Is Much Ado about Nothing a disturbing comedy? The strongest evidence that it is comes in act 4, when Claudio denounces his bride-to-be at the altar for unchastity. Claudio's conduct on this occasion leaves much to be desired, and other characters also behave poorly, including Don Pedro, Claudio's friend and patron, and Leonato, father of the prospective bride. Though critics often extenuate what they regard as the momentary transgression of Leonato and Don Pedro, Claudio has not escaped so easily. Though the wedding scene exhibits him at his worst, Claudio's overall performance has attracted, as one critic remarks, “a whole thesaurus of abuse.” When Much Ado is reckoned a disturbing play, Claudio is generally the reason.

Yet many critics accept the judgment, offered within the play, that Don John is “the author of all” the mischief that occurs and the other characters are essentially good, though of course not without minor faults or occasional departures from the path of virtue. For example, in describing the opposition between Don John and the others, one critic writes: “The theme of anti-love [is] stitched in dark contrast … upon the bright fabric of love, the theme of sullen negation matched against a society of love and courtesy.” Another critic, however, exemplifies the recent tendency to distribute blame more evenly: “In Messina … we find a dark underside to human behavior, partly because we meet here … conscious human villainy … but partly also because the impulses of the villain sometimes find expression in the behavior of well-intentioned characters as well.” Whether or not Messina's “well-intentioned” citizens have dubious motives depends to a great degree on the extent to which one believes dramatic conventions function to limit the search for plausible psychological motivation. For example, Don John's self-proclaimed dedication to evil perhaps marks him as a stage villain whose raison d'être is to plot against virtue. If he lacks roundedness as a character, he is less likely to be seen as a product of society and a reflection of its faults. Other dramatic conventions function directly to protect the “good” characters. Thus, when Claudio and the others readily lend credence to Don John's accusations against Hero, the play reveals not the weakness of particular characters but the devastating results of slander. Similarly, the ceremonial aspects of Claudio's dirge scene can be taken as symbolic indication that his repentance for Hero's death is more than perfunctory.

I myself am convinced that Shakespeare does allow for a reading guided by such conventions, but I think he also permits a far more rigorous assessment of the characters. That—with the exception of Claudio—Messina has commonly escaped harsh criticism reflects, I think, Much Ado's dependence on social nuances—nuances that, though present in The Merchant of Venice, exist in that play side-by-side with starker effects.

Much Ado consists largely of upper-class conversation among friends and relatives who are at leisure to enjoy one another's company. It has often been noted that their drawing-room conversation anticipates Restoration and eighteenth-century English drama, as well as the novel as practiced, for example, by Jane Austen. It is less often noted that, like the best of his successors, in depicting such conversation, Shakespeare implies a complex set of social attitudes and social pressures. To appreciate the drama that unfolds, the audience must often respond to “impressions” gathered from the conversation, or to small gestures that suggest underlying stresses. At other times, the placid tone of conversation is broken by the more acerbic voice of Beatrice, who, in her role as eiron, punctures the illusions that others live by. I have already discussed [elsewhere] Beatrice's response to the announcement of her cousin's betrothal, beginning, “Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but I.” Beatrice identifies the social pressure exerted on all the characters who are single and of marriageable age. She thereby helps to identify the temptations they are exposed to in the course of the play. A disruption such as that which takes place at the wedding represents, in my opinion, not the intrusion of an alien force, but tensions that have gradually come to a head. One is ultimately led to question whether Messina has a right to rejoice at the end of the play. As soon as attention shifts from Don John's malevolence to the subtler social forces in Messina, everyone shares a measure of responsibility for all that happens.

When Much Ado opens, Leonato's invited guest, Don Pedro, prince of Arragon, is approaching Messina, and he has sent a messenger ahead with a letter:

LEONATO:
How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?
MESSENGER:
But few of any sort, and none of name.
LEONATO:
A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestow'd much honor on a young Florentine call'd Claudio.

(1.1.5-11)

This brief interchange illustrates the kind of interpretive problem Much Ado often poses. In these first few lines, at least, the audience strongly inclines towards taking at face value the report of a great victory. However, so little is said about the battle that no one can be sure what did happen, and a few of the details leave open other possibilities. Few men were killed, one assumes, because the soldiers fought well—not because they engaged in a negligible skirmish. And presumably “none of name” died because the nobility fought valiantly—not because the nobility avoided its responsibility to lead troops into battle. No explanation of the military action preceding the opening of the play is ever forthcoming, and perhaps Leonato's unconcern should be ours; yet Beatrice seems to comment on his omission when she raises sceptical questions about the battle.

In paraphrasing the messenger, Leonato makes an outright error when he speaks of a victory with “full numbers” (overlooking the losses among the lower sort), or else his words are supposed to be taken as gnomic wisdom—but even then application of his proverbial saying would mean that he counts the losses of the lower sort as insignificant. Leonato's attention then turns to news of Claudio. The written text does not make clear why Claudio is significant to him, but in view of the flirtation that has already gone on between Claudio and Hero (1.1.296-300), it may be that Leonato reads with a wink for his daughter; he has marriage in mind for her. Why is Don Pedro writing that he has “bestow'd much honor” on Claudio? In thus honoring Claudio, has Don Pedro sought to please Leonato? Leonato asks for no explanations. (The Elizabethans might have thought of what Lawrence Stone calls “the inflation of honors,” the military knighthoods Essex conferred, for example.) The messenger (in a passage not quoted) starts to elaborate, but his language is so flowery that nothing can be gathered from it; he even seems to mock Leonato's lack of curiosity by concluding that Claudio “hath indeed better bett'red expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how” (ll. 15-17). Leonato does not pursue the subject and he soon makes a remark that helps to expose him as a complacent man, not eager to make more than superficial judgments. Upon hearing from the messenger that Claudio's uncle wept upon getting news of his nephew's safe return, Leonato comments: “There are no faces truer than those that are … wash'd” with tears (ll. 26-27). Leonato's trust in tears is a detail Shakespeare will draw on later (4.1.154).

Beatrice now interjects herself, as if dissatisfied with the desultory pace of the conversation. Her uncle has taken care to note Claudio's survival; she wants to know whether Benedick, the man who interests her, has returned. Her manner of questioning sets her apart from her uncle, however; she asks the messenger penetrating questions, probes him about what Benedick has achieved—and not achieved—in battle. She is openly dubious about his accomplishments. She concludes, for example, that his “good service … in these wars” consists of his having helped to eat “musty victual.” Nor is Beatrice merely a gadfly; her questions, she implies, arise from her own uncomfortable experiences with Benedick; she questions not only his bravery and his intelligence, but his capacity for friendship: “He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat: it ever changes with the next block” (ll. 75-77). Beatrice has well-developed suspicions about Benedick's nature and implies that she will take no husband who does not meet high standards. Nevertheless, in bringing Benedick into the conversation, Beatrice perhaps wishes to indicate that she, like her cousin, may marry some day. She is certainly put under pressure to conform. Leonato quickly disparages her independence. Benedick will “be meet with you,” he reminds her, and then he chides her about her professed imperviousness to love: “You will never run mad, niece.” “No, not till a hot January,” is Beatrice's robust reply, but later she may compromise her standards.

Though just a few lines into the play, currents beneath the surface of conversation are becoming evident. Ostensibly Leonato and his family have merely undertaken to entertain guests. Actually, everyone waits expectantly for the arrival of bachelors and for the beginning of a time for courtship.

Upon entering, Don Pedro greets his host: “Good Signior Leonato, are you come to meet your trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it” (ll. 96-98). Is Don Pedro grateful for Leonato's “trouble,” or is he observing Leonato's excessive hospitality, the care haute bourgeoisie takes with aristocracy? Later Don Pedro calls himself a “charge,” and he responds to Leonato's wish that his stay will be a long one by saying, “I dare swear [Leonato] is no hypocrite” (l. 151)—insisting a little too much, so it seems, that Leonato has no ulterior motive. Don Pedro apparently mistrusts Leonato's courtesy.

A few details suggest that Don Pedro's discomfort has something to do with the expectation that courting will follow his arrival. Although he has visited frequently, he seems not to recognize Leonato's daughter, and he recovers himself only to offer an awkward compliment, likening Hero's appearance to her father's (ll. 104, 111-12). Don Pedro's subsequent response suggests a stage direction; his attention is on Claudio, whose eyes are on Hero. As Don Pedro exits with Leonato, he still watches Claudio and notices him staying behind and beckoning Benedick to join him. As quickly as Don Pedro can, he extricates himself and goes to seek Claudio and to inquire after his “secret” (1.1.202-4). Evidently he guesses that Claudio is inclined to marry.

