some beautiful regard, which is Cupides arrowe.”⁶⁹ Such is also the explanation advanced by Dan Bartholmew of Bathe for his unhappy love affair:

I thinke the goddesse of revenge devysde,
So to be wreackt on my rebelling will,
Bycause I had in youthfull yeares dispysde,
To taste the baytes, which tyste my fancie still.(70)

There are constant references to this stereotype in practically all poets of the period. George Whetstone, for example, thus prefaces one set of his poems: “The contemptuous louer finding no grace where hee faithfully fauoreth, acknowledgeth his former scorne, vsed toward loue, to be the onely cause of his miseries.”⁷¹ Elsewhere Whetstone tells the sad story of “The hap, and hard fortune of a careless louer” who summoned by Cupid to yield to Beauty refused and was subsequently brought a captive to “Beauties barre.”⁷² A long and horrendous sentence is pronounced whereby the prisoner is forced to endure unrequited love.⁷³

Although Benedick has been “an obstinate heretic in the despite of Beauty,”⁷⁴ he is not condemned to suffer the pangs of unrequited love. Instead he is matched with another offender against the laws of love. A sentimental view may incline us to envision the married state of these two as one of unalloyed bliss, since “they really did love one another all the time.” Be that as it may, the conclusion of the play shows the lovers, even in the midst of capitulation, still struggling to maintain the dignity of their former positions, and points, at the least, to a lively union. Benedick agrees to matrimony and seeks to gain the last word. “Come, I will have thee, but, by this hand, I take thee for pity.”⁷⁵ Beatrice accepts, caustic as ever, “I would not deny you; but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption,”⁷⁶ and gets, momentarily, the last word. An Elizabethan audience would not, I think, have taken the sentimental view. Aware of the conventions and delighting in their perception of the situation and its inevitable result, they would take it for the wondrous comedy that it is.

The comedy, of course, arises from many elements, but always there is Shakespeare's hand at work blending conventions and creating character. Benedick and Beatrice are not merely rebels against love and its language; they are, as well, juxtaposed; so that their rebellion may find a tangible enemy in each other. Each represents to the other that which each scorns, and therein lie the complexity of their characters and the source of humor. Actually their rebellion is not to be taken too seriously. As we have seen, Benedick refers to his “custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex,” but at once he contrasts an opinion delivered on this basis with “my simple true judgment.”⁷⁷ The assumed pose of this is consonant with Beatrice's “I was born to speak all mirth and no matter,” or, “then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.”⁷⁸ They both have light hearts and are determined to keep “on the windy side of Care,”⁷⁹ but neither will ever be a conventional literary lover, for in these two Shakespeare presents an attitude and a behavior pattern as real as that shown by Claudio and Hero.

In the well-known sonnet, “Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,” Sir Philip Sidney expresses seriously a critical view of conventional jargon which is similar to the nonserious objections of Benedick and Beatrice to the same thing. Fine inventions sought out in the works of other men are not the means whereby he may express his love for Stella. Benedick, attempting a poem in praise of Beatrice, is equally unable to employ the trite; but whereas Sidney concludes with, “Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write,”⁸⁰ Benedick concludes with the acceptance of fact, “I cannot woo in festival terms.” Sidney seeks a genuine expression of emotion and of course achieves it; Benedick is best described as a realist, or, as he says, “I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love. …”⁸¹

Both Sidney and Shakespeare reacted to the spate of love poetry utterly removed from reality, and such reaction was a perfectly normal development in the closing years of the century. A point of satiety, particularly in the imagery of amorous verse had been reached, so that new developments took the form of Donne's metaphysical style or Jonson's classicism. If we are to judge by Shakespeare's creation of Benedick and Beatrice, a new attitude came into being along with a new manner of expression. Exactly as Claudio and Hero are examples of the usual type of marriage as contrasted with the literary, so Benedick and Beatrice are another pair of realists sick to death of the jargon and extravagant behavior demanded by the fashionable code and so exhaustively exemplified, as we have seen, by such lovers as Beverley's Ariodant and Genevra. In Benedick and Beatrice, Shakespeare's tone is close to Raleigh's

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.(82)

Like the nymph who observes quite sagely that “flowers do fade” and that “Time drives the flocks from field to fold,” Beatrice is a realistic commentator:

… wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig (and full as fantastical); the wedding mannerly modest (as a measure), full of state and ancientry; and then comes Repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.⁸³

That Beatrice is not merely a shrew hating all men but is wise and observant is proved by Leonato's comment on the foregoing speech: “Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly,”⁸⁴ or, as Beatrice says in reply, “I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.”⁸⁵

Benedick likewise “sees” quite clearly that love is not what it is in books. When Claudio says that Hero is the sweetest lady he ever looked on, Benedick replies, “I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such matter …”⁸⁶ Later, reflecting on the folly of love, he again uses the same figure: “May I be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not. I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster, but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me he shall never make me such a fool.”⁸⁷ Like Beatrice, Benedick wishes to avoid the folly which they both see in the trite and conventional.

Notes

1. As You Like It, III, ii, 392-403.

2. Much Ado, I, i, 298-307. Of this passage Hazlitt (Characters of Shakespear's Plays [London, 1884], p. 210) observed that it was “as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined.” Similar differentiation between “love” and “like” is found in Sidney's sonnet, “Not at the first sight, nor with a dribbed shot” (Hebel and Hudson, Poetry of the English Renaissance [New York, 1938], p. 106), where is found the line, “I saw and liked; I liked but loved not.”

