Character Profile – At a Glance
- Role: Leonato’s niece and Hero’s cousin, an orphan with no father to marry her off and no intention of marrying. The sharpest tongue in Messina, locked in a "merry war" of words with Benedick.
- Key Traits: Quick, proud, funny and loyal. Mocks men and marriage in public; weeps for her cousin in private. Once she admits she loves, she loves completely.
- The Core Conflict: Beatrice has sworn never to be ruled by a man and never to let one see her care. When Hero is slandered at the altar, the only weapon that can right the wrong is a man’s, and she has no man to wield it.
- Key Actions: Mocks Benedick before he has even arrived (A1S1). Refuses Don Pedro’s proposal and lays out the three dances of courtship (A2S1). Overhears Hero and Ursula and vows to tame her wild heart (A3S1). Defends Hero at the altar and tells Benedick to kill Claudio (A4S1). Marries Benedick, "upon great persuasion" (A5S4).
- Famous Quote:
"No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born."
(Act 2, Scene 1) - The Outcome: Married to Benedick, who stops her mouth with a kiss. She wins every round of their quarrel for four acts and gives up the last one by choice.
Signior Mountanto
Beatrice is talking about Benedick before he is on stage. A messenger brings news of the war, and while Leonato asks about the dead and Hero says nothing, Beatrice wants to know whether "Signior Mountanto" has come home. Nobody else knows who she means. Hero does. The nickname is a fencing term, the upward thrust, and it tells us that Beatrice has been thinking about one particular soldier and does not want anyone to notice.
When he arrives the two of them fall into their routine at once, and it is a routine: Leonato calls it a "merry war" and says they never meet without "a skirmish of wit". Benedick says he is loved by all ladies but her, and that he loves none. Beatrice is delighted to hear it.
Original
A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Well, that brings happiness to every woman, else they’d have to be pestered by an obnoxious sleazebag. And I thank God and my cold-blooded nature that I’m also like you, for I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loves me.
The dog and the crow are the point. Beatrice would rather listen to a noise that means nothing than a man saying something that is supposed to mean everything, because in her experience it does not. The theme of wit and communication begins here, with two people using jokes to say what they will not say plainly, and the play will spend four acts getting the plain words out of them.
The Three Dances
At the masked ball Beatrice gives Hero her advice on being courted, and it is the play’s most clear-eyed account of marriage. Courtship, she says, comes in three dances.
Original
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.
(Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
phase one – wooing; phase two – wedding; and phase three – regret; they’re like three different dances. Phase one – wooing – is hot and quick, like a Scottish jig, and equally as magical; phase two – the wedding – is a more modest dance, formal and full of tradition; and then phase three – regret – on its bad legs stumbles into a five-step dance that grows faster and faster, until it sinks into its own grave.
The jig is fast and silly; the measure is stately and formal; and then comes repentance, on bad legs, faster and faster into the grave. It is a joke with a long shadow. Beatrice has watched marriages, and she has concluded that the fun is all at the front. She will not be ruled by a "clod of wayward marl", she tells her uncle; Adam’s sons are her brothers, and she holds it a sin to marry her own kin.
Then the prince asks her, half in play, whether she will have him, and she gives the one answer that turns a prince down without insulting him.
Original
No, my lord, unless I might have another 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.
(Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
No, my lord, unless I can have a different husband on weekdays: your grace is too expensive to wear every day. But I beg you to forgive me: I was only born to tell jokes, and nothing of consequence.
"Too costly to wear every day" is a compliment and a refusal in six words. What follows is more telling: she apologises for being born "to speak all mirth and no matter". Don Pedro will not accept the apology, and tells her she was born in a merry hour. Her reply is that her mother cried, but a star danced. The theme of courtship and marriage in this play has two models, Hero’s silent assent and Beatrice’s running commentary, and the ball shows both at once.
What Fire Is in Mine Ears?
Beatrice is tricked the way Benedick is tricked, by overhearing a conversation staged for her benefit. Hero and Ursula walk in the orchard and talk about how Benedick loves her and how she is too proud and scornful ever to be told. What Beatrice hears is not a declaration of love. It is a description of herself, and it is not flattering.
Her response is the only time in the play she speaks in verse, and the only time she speaks alone.
Original
What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! And maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My ears are burning! Is this true, no lie?
Am I disliked for being prejudicial?
Contempt, farewell! And virgin pride, goodbye!
Those features never turn out beneficial.