I believe we gradually come to entertain a hypothesis about Don Pedro. Born and bred a prince, elegant in dress and manner, he seems to embody the social values held dear in Messina. Yet he has never married, though he is possibly somewhat beyond the age at which most men do. Knowing that he will never court and knowing, nevertheless, that all thoughts in Messina will turn to marriage, he brings with him, as a well-trained guest, valuable presents—two eminently eligible bachelors, on one of whom, a count, he has newly bestowed “honor.” Don Pedro seems eager to adapt himself to conventional life—indeed, is eager to promote conventional values. Nevertheless, no man is selfless; in exchange he will ask that his efforts to help others be appreciated. Leonato's overeager reception already disturbs him. Don Pedro's affection for Claudio will pose another challenge.

Before Don Pedro reenters, Claudio discloses his interest in Hero to Benedick. Claudio is sensitive to the expectations of the society around him. He has learned that when a soldier is home from the war, it is time to fall in love. He also knows that Hero is the right kind of girl for him—well-born, pretty, and wealthy. Only one more question needs to be answered, and he asks it of Benedick immediately: “Is she not a modest young lady?” (l. 165). Claudio wants to make certain that his marriage will be an asset and not a hindrance. His reasons for wanting to marry, and the promptness of his decision, show him as a rather conventional young man, without any special depth or complication of character.

Though Don Pedro anticipated a time of courtship, he is overtaken by the speed of events. He enters to discover that not only has Claudio already confessed his love, but he has chosen Benedick, not the prince, as his confidant. When Don Pedro asks to hear Claudio's “secret,” Benedick, taunting Claudio, quickly discloses it. Claudio equivocates: he loves Hero “if [his] passion change not shortly” (l. 219). Don Pedro immediately senses Claudio's timidity and reassures him; “The lady is very well worthy.” “You speak this to fetch me in,” Claudio responds, but Don Pedro reaffirms his opinion. In supporting Claudio, Don Pedro fulfills the role he set for himself. On the other hand, Don Pedro has acquired information that at some point could be used destructively: Claudio mistrusts his own judgment, and is very much concerned to find a wife highly regarded by others.

Don Pedro wants to be alone with Claudio. However, Benedick will not leave; quite the contrary, he makes peacock display of himself, boasting that he will “live a bachelor.” Don Pedro, quickly irritated, tells Benedick that he will soon “look pale with love” (l. 247). The prince implies that Benedick is only posing as a “tyrant” to the female sex; behind the mask lies a man almost as ready for marriage as Claudio. Whether Don Pedro is right or not is still unknown. However, his own resentment suggests that for him bachelorhood is painful in a way it is not for Benedick. Don Pedro's greater vulnerability—as courting gets underway—soon becomes more apparent. After trying politely to draw the conversation to a halt, he invents an errand for Claudio. Irritated, Benedick leaves with a parting retort. Using a metaphor from dressmaking, he says that Don Pedro's discourse is ornamented with loosely attached trimmings that may come off to reveal his real concerns (ll. 285-89). Benedick hints at the deceptiveness of Don Pedro's elegant surface.

As soon as Don Pedro and Claudio are alone, the latter turns for help, as Don Pedro apparently hoped he would:

CLAUDIO:
My liege, your Highness now may do me good.
DON Pedro:
My love is thine; teach it but how,
And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn
Any hard lesson that may do thee good.

(1.1.290-93)

While Claudio addresses Don Pedro as a prince who is in a position to do him a favor, Don Pedro answers affectionately. He says that his “love” stands ready to learn any “hard lesson” Claudio asks of him. As the nature of Claudio's request is already obvious, Don Pedro comes very close to saying that he will find it distressful to help Claudio to a wife. Don Pedro's words are rarely, if ever, regarded as intimate, and it is true that the word love is common between male friends in the Renaissance. In context, however, “love” at least hints at an unusually strong emotion that Claudio does not reciprocate. In Elizabethan English, “apt” sometimes means “apt for love” and not simply “ready” or “prepared”; Don Pedro rather than expressing his passion directly, will sublimate it in an act of sacrifice for Claudio.

Don Pedro is still very much a mystery at this point in the play because, unlike Claudio, his relationship to established social patterns is undefined. His deliberate disclosure of affection for Claudio, which he could easily have avoided making, invites speculation about his motives. If he is not simply candid, he may be manipulative, either attempting to discourage Claudio from marrying, or, far more likely, thinking to strengthen their attachment so that Claudio's subsequent marriage will impose less of a separation. I am suggesting a possible parallel with The Merchant of Venice. When Bassanio asks his older friend, Antonio, for the money that will allow him to woo Portia, Antonio expresses his “love” for Bassanio and promises to do his “uttermost” to raise the money. Later, in Bassanio's presence, he readily agrees to the ominous terms of Shylock's loan. Both older men cannot resist accommodating their younger friends in the hope that gratitude will help strengthen the relationship.

Claudio not only fails to reciprocate; he disingenuously avoids acknowledging anything of what Don Pedro has implied. He wants nothing to divert him from the matter at hand: “Hath Leonato any son, my lord?” Critics have debated whether Claudio's inquiry into the financial side of marriage is appropriate. Shakespeare seems to me to go to some lengths to show Claudio's interest as excessive. He wants to learn about more than Hero's dowry; what will she inherit? he asks. Like Claudio's earlier inquiry concerning Hero's “modesty,” he reveals here the desire for a socially advantageous marriage. A little voice speaks to Claudio, “prompting” him, telling him that when war ends, it is time for love: “war-thoughts” are gone, he says, and “in their rooms / Come thronging soft and delicate desires” (1.1.302-3). Claudio's is not the language of authentic passion—he is not “apt,” to use Don Pedro's word. The voice Claudio hears is society's, encouraging him to fall in love and marry.

Another way to judge Claudio is through Don Pedro's eyes. Don Pedro sees that Claudio prepares to gather for himself all that society can offer. Don Pedro knows what voice Claudio listens to, and finally says to him: “Thou wilt be like a lover presently, / And tire the hearer with a book of words” (ll. 306-7). The words flow too freely to be Claudio's; he has been reading from the “book” left open for young men when they return from war (cf. l. 311). Don Pedro has a right to be irritated, and therefore his offer is all the more commendable: he will speak to Leonato on Claudio's behalf.

Claudio, however, resumes the “treatise” he had begun to tell. “How sweetly you do minister to love,” he tells Don Pedro, imagining him as the idealized older patron of romance. At this point, Don Pedro's mood shifts. He breaks in with: “What need the bridge much broader than the flood?”—that is, Claudio's is a familiar human need that does not warrant excessive fuss. Then Don Pedro, without explanation, substitutes a new and far less straightforward scheme for helping Claudio to his bride.

At a masked dance that evening, Don Pedro will disguise himself as Claudio and woo Hero for him. The change in plan invites close scrutiny. Don Pedro is perhaps conscious of three motives. He will help his young friend. He will encourage in him a feeling of gratitude. And third, he will find for himself a role on an occasion when his own failure to woo would otherwise be noticeable. But does the plot also show Don Pedro unconsciously finding a channel for destructive emotion, were he to wish to release it? He goes so far as to imply that were he not wooing for Claudio, he might have an interest of his own in her: in Hero's “bosom I'll unclasp my heart, / And take her hearing prisoner with the force / And strong encounter of my amorous tale” (ll. 323-25). He could make Claudio jealous, if he chose. The scheme will also keep Claudio and Hero apart, thus preventing a firm relationship from growing up between them.

I have argued that to understand all the action seen so far one needs to recognize that the time to marry has arrived in Messina. Claudio responds to the pressure very directly; Benedick less directly; Don Pedro most indirectly of all. So far, only slight signs have appeared that the strain will overwhelm anyone.

Having watched how social forces influence others, we are prepared to see them at work in Don John, who is now introduced. He announces at once: “I cannot hide what I am” (1.3.13); then he declares himself “a plain-dealing villain” (l. 32). For some critics, a self-revelation this emphatic settles the matter: Don John is a pure figure of evil, “a thing of darkness out of step with his society,” who “hates the children of light simply because they generate radiance in a world he prefers to see dark.” If this description is correct, then Much Ado approaches melodrama by artificially dividing the good from the bad characters. I believe, on the other hand, that Don John should not divert us from the evil within society, and to make this point, Shakespeare shows that Don John is shaped by the same social forces that mould others.

When he announces himself a villain, he is not alone—he speaks to Conrade—and by this time in the play one looks beneath the surface of drawing-room chatter. Even Don John's handling of language shows him to be as conscious of himself as a social being as anyone in the play. He makes elegant use of balance and antithesis—in the following sentence, for example: “I am trusted with a muzzle, and enfranchis'd with a clog, therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage” (ll. 32-34). Certain inferences may be drawn from the things Don John does tell Conrade, and more information is forthcoming.