3. Much Ado, I, i, 164-166.

4. Ibid., I, i, 171, 180.

5. Romeo and Juliet, I, v, 46-55. Compare this with Claudio's use of a jewel figure, Much Ado, I, i, 181-182.

6. Much Ado, I, i, 214-225.

7. Ibid., I, i, 316-317.

8. Ibid., I, i, 292.

9. Ibid., I, i, 296-299. In describing his feigned niece to the repentant Claudio, Leonato (V, i, 297-299) stresses this same point as a recommendation for this new bride:

                                           My brother hath a daughter,
   Almost the copy of my child that's dead,
   And she alone is heir to both of us.

10. Whereas Beverley has both lovers reflect on the disparity of their social positions as a possible impediment, Sir John Harington finds a “good morall observation” in “the choise of Geneura, who being a great Ladie by birth, yet chose rather a gallant faire conditioned gentleman then a great Duke” (Orlando Furioso, p. 39). To an Elizabethan the question of social position was a very real consideration in marriage.

11. The depositions from the Court of Requests proceeding Bellot vs. Mountjoy were first printed by C. W. Wallace, Shakespeare and His London Associates, Nebraska University Studies, Vol. X (1910). The relevant material is easily available in Sir Edmund Chambers, William Shakespeare (2 vols., Oxford, 1930), II, 90-95.

12. C. J. Sisson, “The Old Joiner of Aldgate by Chapman,” Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 12-79.

13. Sir Harris Nicolas, Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton (London, 1847), p. 78.

14. Much Ado, III, ii, 97-103.

15. Ibid., III, ii, 127-129.

16. Ibid., III, ii, 129-130.

17. Ibid., IV, i, 64-66.

18. In the order given the relevant cases are Court of Requests: XXX/43; XCVII/5; CIX/38; LXXVIII/104; XLIV/19; XXXI/37; CXV/3.

19. Requests, LXV/55.

20. Requests, XCIV/23.

21. William Camden, The History of … Elizabeth (London, 1675), pp. 217-218.

22. Much Ado, V, i, 300.

23. Ibid., V, i, 297-298.

24. Ibid., I, i, 36.

25. Ibid., II, i, 321-323.

26. Ibid., II, i, 55-59.

27. Ibid., III, iv, 62-63.

28. The Comedies of George Chapman, ed. Thomas Marc Parrott (London, 1914), p. 473, ll. 168-170.

29. V, iv, 4-6.

30. Ibid., II, ii, 44-45.

31. Ibid., V, i, 243-245.

32. Quoted by Ellen Terry in The Story of My Life (London, 1908), p. 358.

33. As You Like It, IV, i, 106-108.

34. Much Ado, III, i, 21-23.

35. “The Book of the Courtyer: A Possible Source of Benedick and Beatrice,” PMLA, pp. 475-502.

36. The Book of the Courtier, ed. Walter Raleigh, p. 206.

37. Ibid.

38. The Love-Game Comedy, p. 212.

39. Ibid., p. 231.

40. Ibid., p. 223.

41. Not only the work of Mr. C. S. Lewis on the various aspects of love in The Faerie Queene (The Allegory of Love), but the encyclopedic knowledge of the subject found in T. F. Crane's Italian Social Customs of the Sixteenth Century testify to the impossibility of any simple generalizations as to the nature of love behavior patterns. The whole subject is one needing thorough study.

42. Abbie Findlay Potts, “Spenserian ‘Courtesy’ and ‘Temperance’ in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing,” Shakespeare Association Bulletin, XVII (1942), 103-111, 126-133.

43. The Year's Work in English Studies, XXIII (1942), 110.

44. The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, p. 369. Hereafter references will be given to The Faerie Queene by Book, Canto, and stanza. The present citation is from VI, 7, 44.

45. The Faerie Queene, VI, 7, 37.

46. Ibid., VI, 7, 38.

47. Ibid., VI, 7, 28.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., VI, 7, 30.

50. Ibid., VI, 7, 31.

51. Much Ado, III, i, 49-56.

52. Ibid., I, i, 119.

53. Ibid., II, i, 362-365.

54. Ibid., II, iii, 119-120.

55. The Rocke of Regard, p. 43.

56. Much Ado, II, i, 19-22.

57. Parallels between Beatrice and Katherine are of course obvious, but it is worth pointing out that the adjective “curst” is applied at least ten times to Katherine.

58. Much Ado, I, i, 125-129.

59. Ibid., I, i, 167-170.

60. “Spenserian ‘Courtesy’ and ‘Temperance’ in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing,” pp. 129-132.

61. Much Ado, II, iii, 197-200.

62. The Faerie Queene, I, 9, 10.

63. Ibid., I, 9, 11.

64. Ibid., I, 9, 12.

65. Much Ado, I, i, 39-42.

66. Ibid., III, ii, 10-12.

67. Ibid., I, i, 184-187.

68. Ibid., II, i, 199.

69. The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, p. 428.

70. George Gascoigne's A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, ll. 49-52, p. 203.

71. “The Garden of Vnthriftinesse,” The Rocke of Regard, p. 100.

72. Ibid., pp. 80-82.

73. This is a rather crude adaptation of one of Gascoigne's better poems, “Gascoignes araignement,” which concludes,

    “Thus am I Beauties bounden thrall,
    At hir commaunde when she doth call.”

    A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, pp. 144-145.

74. Much Ado, I, i, 236-237.

75. Ibid., V, iv, 92-93.

76. Ibid., V, iv, 94-97.

77. Ibid., I, i, 167-168.

78. Ibid., II, i, 343-344, 349-350.

79. Ibid., II, i, 325-326.

80. Hebel and Hudson, op. cit., p. 106.

81. Much Ado, II, iii, 7-12.

82. Hebel and Hudson, op. cit., p. 137.

83. Much Ado, II, i, 76-83.

84. Ibid., II, i, 84.

85. Ibid., II, i, 85-86.

86. Ibid., I, i, 191.

87. Ibid., II, iii, 23-28.