Ten lines, rhymed, where she usually talks in quick prose. The form tells us something has changed. The questions are real: she is asking whether what she heard is true, and she decides that it is. "Contempt, farewell! And maiden pride, adieu!" is a farewell to the person she has been playing. Nobody made her love Benedick. They told her she was proud, and she found she minded. The theme of deception and noting works on Beatrice differently from everyone else: the lie she is told is about him, but the truth she discovers is about herself.
Kill Claudio
At the wedding Hero is accused, faints, and is left for dead by the men who loved her. Beatrice never doubts her for a second. When the church empties and Benedick, of all people, stays behind, the two of them finally say what the play has been waiting for. He says he loves nothing in the world so well as her. She says she loves him with so much of her heart that none is left to protest. He asks her to bid him do anything for her.
Original
BENEDICK: Come, bid me do any thing for thee.
BEATRICE: Kill Claudio.
BENEDICK: Ha! Not for the wide world.
BEATRICE: You kill me to deny it. Farewell.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: Then ask me to do anything for you.
BEATRICE: Kill Claudio.
BENEDICK: Ha! Not for all the world.
BEATRICE: Then you’re killing me by refusing. Goodbye.
Two words, and the comedy stops. Beatrice is not being witty. She wants Claudio dead for what he did to her cousin, and she is asking the man who has just declared himself to prove it. His first answer is a laugh. Her second line is not. Productions have played the moment every way from a gasp to a roar of laughter, and both work, because the line is both: it is absurd, and she means it.
What follows is the longest speech of her life, and it is about not being a man. She would eat Claudio’s heart in the market-place; but she cannot challenge him, and the men who could have turned into tongue. Benedick listens, asks one question, and goes to issue the challenge. The theme of honour and shame belongs to the men in this play until Beatrice takes it from them.
No More Than Reason
Even at the end Beatrice will not say it plainly. Asked in front of everyone whether she loves Benedick, she says no more than reason; he says the same; and the match is saved only when Claudio and Hero produce two love-sonnets, one in his hand and one in hers. Beatrice makes her terms.
Original
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.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I wouldn’t refuse you; but, rest assured, I’m only doing this after much persuasion; and partly to save your life, for I heard you were wasting away without me.
She yields "upon great persuasion", and partly to save his life. It is the same joke she made in Act 1 about Benedick as a disease. Then he kisses her, and for the first time in the play she has nothing to say. Whether that is a happy ending or the first move in the dance of repentance is a question the play leaves open, and Beatrice, who described the dance, would be the first to say so.
"In Beatrice, high intellect and high animal spirits meet, and excite each other like fire and air."
— Anna Jameson, Characteristics of Women, 1832
Key Quotes
Quote 1
Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
How could Miss Condescending die while she still has so much material to get through from Signior Benedick? Good manners turn into condescension whenever you are near her.
Quote Analysis: Beatrice to Benedick, moments after he calls her "Lady Disdain". She takes the insult and wears it. Disdain cannot die while Benedick is alive to feed it; courtesy itself would turn to disdain in his presence. The exchange is pure sparring, but notice how personal it is. She is not insulting men. She is insulting him, and she has clearly been practising.
Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.
(Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Well, that won’t happen until God makes men out of something other than earth. Wouldn’t it hurt a woman to be ruled by a brave smattering of dust? To dedicate an account of her life to a clump of obstinate clay? No, uncle, I won’t do that. The offspring of Adam – who was made from dust – are my relatives, and marrying them is a sin.
Quote Analysis: Beatrice to her uncle, who hopes to see her married. "Valiant dust" and "wayward marl" are what men are made of, according to Genesis, and Beatrice will not spend her life accounting for herself to a lump of clay. The joke about Adam’s sons being her brothers makes marriage sound like incest. It is the funniest refusal of marriage in Shakespeare, and like most of Beatrice’s jokes it means exactly what it says, until the play changes her mind.
And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand:
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in a holy band;
For others say thou dost deserve, and I
Believe it better than reportingly.
(Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And, Benedick, keep loving me; I’ll match you,
And tame myself to make my brash heart sing:
Through kindness, if you love me, then I’ll catch you
And turn your love into a wedding ring;
You’ll make a worthy husband, they suggest,
And I believe it more than they attest.
Quote Analysis: The close of her one soliloquy, in rhymed verse. "Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand" borrows the language of falconry: Hero has just called her as wild as one of the "haggerds of the rock", a hawk caught full-grown, and Beatrice takes the image and offers to be tamed. The last line is the key to the whole trick. She believes Benedick deserves her "better than reportingly", that is, better than the report she has just overheard. She is not persuaded by the gossip. She has decided for herself.
O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh God, if only I was a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.