Conrade opened the scene by asking Don John, “Why are you thus out of measure sad?” Don John answers evasively by referring only to “the occasion.” Context, however, defines the “occasion” as the same one that distresses Don Pedro—Leonato's preparations for an evening of dance and courtship. This explanation is soon confirmed. When Borachio, another member of Don John's retinue, enters, he tells Don John that he comes with news “of an intended marriage.” Don John replies: “What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?” Here is a statement with strong feeling behind it!

Although the play terms them “brothers” and both enjoy the rank of prince, Don John is apparently a bastard and he and Don Pedro half brothers. Each surrounds himself with two male followers: Don John with Conrade and Borachio, and Don Pedro with Claudio and Benedick. Alliteration, syllabication, and accentuation connect the two groups of names. Like Don Pedro. Don John is distinguished from his retinue by his lack of interest in courting a woman. While Benedick and Claudio woo, Borachio resumes a liaison with Margaret. When Beatrice remarks that Don Pedro does not make himself available to women, she links the two brothers: “Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them” (2.1.324-25).

In analogues and sources for Much Ado, two friends are in love with the same woman, and the Don John figure plots to separate his friend from the lady and so obtain her for himself. Don John, of course, has no such motive. He offers as many motives as Iago does, and it is probably as treacherous to choose among them; about all we can say for sure is that he lives in a world of men and focuses his resentment on them. To speculate a little further, however, Don John and Don Pedro both focus their attentions on Claudio, though Don John's emotions are hostile while his brother's are not. Don John initially welcomes the opportunity to contrive against “that young start-up [who] hath all the glory of [his] overthrow” (1.3.66-67). Later, Don John works to drive a wedge between Claudio and his royal patron. At the end of the dance, Don John, recognizing the masked Claudio, informs him that Don Pedro has wooed for himself (2.1.164). Later, when Don John enters to report Hero's “disloyalty,” he contrasts his brother's effort to effect the marriage with his own effort to protect Claudio (3.2.95-100). Whether Don John is a bidder for Claudio's affections or simply the young man's enemy is not easy to say.

In many accounts of Much Ado, Don Pedro and Don John are held to be of opposing natures, even if they superficially share certain traits, such as a love of intrigue. G. K. Hunter, for example, contrasts the “blind self-interest of Don John” with the “social expertise of Don Pedro.” Robert G. Hunter says bluntly: “Don Pedro's function is to create love. Don John's is to destroy it.” I am suggesting instead that the “melodramatic” distinction between the brothers becomes blurred, so that we are prepared to see some of Don John's ill will in his brother. One villain is not merely substituted for another, however, because Don Pedro, unlike his brother, is woven into a complex social pattern; his complicity makes the problem of guilt in the play far subtler than it seemed when Don John first announced his villainy.

Act 2 opens after the dinner with Beatrice holding forth about marriage. Her society, of course, believes strongly in marriage; she asserts contrary views:

BEATRICE:
I will even take sixpence in earnest of the berrord [bearward, animal keeper], and lead his apes into hell.
LEONATO:
Well then, go you into hell.
BEATRICE:
No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, “Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven, here's no place for you maids.”

(2.1.39-46)

Proverbially, old maids lead apes to hell, while mothers, led by their children, go to heaven. Beatrice, however, places the married folk in hell, presumably because of their misery and because they sin, not only in taking lovers, but in marrying when they ought not to. Beatrice, who never talks idly, is wondering about her own predicament and Hero's, and she raises a question for the audience to keep in mind: are the marriages in Much Ado well-advised?

Beatrice's feelings about marriage are more complicated than she admits. After all, she is very much a part of Leonato's household, which she amuses with her clever remarks. Also, it soon becomes apparent that she has introduced Benedick and marriage into the conversation because Hero's prospects are already a subject of discussion. Beatrice, as at the opening of the play, asserts her own romantic interest, albeit in an indirect manner. She evidently feels the same pressure to marry that the other single people feel.

It is greatly to Beatrice's credit that she does not try to discourage her cousin, though Hero seems destined to go to the altar first. Overheard conversation has led Leonato to conclude that Don Pedro plans to woo Hero in the evening, and Leonato instructs his daughter to be ready. With a generosity Benedick has not shown Claudio in comparable circumstances, Beatrice simply cautions Hero against undue haste (ll. 69-80). In these and other circumstances, Beatrice emerges as a person of stature.

The dance and its aftermath prefigure later events, although the potential for trouble is not yet realized. At the dance, others conclude that Don Pedro courts on his own behalf, and the few overheard words make us wonder whether he encourages the misapprehension. When he begins to dance with Hero, he alludes to his real identity, beneath the mask: “Within the house is Jove” (2.1.97), then he whispers: “Speak low if you speak love.” While Claudio apparently suspects Don Pedro because of what Don John tells him, Benedick forms suspicions on his own. When he alludes to them, Don Pedro studiously avoids understanding him, and then denies the allegations and throws Benedick on the defensive about another matter, his insulting behaviour to Beatrice. Shortly afterwards, Don Pedro carefully vindicates himself before the assembled household: “Here, Claudio, I have woo'd in thy name, and fair Hero is won” (ll. 298-99). He seems relieved to prove himself loyal to Claudio, as if the doubts others form about his motives make him doubt them too.

Claudio, for his part, acts inexcusably. Unlike Benedick, Claudio knew beforehand that Don Pedro danced with Hero so that he could woo her for him. Yet Claudio quickly succumbs to Don John's ploy and loses faith in his friend. Claudio replaces one romantic story with another; now “beauty is a witch / Against whose charms faith melteth into blood” (2.1.179-80). Claudio's real feelings are revealed when he says, “let every eye negotiate for itself, / And trust no agent” (ll. 178-79). As one critic remarks, Claudio feels “duped in a bargain.” He appreciates neither Don Pedro nor Hero, whose loss disturbs him only as it affects his self-respect.

When Beatrice and Benedick begin to dance with one another, she may well be ready to be courted, but instead, Benedick insults her. Benedick is masked; Beatrice, possibly, is not. Benedick, believing himself undetected, takes advantage of the opportunity to trim Beatrice's sails, telling her that he has heard that she “was disdainful” and “had [her] good wit out of the ‘Hundred Merry Tales’” (2.1.129-30). Beatrice's intelligence and humor are too much for Benedick's male pride, and she takes offense, as well she should. Beatrice, who does recognize Benedick beneath his mask, describes him as “the Prince's jester, a very dull fool,” and says that his only “gift is in devising impossible slanders.” This criticism of Benedick is especially telling because it describes Benedick as he behaves with her at this moment.

Because a question has arisen about Benedick's merit, special importance is to be attached to the following interchange between Benedick and Beatrice as the music resumes and they begin to dance:

BEATRICE:
We must follow the leaders.
BENEDICK:
In every good thing.
BEATRICE:
Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next turning.

(2.1.150-54)

This dialogue is symbolic. Both Beatrice and Benedick set themselves up as superior to the others around them—they will make independent moral judgments and not simply “follow the leaders.” Only time can determine whether they are as good as their word.

After the dance, both have an opportunity to take out their hurt on others. Benedick does so. Believing that Don Pedro has wooed for himself, Benedick seeks out Claudio and taunts him. Ironically, he sees Claudio's vulnerability but not his own: “Alas, poor hurt fowl, now will [Claudio] creep into sedges. But that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me!” (2.1.202-4). Nor is Benedick through. When Don Pedro enters looking for Claudio, Benedick admonishes the prince for betraying his friend. Then, rebuked for insulting Beatrice, he can only see how she has “misus'd [him] past the endurance of a block.” When she enters, he pretends not to notice her, and calls her a “harpy” (l. 271).

Beatrice acquits herself better. Speaking privately with Don Pedro, she is remarkably candid. She admits that she had once given Benedick her heart, but he betrayed her (2.1.278-82). Then she indicates that she has come to a decision; she will not be “the mother of fools” (l. 286)—that is, she no longer wants to marry Benedick. Realizing that her feelings have been hurt, the viewer does not know whether to believe her, but her judgment may be sound—she might be wise to sit out this dance and wait for another suitor.

Beatrice acts even more commendably when Claudio enters and, in the presence of everyone, Don Pedro announces that “fair Hero is won.” Claudio is silent, and Beatrice prompts him: “Speak, Count, 'tis your cue” (l. 305). She understands that although Claudio has chosen to take part in a play, his moment has come and he has nothing to say. Like Claudio, Hero also lacks words—each lacks sufficient knowledge of the other. Beatrice wittily but generously gives Hero her part: “Speak, cousin, or (if you cannot) stop his mouth with a kiss.” Beatrice tries to live through the happiness of Claudio and Hero.

Only when Claudio greets Beatrice as his “cousin” does she reveal her real feelings. Though she is witty, her exclamation, “Good Lord, for alliance!” is heartfelt. She knows that society exerts pressure from which she is not immune. Therefore her resolve not to marry Benedick may weaken.

Beatrice is not the only observer deeply affected by the engagement of Hero and Claudio. Don Pedro has been silent. He watches Beatrice admiringly and sympathizes with her—up to a point. Suddenly he responds to her wish for “alliance” by saying, “Lady Beatrice, I will get you one [a husband].” His impulse is in part a generous one, but his tone is complex. With the verb “get,” which is crude, and the impersonal “one,” Don Pedro indicates that Beatrice's need is a common one and may be met readily. He hints that despite her pretensions, Beatrice is willing to conform.

Beatrice replies to Don Pedro with intelligence as well as wit:

I would rather have one [a husband] of your father's getting. Hath your Grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid come by them.

(2.1.322-25)

Beatrice pays Don Pedro a compliment that she knows he will value. She says that he is attractive to women, and but for his high birth, she herself would aspire to marriage with him. On the other hand, by repeating Don Pedro's equivocal words, “get” and “one,” Beatrice calls attention to them and to his enigmatic role as a matchmaker. Then she raises an implicit question; why is Don Pedro never available to women, never a suitor in his own right?

Don Pedro escapes with exceptionally clever repartee. He offers himself in marriage: “Will you have me, lady?” I do not think this proposal sincere. Beatrice and Don Pedro are engaged in witty dialogue. Don Pedro well knows that the others present regard Beatrice and Benedick as a likely match, and he would not again invite the suspicion that he lets his own interests intrude. He expects his audience to see that he has set himself before the finicky Beatrice, inviting her to refuse in a clever fashion. Of course, Don Pedro also wants his proposal to suggest to others that were he not so generous, he might well seek Beatrice's hand for himself.

As is her custom, Beatrice refuses to be merely clever in her reply:

No [she declines the prince], unless I might have another [husband] for working-days. Your Grace is too costly to wear every day. But I beseech your Grace pardon me, I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.

(2.1.327-30)

Interpreted in one way, the remark is complimentary. Beatrice pictures the prince as he likes to see himself, set apart by his special elegance, “too costly to wear every day.” But Beatrice's words also suggest that Don Pedro is permanently excluded from the “alliance” of marriage. She describes herself and the prince as well-matched for Sundays—both superior souls, both alone—but not as suitable life companions, because an invisible but seemingly uncrossable line separates them. This line may be the one that separates the heterosexually inclined from the homosexually, but such terminology is too coarse for Shakespeare's delicate and perhaps evasive portrayal.

The moment is a poignant one. Beatrice and Don Pedro had seemed for a moment to enjoy an intimacy; then decisive differences emerge. After their interchange, each is again left alone to deal with relentless social pressures.

Beatrice, realizing that she has been indiscreet, hastily apologizes. Though the prince graciously reassures her, his reaction is soon seen to be complicated. When Leonato saves Beatrice further embarrassment by sending her on an errand, Don Pedro alludes to a new scheme, designed to bring Beatrice and Benedick together. Both schemes divert attention from Don Pedro's own failure to woo. But are in part the product of generous impulses, the first towards Claudio, the second towards Beatrice, who will be helped to the happiness denied Don Pedro himself. However, Don Pedro's introduction of both schemes comes accompanied by language denigrating romance; if Beatrice and Benedick can be brought into a “mountain of affection,” then, Don Pedro assures his listeners, “Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods” (ll. 385-86). Don Pedro's wit should not conceal that “love-gods” have dangerous powers. Don Pedro's scheme will create a precarious situation. Beatrice will be led to think Benedick loves her, and Benedick to think Beatrice loves him. The product of a lie, their courtship may easily be disturbed. Even as the scheme gets put into motion, it will create another danger. Like the earlier scheme, it keeps Claudio and Hero apart (Beatrice will overhear the women, and Benedick the men). Claudio, therefore, will be at Don Pedro's side when the prince demonstrates that love is only an illusion.

Having considered Don Pedro's motives for proposing the scheme, we can return to the question of why it is received so enthusiastically by his audience. Leonato does not seem to understand that “melancholy” lies beneath Beatrice's “merry” surface (ll. 341-46), so his participation in the scheme is not entirely to be explained by his interest in her well-being. Indeed, he delights to think how soon Beatrice and Benedick would be bickering: “If they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad” (ll. 353-54). It is Don Pedro's satiric description of Benedick and Beatrice brought into a “mountain of affection” that brings Leonato to life: “My lord, I am for you, though it costs me ten nights' watchings.” Claudio quickly provides an echo: “And I, my lord.” Hero chimes in: “I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.” Her earnestness betrays the real motive of the three of them. Beatrice and Benedick are aloof and superior; the conventional world wants to bring them within its orbit.

The prosecution of the scheme helps confirm this inference. When Benedick overhears their conversation, the men take advantage of the opportunity to deflate his pretensions. Hero's remarks, overheard by Beatrice, are even more illuminating. Hero criticizes Beatrice, who is “odd, and from all fashions” (3.1.72), and “turns … every man the wrong side out, / and never gives to truth and virtue that / Which simpleness and merit purchaseth” (ll. 68-70). Shakespeare wittily gives Hero a chance to praise “simpleness.” Though in her father's own household, she has been eclipsed by her cousin and she does not like it. Beatrice is far more generous with her than she is with Beatrice.

In quick succession, Beatrice and Benedick overhear that they are loved and declare in soliloquy not only their love for one another but their desire to marry. Beatrice and Benedick are therefore not indifferent to what others say about them and to the pressure to conform—the contrast between Beatrice and Benedick on the one hand and Hero and Claudio on the other gradually comes to seem less sharp. Many critics nevertheless do tend to maintain the distinction, arguing that while Hero and Claudio become engaged only because to do so is expected of them, Beatrice and Benedick are well matched and merely need a slight push toward marriage. By giving them names that alliterate, Shakespeare has certainly invited us to think of Beatrice and Benedick as a pair. They also have certain traits in common. Both, for example, hold themselves aloof from society and by means of verbal wit display a sense of superiority. Beatrice and Benedick are also undoubtedly attracted to one another, and they spar together in order to disguise affection, as Leonato implies: “There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and [Beatrice]; they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them” (1.1.61-64). Leonato nevertheless underestimates the importance of the tension in their relationship.

The distance Beatrice and Benedick maintain allows each of them to examine what he or she finds disturbing in the other. Beatrice's doubts arise from questions about Benedick's moral character. I have already mentioned one among several somewhat obscure allusions to a past incident or incidents; Benedick apparently betrayed the intimacy that had grown up between Beatrice and himself (in addition to 2.1.278-82, see 1.1.39-42, 120-23, and 144-45). Such suspicions about Benedick are supported by his reputation as a ladies' man (see, e.g., 1.1.109-10). This trait, on which Benedick prides himself, helps to explain the reservations he has about Beatrice: she withholds admiration. Benedick complains to her: “It is certain I am lov'd of all ladies, only you excepted” (1.1.124-25). At the dance, he criticizes her “wit”; Benedick would like a wife as intelligent and as attractive as Beatrice, but he would like her to defer to him.

The problems in their relationship point to important differences between their characters. Only Beatrice is a genuine critic of society—Benedick's satirical remarks are often made to get attention; only Beatrice has self-knowledge—Benedick denies his susceptibility to social pressure; and only Beatrice is generous—Benedick resents the successes of others, as when he taunts Claudio after Claudio discloses his interest in Hero. Beatrice's greater worth is subtly caught in the contrast between their soliloquies after they are trapped.

When Claudio and Hero became engaged, Beatrice frankly admitted her loneliness. After she eavesdrops and learns how others criticize her and how Benedick loves her, her response is put in ten succinct lines (of verse). She rebukes herself sharply: “Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!” (3.1.109). And she promises to turn over a new leaf—she will “tam[e her] wild heart to [Benedick's] loving hand” (l. 112). Were Beatrice not so desirous of marrying, she might be less inclined to accept hearsay evidence and she might hesitate to subordinate herself to Benedick. Though her new humility has its attractive side, she is perhaps too eager to sacrifice the moral independence she has held dear; Shakespeare, we note, has Beatrice express herself in rhyme of rather pedestrian character, not up to her usual standards.

Benedick soliloquizes both before and after eavesdropping. The first speech shows that, unlike Beatrice, he has not admitted to himself his desire for marriage. He portrays himself as a satisfied bachelor who will not stir himself until he finds the perfect woman (2.3.26-35). Benedick protests too strongly. Ever since Claudio disclosed his desire to marry and Benedick responded by claiming that Hero's beauty was exceeded by Beatrice's (1.1.190-92), Benedick has been keeping a careful eye on his friend's advance to the altar. Benedick describes him as “Monsieur Love” (2.3.36) and criticizes his clothes and affected speech (ll. 15-21). “May I be so converted?” he wonders (l. 22), inadvertently revealing his wish to imitate Claudio.