Quote Analysis: Beatrice to Benedick, after "Kill Claudio". The wish to be a man is repeated four times in the speech, and each time it means the same thing: a man could challenge Claudio and she cannot. The image of eating his heart in the market-place is savage and public, which is the point. Hero was shamed in public; Beatrice wants the revenge to be public too. It is the moment the play’s wittiest character runs out of wit and finds she has rage underneath.
Key Takeaways
- The Merry War: Beatrice and Benedick insult each other because it is the only way either can talk to the other, and the play spends four acts getting the plain words out of them.
- Three Dances: Her account of courtship as a jig, a measure and a cinque pace is the play's most honest view of marriage, from a woman who has decided to sit it out.
- Tricked into the Truth: The gulling tells her a lie about Benedick and a truth about herself; her one soliloquy is a farewell to pride, not a surrender to gossip.
- Kill Claudio: Two words turn the comedy serious: Beatrice has loyalty, rage and no weapon, and she borrows Benedick's.
Study Questions and Analysis
Were Beatrice and Benedick in love before the play begins?
The text hints at it and never explains. Beatrice knows Benedick "of old"; she says he always ends with "a jade’s trick"; and when Don Pedro teases her that she has lost Benedick’s heart, she answers with a history nobody asked for.
Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.
(Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Indeed, my lord, I had it for a while; and I gave him my heart in return, loving him twice as much as he loved me. Though, once before, he won my heart with loaded dice, and so your grace is right to say that I have lost my heart.
A double heart for his single one; a heart won "with false dice". It sounds like a courtship that went wrong, with Beatrice giving more than she got and Benedick cheating. The play never returns to it, and we are left to decide how much of the merry war is a wound.
Editors have been careful with the passage, and most treat it as a deliberate hint of a prior attachment that Shakespeare chose not to develop. The oldest critical reading takes the quarrel itself as the evidence. August Wilhelm Schlegel, lecturing in 1808, argued that "the exclusive direction of their raillery against each other is in itself a proof of a growing inclination": people who only ever fight with one person are thinking about that person. Anna Jameson, in Characteristics of Women (1832), noticed the balance of the thing: "It is observable that the power is throughout on her side, and the sympathy and interest on his", which is roughly what the "false dice" speech says about the past. Alexander Leggatt, in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love (1974), read the pair as the play’s demonstration of real feeling living inside a convention, the convention here being the stage quarrel of witty lovers. Whether there was a romance behind it is a question for the actors. What the text establishes is that Beatrice’s mockery is not indifference. Nobody thinks that hard about a man she does not care about. The theme of love and romance in this play begins as a war because, for these two, war is safer.
Is Beatrice as happy as she seems?
Her uncle thinks so, and gives the best description of her in the play.
There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.
(Leonato, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
There’s not much misery in her nature, my lord: she is never sad except when she’s asleep, and she’s not even sad then; for I have heard my daughter Hero say that Beatrice often has unhappy dreams but she wakes herself up by laughing.
Dreaming of unhappiness and waking herself with laughing is a lovely image and a slightly worrying one. Beatrice laughs in her sleep because the alternative is to cry, and the play lets us see the other side once or twice: she is "sunburnt", she says, and may sit in a corner and cry "heigh-ho for a husband"; her mother cried when she was born, "but then there was a star danced". The star gets remembered. The crying mother is in the same sentence.
Ellen Terry, who played Beatrice opposite Henry Irving at the Lyceum in the 1880s, modelled the part on a friend and described what she was after in The Story of My Life (1908): "as fine a lady as ever lived, a great-hearted woman—beautiful, accomplished, merry, tender". Her one rule for playing her was pace: "Beatrice must be swift, swift, swift!" Anna Jameson (1832) had seen the same warmth under the wit, and insisted that "Beatrice, though wilful, is not wayward; she is volatile, not unfeeling", while admitting that in her wit "there is a touch of insolence". Barbara Everett, in an influential essay in Critical Quarterly (1961), shifted the emphasis from Beatrice’s temperament to her judgement, reading the play as one in which the women see clearly and the men do not. Modern productions have tended to follow Everett, often casting Beatrice older than Hero and letting the audience sense that the jokes about husbands are also jokes about time. Both readings are in the text. Beatrice is the happiest person in Messina and the one with the least to look forward to, and her wit is how she holds the two together. The theme of gender and patriarchy is not far beneath the surface: Hero’s future is being arranged by men in the next room, and Beatrice’s is not being arranged at all.
Why does Beatrice refuse Don Pedro?
Because he is not serious, and because she is. The proposal comes in the middle of the engagement scene, when everyone is pairing off and Beatrice has just announced that she will be left out.
Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sunburnt; I may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband!
(Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Thank the Lord for marriages! That’s what everyone does except for me, because I’m dark and unattractive; I may as well sit in a corner of a room and sigh, ‘Heigh-ho for a husband!’
Don Pedro offers to get her one, she asks for one of his father’s making, and he asks whether she will have him. Her answer, that he is "too costly to wear every day", is quick enough to let both of them pretend it was a joke. It may have been. Productions differ on whether Don Pedro means it, and on whether Beatrice, for a moment, is tempted.
Critics have read the moment both ways, and the play allows it. Gail Kern Paster, in her "Modern Perspective" essay for the Folger edition, takes the prince at his word elsewhere in the scene: his matchmaking is a way "to enliven the time between Claudio’s betrothal and nuptials by accomplishing a difficult thing", and on that reading the proposal is one more diversion from a man who treats love as a pastime. Others have heard a real offer in it, and have pointed to the end of the play, where the prince is the one man left without a partner. Anna Jameson (1832) thought the question of what Beatrice might have felt beside the point, since "Beatrice more charms and dazzles us by what she is than by what she says". What is not in doubt is Beatrice’s reason for saying no. A prince is a husband one wears for show, and she has just finished explaining that a marriage is a jig, a measure and a long repentance. She does not want to be a princess. She wants, though she has not yet admitted it, a man she can quarrel with as an equal. The theme of status and class runs quietly under the scene: a prince who woos for his friend, a count who wants an heiress, and a woman with no fortune mentioned who turns the prince down.
Is Beatrice really tricked into loving Benedick?
The trick is real, but what it changes is less clear than it looks. Hero and Ursula let her overhear that Benedick is dying of love for her and that she is too proud to be told. Listen to what Hero actually says about her.
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.
(Hero, Act 3, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
But Mother Nature never made a woman
Whose heart was prouder than the heart of Beatrice;
Her eyes are filled with scorn and disrespect,
And undervalue everything she sees,
And she thinks she is so intelligent,
She thinks all others weak. She cannot love,
Nor contemplate affection for another
For she’s so self-enraptured.
This is not bait about Benedick. It is a character assassination of Beatrice, delivered by the gentlest person in the play, and Beatrice’s soliloquy responds to that rather than to the news. "Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much?" is the question she asks, and her resolution is to give up contempt, not to fall in love. The love, it seems, was already there.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his 1818 lectures, saw why the same trick works on both of them: "the same stratagem being used in regard to Benedick and Beatrice, — the vanity in each being alike." It is their pride, not their hearts, that the conspirators aim at. A. P. Rossiter, in the lecture on the play collected in Angel with Horns (1961), treated the gulling as the benign version of the trick Don John plays on Claudio: both couples are shown a staged scene and believe it. Bertrand Evans, in Shakespeare’s Comedies (1960), called the play’s method "discrepant awareness": the audience knows more than the characters for most of the play, so that we watch Beatrice believe a lie while knowing it is about to become true. Gail Kern Paster, in the Folger "Modern Perspective", put the difference between the two gullings sharply: "While Benedick must be led to believe in Beatrice as Different from all other women, Beatrice must be brought to accept herself as just the Same." The sharpest reading, though, is the one the text offers. The conspirators do not create her feeling; they give her permission to have it. Hero tells the audience as much when she says that some Cupid kills with arrows and some with traps. Beatrice was never going to be shot. She had to be caught. The theme of deception and noting in this play distinguishes between lies that reveal and lies that destroy, and the orchard is where the first kind does its work.
Why does Beatrice say "Kill Claudio"?
Because she means it, and because it is the only thing she can ask for. Hero has been publicly shamed and left for dead by her bridegroom, and Beatrice has just been told by the man she loves that he will do anything for her. She asks for what she wants.
Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman?
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Hasn’t he proved himself the worst possible villain, by the way he slandered, scorned and dishonoured my cousin?
Slandered, scorned, dishonoured: the charge is laid out like a lawyer’s. Beatrice has watched Claudio string her cousin along to the altar and then destroy her in front of the congregation, and she sees no difference between that and murder. Benedick’s "Not for the wide world" is a reasonable man’s answer. Beatrice is not interested in reasonable.