Benedick's second soliloquy is an important guide to the man who emerges in the latter part of the play. Unlike Beatrice, he has no suspicions whatever, though he has more reason than Beatrice to suspect treachery, for Don Pedro has promised to see him “look pale with love.” Benedick believes what he hears because he wants to marry. He quickly concludes that if she loves him, her love “must be requited” (2.3.224). In other words, he has a moral obligation to her. As the speech develops, Benedick elaborates on the righteousness of his change of course. His need to justify himself is explained by his fear—“they say I will bear myself proudly” (2.3.225). And he does bear himself proudly; quite unlike Beatrice, Benedick is brimming with pride when he learns he is loved. Benedick also worries because he has loudly vaunted his independence. He begins to work out his defense: “Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.” This has the desired moral ring, but is not quite splendid enough. “Doth not the appetite alter,” he now suggests, as if he were a philosopher of human nature. Finally, he reaches for the grand: “The world must be peopled.” Critics have occasionally quoted these lines out of context and made them the moral of the play. But Benedick has really trailed off into banal sophistry—“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”

Having wrapped himself in a moral cloak, he is ready to adopt the utterly conventional role of the lover. At least one earlier critic likened him to Malvolio, for in his next appearance, he cuts a ridiculous figure, newly shaven, absurdly dressed, and perfumed. Like Malvolio, he fails to appreciate the joke on himself. In spite of Benedick's pretensions, he is proving himself an ordinary young man.

So far I have discussed social pressures in Messina and the urge characters have to conform and make others conform. On the other hand, no decisive test has yet arisen. One may entertain doubts about a character, but one cannot clearly fault anybody. Don Pedro, the most vulnerable character, also happens to be critically placed to influence events, for he is respected by everyone. Until a day before the marriage, the good in him prevails, a situation symbolized by the control he imposes over Don John. Now, with Claudio's marriage imminent, Don Pedro begins to break.

When Don Pedro arrived in Messina, he promised a stay of “at the least a month” (1.1.149). Act 3, scene 2 opens with Don Pedro announcing a change in plans:

DON Pedro:
I do but stay till your marriage be consummate, and then go I toward Arragon.
CLAUDIO:
I'll bring you thither, my lord, if you'll vouchsafe me.
DON Pedro:
Nay, that would be as great a soil in the new gloss of your marriage as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear it.

The desire to leave Messina merely testifies to Don Pedro's growing discomfort. However, his decision to communicate his plans to Claudio represents an important weakening of his resolve to do well by Claudio. A first inclination may be to say that Don Pedro merely wishes to remind Claudio, in the words of a famous sonnet, “to love that well, which thou must leave ere long.” While this is presumably Don Pedro's only conscious purpose, his apparently simple statement probes for the answer to two questions. By indicating that he will leave on Claudio's marriage day, Don Pedro asks whether his friend realizes that marriage alters all of a man's previous relationships, even his relationship to a patron. In choosing the verb “consummate,” Don Pedro asks whether Claudio keenly anticipates the joys of the marriage bed. Claudio's disingenuous offer to accompany Don Pedro after the wedding ceremony answers both of the prince's questions—Claudio does fear losing a patron and the sexual allusion makes him uneasy.

Don Pedro thinks to respond with harmless and traditional kidding of the prospective groom. Actually, he addresses not only Claudio's sexual embarrassment, but his fears about the future. Don Pedro says that to the betrothed, marriage wears a “gloss.” By leaving Messina, Claudio would “soil” this gloss. In advising him against leaving, Don Pedro implies that marriage loses its “gloss” soon enough anyway. There is a comparable implication in Don Pedro's words when he goes on to compare Claudio's anticipation of marriage and its sexual pleasures with the anticipation a child has for a new coat that gains more than its intrinsic value by being withheld. Simply to compare Claudio's emotions to a child's is to undermine his sense that marriage is a mark of maturity. To compare Claudio to a child awaiting a new coat that will soon become an old coat is to make him wonder whether his judgment is sound. In due course, Don Pedro implies, Claudio will discover the “soil” on his marriage—but by then, he may have lost what he once he had for a certainty, Don Pedro's patronage.

Apparently sensing that he is headed in a dangerous direction, Don Pedro suddenly breaks off. He decides to tease Benedick, who has swallowed the bait laid for him and now stands before them dressed in the latest fashion and an image of vanity. Inevitably—because Don Pedro has a score to settle with Benedick—his teasing soon comes very close to taunting. Benedick, he says, looks ridiculous, outfitted as he is not in one smart style but in a mixture of all the modish foreign styles of dress. Nevertheless, this attack on Benedick is more dangerous because it inadvertently allows Don Pedro to send Claudio a destructive message. Claudio himself is newly concerned with “carving the fashion of a new doublet,” as Benedick said earlier (2.3.17-18)—he must be almost as absurdly dressed as his friend. By teasing Benedick and inviting Claudio to join him, Don Pedro in effect asks Claudio whether he wants to be a foolish young lover or the companion of an urbane and elegant prince.

The belief that young lovers are as foolish as their fashionable clothes represents Don Pedro's last line of defense, and Benedick now deprives him of his consoling thought. When Don Pedro and Claudio slyly argue over whether Benedick is in love, it is no accident that Don Pedro puts the negative case, asserting that there is “no true drop of blood” in Benedick (3.1.18-19). Benedick delivers a stunning refutation of Don Pedro's allegation. He proudly says to Leonato: “Walk aside with me, I have studied eight or nine wise words … which these hobby-horses must not hear” (ll. 71-73). That Benedick remains unperturbed testifies to the emotional strength the mere illusion of love gives the lover; Don Pedro registers shock: “For my life, to break with him about Beatrice.” Suddenly, Don John enters as the tempter and says with grim irony, “My lord and brother, God save you!”

Like many great temptations in Renaissance literature, the success of this one depends on the predisposition of those tempted. Claudio, in his desire for a marriage that will bring him honor, has long been concerned to know that Hero is “modest.” He has now been made to feel that for an uncertain future he may forego Don Pedro's assured patronage. The prince has gradually succumbed to his own fear of the isolation that will follow the loss of Claudio to marriage. Finally, the temptation has been prepared for by showing that Don Pedro takes pride in the support he has given Claudio and society in general; he will not consciously be false to his ideals, but he may be easily convinced that he should protect Claudio from a marriage that will disgrace him.

When Don John announces that he has news showing the marriage to be ill-advised, Don Pedro puts himself forward as Claudio's protector. Then, when Don John accuses Hero of being “disloyal” (3.2.104), the prince waits until Claudio inquires of him: “May this be so?” “I will not think it,” Don Pedro replies. Even to the modern ear, his words imply that only his magnanimous mind stands against a sea of evidence. In Elizabethan English, the verb think distinguishes mental process from external reality, as in Hamlet's observation, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (2.2.249-50). Claudio catches Don Pedro's insinuation and quickly promises to watch at Hero's window. Then Don Pedro concludes, “O day untowardly turn'd!” and Claudio echoes him, “O mischief strangely thwarting!” (ll. 131-32). At this point, Claudio clearly contemplates shaming Hero in the church, and Don Pedro indicates a willingness to back him (ll. 125-27). Thus it is not surprising that later they both believe not only Don John's flimsy visual evidence, but the totally unsubstantiated charges about how Hero has already met her lover “a thousand times in secret” (4.1.94).

In the Bandello novella that is a probable source for Much Ado, Sir Timbreo (Claudio's equivalent), though hardly an admirable person at this point in the story, quietly repudiates Hero in a private communication sent to her father. By moving the scene into the church, Shakespeare not only creates effective theater; he puts Claudio and Don Pedro into a far worse light. Claudio allows Hero and her family to anticipate the marriage and then he suddenly insults her, in the harshest terms: “Give not this rotten orange to your friend,” he tells the shocked father (4.1.32). Pouring forth a torrent of abuse, Claudio depicts himself as a pathetic and larmoyant victim of woman's “savage sensuality” (l. 61). If he can be seriously thought of as a rounded human character (as I think it likely), this catalogue of stereotypical abuse is an index of a lava of desires that as a proper young suitor he has been forced to repress; towards Hero he has shown only “bashful sincerity and comely love” such as “a brother to his sister” shows (ll. 53-54). “You are dishonorable, not me,” he seems to insist in the church.

Don Pedro justifies his role by claiming that he acts reluctantly and only because his protégé has been wronged. Yet he, no less than Claudio, tries to inflict maximum pain. He waits until a critical moment, then instructs Claudio to “render [Hero] again” to her father. “Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness,” is Claudio's deeply ironic response (l. 30). That Don Pedro has become the teacher confirms his failure to master the “hard lesson” Claudio once asked of him. Don Pedro also speaks with devastating effect when Leonato, innocently trustful, turns to him: “Sweet Prince, why speak not you?” Then Don Pedro does speak: “I stand dishonor'd, that have gone about / To link my dear friend to a common stale” (ll. 64-65). The audience knows the prince is wrong and perhaps even senses complacency.

As Hero faints, and is perhaps thought to be dying, the three parties leave, in a final gesture of contempt: Don John, followed by Don Pedro and Claudio. Those who remain at Hero's side—Leonato, Beatrice, Benedick, and the friar who was to have performed the wedding ceremony—now have their moral fiber tested. They are concerned for Hero's life, outraged at the treatment she has received, and doubt (at least) that the charges against her are true. The friar—a figure partially detached from the society—provides exemplary faith in Hero's innocence, having noticed her “thousand” innocent blushes when her crimes were named. Beatrice also behaves admirably. She cries out in alarm when Hero falls, gives her comfort when she begins to stir, and testifies, to her innocence: “Oh, on my soul, my cousin is belied!” (l. 146).

Leonato, on the other hand, at once takes the accusations to be true: “Would the two princes lie, and Claudio lie?” he asks (l. 152), showing his limitations: he is a superficial man, unable to imagine that a contradiction might exist between exalted rank and inner worth. But while his credulity is forgivable, his vanity and self-absorption are more serious faults, since they lead him to heinous behavior. When Hero begins to stir, he tells her: “Do not live” (l. 123). Better she had been a changeling, he says, so that now, “smirched … and mired in infamy” as she is, he would not need to acknowledge her as his own daughter. Of course the harshness is intended to be an index of the severity of the charge and the importance of the code presumed violated. And yet as Leonato strings up what seems like a declension of first person personal and possessive pronouns, a note of self-centeredness is very clear in his lament: “Mine I lov'd, and mine I prais'd, / And mine that I was proud on, mine so much / That I myself was to myself not mine, / Valuing of her” (ll. 136-39). Leonato had “valued” his daughter as a flattering possession; the marriage he desired for her—to a count with royal connections—was to redound to the credit of his family, indeed, to his credit. Once Hero suffers “shame,” he wants “no part” of her. Leonato's words are among the harshest any father in Shakespeare speaks to his child, and the harshest in all the comedies. Leonato is not an evil man, but his values are questionable.

Though Leonato and Hero respond to the crisis in almost opposite ways, both declare themselves unambiguously; on the other hand, Benedick's reaction puzzles. At first it seems that his remaining in the church reflects a moral decision to dissociate himself from his former friends and commit himself to the wronged family. But though Benedick is sympathetic, he continues to describe Don Pedro and Claudio as possessing his “inwardness and love” (l. 245), and he is noncommittal about the allegations against Hero: “I am so attir'd in wonder, / I know not what to say” (ll. 144-45). A satisfactory explanation for Benedick's presence has yet to emerge.

When Leonato, Hero, and the friar leave the church, Beatrice and Benedick remain. Shakespeare has cunningly planted a temptation for them. Having not been alone together since falling in love, they now have an opportunity to court, but under circumstances when their primary obligation should certainly be to Hero and not to themselves.

Benedick begins by comforting Beatrice, trying (for the first time) to sound convinced of Hero's innocence: “Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wrong'd” (ll. 259-60). Beatrice rightly sees that Benedick is making a tentative approach to her, and she wants to encourage him, at the same time that she contrives to prevent their “alliance” from conflicting with her loyalty to Hero. Beatrice shrewdly answers Benedick by remarking: “Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right” Hero (ll. 261-62). Then when Benedick volunteers to be that man, Beatrice tells him: “It is a man's office, but not yours.” She goads Benedick to prove his valor, while also implying that he must choose whether he is committed to his friends or to her family. Benedick promptly takes Beatrice's hint and renounces one allegiance by declaring another: “I do love nothing in the world so well as you.” They quickly drop mention of Hero and talk of love.

Eventually the conversation does return to Hero, but only because Benedick moves out of his depth. Though Beatrice has asked him to avenge her family, Benedick cannot conceive how disturbed Beatrice is both by the wrong done her cousin and her own present neglect of Hero's cause. Benedick's ignorance and his penchant for the grand gesture lead him to present himself as a knight errant ready to prove his worth to his ladylove: “Come, bid me do any thing for thee” (l. 288). Though initially cautious when they spoke of love, Beatrice had gradually been swept along on a tide of enthusiasm; hearing these words, however, she remembers the Benedick of old, a man of many words but little faith. Instinctively, she challenges him to meet her highest expectations: “Kill Claudio.” Taken completely by surprise, Benedick exclaims: “Ha, not for the wide world.”

Beatrice now must make a choice. She can accept Benedick as he is, or repudiate him, or attempt to have him see with her eyes. She seems to end the interview, but her witty reply betrays her: “You kill me to deny it [i.e., the request]. Farewell.” Benedick detains her, and she stays, but not without confronting him with the reasons for her anger:

Is [Claudio] not approv'd in the height a villain, that hath slander'd, scorn'd, dishonor'd my kinswoman? O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand [deceive with false hopes] until they come to take hands, and then with public accusation, uncover'd slanders, unmitigated rancor—O God, that I were a man! … Princes and counties! Surely a princely testimony, a goodly count, Count Comfect, a sweet gallant surely! O that I were a man for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into cur'sies, valor into compliment, and men are only turn'd into tongue, and trim ones too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie, and swears it.

(4.1.301-6, 315-22)

Of interest is the fact that Beatrice focuses her indictment of Claudio not on his decision to break the engagement, but on his way of disrupting the wedding ceremony. It would seem that she has detected beneath his mincing manner a sadistic urge that led him to calculate Hero's humiliation. Beatrice has measured the man; she realizes, as Leonato does not, that titles may mislead. Claudio is nothing more than a “sweet gallant,” a spoiled young aristocrat. Beatrice widens her view to encompass Don Pedro and Don John—they have provided “princely testimony,” she remarks bitterly—and then broadens her scope still further to take in all of “manhood” as she has observed it in her society. She sees that an ostentatious display of courtesy hides the absence of real courtesy; honor comes at a risk; better to guard one's social position and simply appear honorable.

Beatrice speaks with the authority she has gradually accumulated since the opening scene, in which she sought to discover the reality everyone else was busy to ignore. She interprets the repudiation of Hero as more than an isolated event; she sees it as confirming doubts she has long entertained—not necessarily specific doubts about specific people, but a general suspicion that extrinsic and intrinsic honor have become confused in her society. Though Beatrice's tirade is delivered in the heat of passion, it nevertheless contains, I believe, a core of truth.

The church scene tests and exposes a society in miniature. In Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato grievous flaws are uncovered, and in Beatrice and Benedick, potentially significant weaknesses. At the bitterest moments during the scene, one might complain with Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost that Jack hath not Jill and the play nothing resembles a comedy. Yet this scene has several hints that Jack will have Jill, and the following scene contains more. The friar, making an attempt to comfort Leonato, suggests a ruse: the family should pretend that Hero is dead; he hints at a miraculously happy outcome and goes so far as to say, “this wedding-day / Perhaps is but prolong'd” (ll. 253-54).

The interview between Beatrice and Benedick also gives strong indications that this match will go forward. Then in the second scene of act 4, Dogberry enters with the nightwatchmen and their prisoners, Borachio and Conrade. The audience already knows that the nightwatchmen overheard a drunken Borachio confess the details of Don John's plot to Conrade. Disclosure of the plot was delayed only because Leonato was in haste to join the wedding party and because he and Dogberry, equally self-important personages, spoke at cross-purposes. However, the sexton proves an efficient investigator. Already informed that Don John has fled the city, he quickly ascertains the nature of his crimes. It seems likely that at least a considerable portion of the blame will light on Don John; if it does, Don Pedro and Claudio may be reconciled to Leonato and the planned marriage may yet go forward. By the end of act 4, therefore, Shakespeare has not left great doubt about the externals of the plot.

Act 4 has, however, raised questions about the “inward changes” which will be the focus of the last act. The characters all have another test to confront. They have a chance to redeem themselves and prove worthy of the celebration that lies in the offing. Or they can merely resume the rush to the altar, once their knowledge of Don John's crime permits him to serve as their scapegoat.

Specific questions about individual characters have emerged during act 4. In suggesting his ruse to Leonato, the friar predicts that “slander” will change to “remorse” when the princes and Claudio receive news of Hero's death (l. 211). Of Claudio, in particular, the friar says that “if ever love had interest in his liver,” and regardless of whether Claudio continues to believe Hero guilty, knowledge of her death will make him regret her loss and contemplate the beauties in her life (ll. 222-33). If the friar is right, Claudio will gain an appreciation for Hero that he has never had, and Don Pedro will recommit himself to true courtesy.