The line has divided audiences since there were audiences. A. C. Swinburne, in A Study of Shakespeare (1880), loved it: "The good fierce outbreak of her high true heart in two swift words—‘Kill Claudio’—would have fluttered the dovecotes of fashionable drama to some purpose." Anna Jameson (1832) thought the comedy survives the moment because of "the very consciousness of the exaggeration", the gap between Beatrice’s real good nature and the ferocity of her language. Carol Cook, in her 1986 essay in PMLA, read it less warmly, as the moment the play’s "merry war" shows itself to be "a masculine struggle to maintain control of representation": Beatrice can demand a death but cannot deliver one, because the code of honour has no place for her. In performance the line can be a joke, a shock or both. Ellen Terry recorded in her memoir that Henry Irving, at the Lyceum, insisted on ending the scene with an added gag, Beatrice crying "Benedick, kill him—kill him if you can", because he feared the curtain would otherwise fall in silence; "I protested, and implored Henry not to do it," she wrote, and lost. What matters is that Benedick, having laughed, goes and does it. He asks one question, whether she believes in her soul that Claudio has wronged Hero, and on her word he challenges his closest friend. The theme of honour and shame in this play is usually about women’s chastity. For one scene it is about a man keeping his word to a woman.
What does Beatrice mean by "O that I were a man"?
She means it literally, and the speech is one of the clearest statements in Shakespeare of what a woman in this world cannot do.
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 courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh, if only I was a man, I’d deal with him! Or even if I had a friend who would do a man’s job for me! But brave men have melted into courteous comments, and bravery changed into compliments, and men speak empty words, and fancy words too. A man is considered as brave as Hercules when all he does is lie and swear it’s true. I cannot become a man by wishing I was one, hence I will die a grieving woman.
The wish comes three times in the full speech, and each time the reason is the same: a man could challenge Claudio and a woman cannot. What follows is a withering account of the men who could. Manhood has melted into courtesies; valour into compliment; men are "only turned into tongue". The insult is aimed at Benedick, standing in front of her, and at the prince and count who have just destroyed Hero with words and called it honour.
Carol Cook (1986) built her reading of the play around this speech, arguing that Messina’s men define themselves through a language of wit, cuckoldry jokes and honour that excludes women entirely, and that Beatrice’s rage exposes the exclusion without being able to end it: she must still ask a man to act. Jean E. Howard, in a 1987 essay on gender and rank in the play, placed the scene in a pattern where women are the objects of men’s theatrical deceptions and are never given the stage themselves; Beatrice’s speech is the nearest a woman comes to taking it. Harry Berger Jr., in Shakespeare Quarterly (1982), called the play’s world "the Men’s Club of Messina" and noted its double standard, that "women are responsible for their sins but men are not"; the speech ends, after all, with Beatrice weeping and Benedick leaving to do the man’s work. All three agree on what the speech is: the moment the play’s comedy about the battle of the sexes admits that the battle is not fair. "I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving" is as bleak a sentence as the comedies contain, and the theme of gender and patriarchy has no better summary.
Does Beatrice lose her independence by marrying Benedick?
The play asks the question itself, in its last scene, and then stops her mouth before she can answer. Unmasked and asked in front of everyone whether she loves him, Beatrice reverts to type.
BENEDICK: Do not you love me?
BEATRICE: Why, no; no more than reason.
BENEDICK: Why, then your uncle and the prince and Claudio
Have been deceived; they swore you did.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: Well, don’t you love me?
BEATRICE: No; well, no more than is reasonable.
BENEDICK: Well, then your uncle and the prince and Claudio
Have been deceived; they swore you did.
He gives the same answer; they discover they were both gulled; and for a moment it looks as if the whole thing might collapse into wit again. It takes two stolen love-letters to settle it. Even then Beatrice yields only "upon great persuasion" and to save his life, and Benedick ends the exchange with "Peace! I will stop your mouth", and a kiss.
Readers have divided on what the kiss means. George Bernard Shaw, reviewing the play in 1898, refused to be charmed by either of them: "The main pretension in ‘Much Ado’ is that Benedick and Beatrice are exquisitely witty and amusing persons. They are, of course, nothing of the sort." For Shaw what carries them is "the music of the words", not their meaning, and the kiss is simply where the music stops. Carol Cook (1986) read the silencing of Beatrice as the play’s final act of masculine control: the comedy’s ending, she argued, "leaves unresolved crucial conflicts that the play has generated", and the woman who said "O that I were a man" is married, kissed quiet and folded into a dance. Anna Jameson (1832) had taken the gentler view a century and a half earlier: "Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the first word, and will have the last", and the kiss, in that reading, is a shared joke between two people who have both run out of arguments. The fairest answer may be that the play gives us both. Beatrice and Benedick marry as equals who have each been tricked, each been exposed and each chosen to go on anyway, which is more than Hero and Claudio can say. But it is Benedick who gets the last long speech, and Beatrice who gets kissed into silence. The theme of courtship and marriage ends, as Beatrice predicted, in a measure: formal, stately and full of ancientry, with the woman’s part written for her.