The friar also helps to establish the test facing Leonato. Shocked by Leonato's loss of faith in Hero, the friar urges on him belief in his daughter's innocence. Although Leonato at first rejects the suggestion, he eventually admits the possibility. He is still more concerned with his own dignity than with Hero's plight, however. When he promises revenge against the princes and Claudio if they are guilty, he seems eager to impress others that he is not a man to be trifled with (ll. 190-200). He lacks all conviction about who is at fault, and he eventually agrees to follow the friar's plan by saying: “Being that I flow in grief, / The smallest twine may lead me” (ll. 249-50). About all that can be said in favor of Leonato is that for the moment he accepts the advice of well-intentioned people: he remains susceptible to beneficent influences.

Beatrice and Benedick also have yet to prove themselves. That they will eventually marry there is little doubt. But will they, as a couple, exert moral authority? If others do not, will they at least call Don Pedro and Claudio to account? From their relationship thus far, an answer to this question probably depends on the answer to another: Will Benedick defer to Beatrice's greater wisdom, or will she gratify Benedick by accepting the subordinate role?

In the course of act 5, the anticipated justification for a celebration develops: major blame for the slander of Hero is attributed to Don John. Whether the audience accepts this interpretation of events depends in part upon the judgments it made in the earlier acts; if viewers were critical, they will find ample reason for remaining so. The sequence of the act itself invites suspicions. The first three scenes immediately follow the interrupted wedding; the last scene takes place the next morning. In other words, in a trice of time, the march to the altar resumes. Has an adequate investigation taken place, or has Messina chosen Don John as a scapegoat in order to remove an impediment to marriage?

Doubts about Leonato's character are kept alive by his conversation with his brother, Antonio, at the beginning of act 5. Leonato takes no comfort in Hero's survival; nor does he once regret the harsh words he spoke to her. His concern is still not his daughter's suffering, but his own, which, however, he expresses in hyperbolical language that cannot possibly represent true passion. No father has grieved as he grieves, and no father “so lov'd his child” (5.1.8)—a preposterous claim, one might think. In everything Leonato says, he implies a subtext: “I'm an important person who has been affronted.” Leonato acts the lordly paterfamilias who feels sorrows inaccessible to his brother. When Don Pedro and Claudio enter, the two brothers foolishly compete to show greater concern for the insult the family has suffered. A. P. Rossiter describes them as “two old men lashing themselves back into a youthful fury.” First Leonato, then Antonio, challenges Claudio, as if each is trying to outdo the other. The challenges bring to the fore a question about Leonato's motives. By maintaining the fiction of Hero's death, Leonato leaves open the friar's suggestion, that Don Pedro and Claudio will seek a rapprochement with him. For all Leonato's bluster, he does not break decisively with the men who slandered his daughter.

As soon as Leonato learns from the sexton of Don John's flight, he confronts Don Pedro and Claudio, ironically calling them “a pair of honorable men” (l. 266) who should include Hero's death among their “high and worthy deeds” (l. 269). Leonato seems stern, but he has a ruse in mind. Responding to the offers of Don Pedro and Claudio to do penance, Leonato turns to the latter and asks him to go to Hero's grave that evening, where he should hang an epitaph on her tomb and sing a dirge (ll. 284-85). Then, as if requesting further restitution, Leonato instructs the men to return to his home the next morning, at which time Claudio should marry his niece.

Leonato's easily accomplished penance may merely reflect the dramatist's desire for a quick and happy denouement. Shakespeare has added one detail, however, that raises a question about Leonato's motives. Leonato states very carefully that his “niece” is sole heir to both himself and his brother (l. 290). As Claudio is a man interested in inheritances, Leonato's purpose seems clear: he has long ago decided that Count Claudio, with his royal connections, would make a good son-in-law, and he now wishes to consummate the union between the young man and his daughter.

The behavior of Claudio and Don Pedro in act 5 makes it difficult to believe that they undergo the reformation Leonato fails to require. The friar had expected Don Pedro and Claudio to repent upon hearing of Hero's death; instead they enter to taunt the father and uncle of the woman presumed killed. Don Pedro needles Leonato by curtly walking by him with the comment: “We have some haste” (5.1.47). Claudio puts his hand on his sword, then denies he would give Leonato's “age such cause of fear” (l. 56). Claudio and Don Pedro have continued their downward spiral. Don Pedro had been a model of courtesy until the church scene, during which he struck out at society, at the hated institution of marriage. When Don Pedro finds that no punishment is forthcoming and that he even retains Claudio's companionship, his habitual control partially breaks down, and he exercises a kind of drunken freedom. Of course, as royalty, Don Pedro knows how to hint antagonism and suggest a course for Claudio to follow, while he himself avoids an open, irreconcilable break with Leonato. Claudio, for his part, is no longer the well-behaved young man who arrived in Messina. He throws off the constraints he accepted when he sought Leonato's favor and becomes the snob Beatrice thought she detected in the church.

It is not until Leonato and his brother leave that Don Pedro and Claudio have a chance to express their full contempt for their host. As soon as Benedick enters, they tell him that, “We had lik'd to have had our two noses snapp'd off with two old men without teeth” (ll. 115-16). This remark earns a rebuke from Benedick, who then delivers his challenge to Claudio. At this point, Claudio and Don Pedro join in uncontrollable jesting at Benedick's haughty manner. Even after Benedick discloses in a parting comment news of Don John's flight, Claudio and Don Pedro continue to laugh at Benedick's pretensions, though Don Pedro, at least, knows it is time for him to be serious (ll. 203-5). When Dogberry enters with his prisoners, Borachio and Conrade, the prince amuses Claudio by parodying the foolish constable's speech. Only Borachio's somber confession gives Don Pedro pause:

DON Pedro:
Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?
CLAUDIO:
I have drunk poison whiles he utter'd it.

(5.1.244-46)

These lines suggest that residual levity may remain in both men, for Don Pedro describes how the news affects him by using a figure of speech that Claudio, as if amused, develops in his reply. Don Pedro's remark shows him distancing himself from the crime in still another way, as Horace Furness noticed: “How gracefully and adroitly the Prince evades all responsibility by the use of this ‘your’ instead of our!” Don Pedro makes another deft move. Guilt is still too close to him if he leaves it with Claudio, since the two have been constant companions. Therefore the prince gets Borachio to confirm that Don John instigated the plot, then emphatically describes his brother as “compos'd and fram'd of treachery” (l. 249). Don Pedro anticipates the use others will make of his brother; yet the prince, as well as anyone, knows Don John's evil nature. Rather than making a new discovery, Don Pedro merely finds a way to extenuate his guilt.

When an apparently angry Leonato accuses Don Pedro and Claudio, they say they are contrite; they are undoubtedly shaken by the discovery of Hero's innocence, yet they do not fully confront the wrong they have done. After offering to do penance, Claudio adds, “yet sinn'd I not, / But in mistaking” and Don Pedro (content on this occasion to be Claudio's echo) adds, “By my soul, nor I” (5.1.274-75). Their wrongdoing hardly seems merely a matter of having trusted the treacherous Don John. Nor is it only their reluctance to accept guilt that is disturbing. Don Pedro appears to patronize Leonato: “To satisfy this good old man, / I would bend under any heavy weight / That he'll enjoin me to” (ll. 276-77). And although Claudio with tears embraces Leonato's offer of his niece in marriage, he does so immediately following mention of the double dowry; is he partly moved by the sudden opportunity to restore himself to good social standing?

The dirge scene resolves none of the doubts that have arisen about the “inner changes” the two men have experienced. Shakespeare might easily have created the impression of protracted mourning by beginning the scene in medias res. Instead, the scene opens with the arrival in the churchyard of the two men and several musicians and singers. Claudio reads the epitaph and asks the singers to render a “solemn hymn” (5.3.11). Claudio fulfills Leonato's directions, doing no less—and no more—than was asked of him. Alexander Leggatt notices that Claudio's grief is expressed only through “external forms,” never in personal terms, but argues that “formal expressions of feeling have their own kind of value.” The scene remains ambiguous, however, because the reality that lies behind Claudio's willingness to conform to social rituals is questionable. The few words that Don Pedro and Claudio exchange between themselves lack a convincing indication of sorrow.

Even in the final scene Don Pedro and Claudio seem curiously detached from the suffering they think they have caused. When the men arrive at Leonato's, Don Pedro smartly teases Benedick, recalling to him his boast that he would die a bachelor. Claudio, still taking his cues from Don Pedro, elaborates upon the joke (5.4.40-47). Claudio has been accused of “flippancy,” and rightly, I think. Asked whether he is prepared to fulfill his promise to marry Antonio's daughter, he replies, “I'll hold my mind were she an Ethiope” (l. 38). Then, when the masked women approach, he turns from Benedick, saying, “Here comes other reck'nings. / Which is the lady I must seize upon?” (ll. 52-53). The remark is not very gracious, to say the least. Claudio acts as if he feels compelled to go through with the wedding, but regards the situation as disagreeably beneath his dignity.

Beatrice and Benedick display in act 5 the willingness to compromise moral principle anticipated in their church interview. Benedick has already challenged Claudio in a pompous manner that makes it hard to take at face value the moral earnestness he alleges. His lack of gravity is amply illustrated when he searches for Beatrice to report having made the challenge. He has been writing sonnets—poor stuff, he admits—while insisting that in other ways, he is a “deserving” lover (5.2.29-41). Beatrice enters to ask: “What hath pass'd between you and Claudio?” “Only foul words—and thereupon I will kiss thee.” Benedick's answer shows him unwilling to be serious and eager to divert Beatrice. As in the church interview, Beatrice feigns a departure, then engages in love talk.

Only a chance comment from Benedick brings to the surface Beatrice's underlying reservations. When Benedick casually remarks upon the extension of their accustomed repartee into the period of their courtship by saying, “Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably” (l. 72), Beatrice's reply introduces unexpected caution: “It appears not in this confession; there's not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.” Benedick will not be gainsaid, however; he answers that in the present day and age, a man with a free conscience should be “the trumpet of his own virtues” (ll. 85-86). Promptly taking his own advice, Benedick testifies that he himself is “praiseworthy.” Beatrice answers never a word, for she has learned her uncle's lesson at last: “Niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue” (2.1.18-19).

A servant suddenly brings Beatrice and Benedick news:

It is prov'd my Lady Hero hath been falsely accus'd, the Prince and Claudio mightily abus'd, and Don John is the author of all, who is fled and gone.

(5.2.96-99)

Once, in an outraged voice, Beatrice had shown Benedick that, regardless of whether Don Pedro and Claudio thought Hero guilty, they treated her abominably. Neither Beatrice nor Benedick wish to remember the resolve they made then. Their one desire is to rush off and join Hero and Claudio in a double wedding.

By now properly investigating the crime that took place and by accepting perfunctory repentances, the family is able to celebrate two marriages, as it has long desired to do. Audience response to the celebration is shaped by the decision arrived at about the real nature of the crime. I have yet to consider the light shed on this event by one possible accomplice, Margaret, Hero's “waiting gentlewoman.”

Margaret and Borachio are apparently lovers (2.2.12-14). In suggesting a plot to Don John, Borachio confidently assumes Margaret's willingness to disguise herself as Hero in order to decoy Claudio into thinking his fiancée is unfaithful (2.2.41-50). Subsequent evidence suggests that Borachio may have judged Margaret correctly. The night before the planned wedding, the nightwatch overhears Borachio describe the incident that just took place. He says that he called Margaret Hero and that Margaret answered to that name from her chamber-window and bid him “a thousand times good night” (3.3.147-48). Later Margaret is said to have dressed in Hero's garments (5.1.238). When Leonato finally gets the information gathered by the nightwatch, he questions Borachio about Margaret. Borachio, however, testifies that she “knew not what she did when she spoke to” him (5.1.301). Still suspicious, Leonato interrogates Margaret; at the opening of 5.4, in Margaret's presence, Leonato settles upon a somewhat different account from the one Borachio offered—she acted not unwittingly, but “against her will” (5.1.5). Leonato exonerates her and she is included in the celebration.

The critics have been satisfied with Leonato's verdict. They dismiss the evidence against Margaret, arguing either that it is too trivial to notice in performance or that it represents something other than Shakespeare's final intention, the survival from a source for the play, perhaps, or an earlier version of Much Ado itself. One wonders, however, whether the strength of the evidence is sometimes overlooked because it raises a question about the adequacy of Leonato's entire investigation and thus about the conventionally happy close of the comedy.

Margaret has a motive for the crime: resentment against her social betters. Margaret shows her character most fully when she helps Hero dress for her wedding (3.4). Margaret treats Hero as a spoiled rich girl. As Hero fusses over her clothes and seeks the attention she feels is her right on this occasion, Margaret first makes her uncomfortable about the choice of a ruff, and then obliquely deprecates Hero's gown by comparing its simplicity with the duchess of Milan's more lavish garment (ll. 14-23). Finally, Margaret shows up the prim and proper Hero by making a coarse allusion to marital sex. Hero rebukes her:

HERO:
Fie upon thee, art not asham'd?
MARGARET:
Of what, lady? of speaking honorably? Is not marriage honorable in a beggar? Is not your lord honorable without marriage?

(3.4.28-31)

This excerpt perhaps makes a difficult passage more difficult; yet the drift of Margaret's remark is clear. She alludes to Heb. 13.4 (a passage incorporated in the Anglican marriage service), where marriage is declared “honorable in all.” Margaret implies a contrast between the equality enjoined on man in the Bible and the inequality introduced by social distinctions: Hero's lord is “honorable without marriage”—he is the honorable Count Claudio. In the social world in which Margaret and Hero live, honor is achieved not by making any marriage but by a “good” marriage. Later, in a bawdy exchange with Benedick, Margaret expresses the desire for a marriage that will not leave her “below stairs” (5.2.10). Margaret has no such marriage in prospect, and she resentfully watches Hero's nuptial approach.

Margaret behaves, in fact, as if she might indeed have participated in the plot the previous evening and now sought to justify in her own mind the damage about to ensue. Whether or not Margaret did indeed conspire with Don John and Borachio the play does not demonstrate. Instead, Shakespeare uses Margaret to help develop the dark background against which Messina moves toward marriage. Margaret makes it harder to think of Don John's evil as singular; he emerges more clearly as part of a social context that includes characters in the mainstream of society.

It is difficult to maintain a sharp distinction between “good” and “evil” characters in the play. Don Pedro's destructive urge does not originate in Don John. The bastard prince succeeds because he is, in part, the destructive side of Don Pedro and the side that comes to prevail. In like manner, it is also possible that even without both princes, Claudio might have denounced Hero as he did. By putting his question to Benedick about Hero's chastity in the negative, he reveals that doubt already has a place in his mind: “Is she not a modest young lady?” Finally, Leonato's tirade against his daughter results from emotions elicited, but surely not caused, by the particular set of circumstances brought about by Don John's plot.

The enemy is within the gates of Messina. Beneath a thin veneer of civility, Messina is an anxious and insecure world where the men “hold their honors in a wary distance” (Othello 2.3.56). Uneasy about their social position, anxious to advance their fortunes, the characters keep a watchful eye, and as soon as they perceive danger, push cordiality aside. A quarrel almost develops after the dance, then flares out at the wedding. If the characters felt strong affection for one another, once the heat of the moment passed they would begin to seek a reconciliation; instead, acrimonious exchanges and challenges open act 5. The characters quarrel until Don John's flight makes it possible to think of marriage again; then they hastily conclude peace. Yet the celebration cannot wholly obliterate the tensions that surfaced. Benedick and Claudio exchange verbal blows with their old gusto until Benedick remembers that he must leave Claudio “unbruis'd” because through marriage they are about to become “kinsmen” (5.4.111).

Don Pedro is of course not part of the “alliance” concluded at Leonato's home, and the limits of kindness in Messina can be measured by the treatment accorded him. He is a foreign prince who had once been extended every courtesy. When he does not marry and fails as a matchmaker, he is no longer necessary to the household, though he is too important and too closely tied to Claudio to exclude or even treat with outright rudeness. The text of the play nevertheless provides hints (which can be developed in performance) that he is made subtly uncomfortable. When Don Pedro and Claudio offer to make restitution, Leonato gives instructions only to Claudio, although he does invite both men back to his home. When the men return, Don Pedro interjects himself into the conversation two or three times, but is not otherwise noticed until the last lines of the play. By this time, Benedick, pleased that he is marrying (as he thinks) despite social pressures, usurp's Leonato's role as master of ceremonies, even countermands Leonato's order that the wedding should precede the festivities; then he addresses Don Pedro, now neglected and silent:

Prince, thou art sad, get thee a wife, get thee a wife.
There is no staff more reverend than one tipp'd with horn.

(5.4.121-23)

This is the taunt of an insecure man. Even as Benedick goes to the altar, he needs to reassure himself by making Don Pedro feel left out. Benedick exhibits the hostility that has been part of Messina throughout the play and that helps to explain—though it does not excuse—the destructive acts of Don Pedro and the conspirators who malign Hero.