Character Profile – At a Glance
- Role: Don Pedro’s bastard brother, lately defeated in rebellion and grudgingly pardoned. The play’s villain: he engineers the slander of Hero out of pure spite, with Borachio and Conrade as his instruments.
- Key Traits: Sullen, silent, self-pitying and candid about his own malice. "A plain-dealing villain" who says little and means all of it.
- The Core Conflict: Don John cannot be what his brother is, so he will spoil what his brother loves. His hatred of Claudio, the "young start-up" who has the glory of his defeat, gives the spite a target.
- Key Actions: Tells Conrade he would rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his brother’s grace (A1S3). Tells Claudio at the ball that the prince woos Hero for himself (A2S1). Buys Borachio’s window plot for a thousand ducats (A2S2). Leads the prince and Claudio to the window, and in church calls Hero’s sins "not to be named" (A3S2, A4S1). Flees Messina and is brought back under guard (A4S2, A5S4).
- Famous Quote:
"I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace..."
(Act 1, Scene 3) - The Outcome: Captured in flight and brought back to Messina. Benedick promises to devise "brave punishments" for him tomorrow.
I Cannot Hide What I Am
Don John arrives with his brother’s army and says thirteen words. Leonato welcomes him as a man newly "reconciled to the prince your brother", and he answers: "I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank you." In the next scene, alone with Conrade, he explains why.
Original
I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I can’t hide what I am: I’ll be sad when there’s a reason, and won’t smile at anyone’s jokes; I’ll eat when I am hungry and won’t wait for any man; I’ll sleep when I am sleepy and won’t work for anyone; I’ll laugh when I am happy and won’t suck up to anyone.
It is a credo of sorts. He will be sad when he has cause, eat when he is hungry, sleep when he is tired, and flatter no one. Conrade has advised him to hide his discontent until he can show it safely, and Don John refuses. He has been forgiven and he resents the forgiveness; he is on a leash and he resents the leash. "Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me" is the last thing he says before Borachio brings him the news he can use.
The speech tells us what kind of villain this is. He is not clever, like Iago, and he does not enjoy himself, like Richard. He is a man who has lost, who is tolerated in the house of the man who beat him, and who has decided that his only freedom is to be disagreeable. The theme of status and class in this play has its bitterest voice in the brother who was born on the wrong side of it.
A Plain-Dealing Villain
Conrade asks whether he can make no use of his discontent, and Don John’s answer is that he uses nothing else. The image he chooses for himself is a dog.
Original
I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My brother only trusts me wearing a dog’s muzzle and chained to a block like a horse; so I have decided to keep quiet in my corner. If my mouth wasn’t muzzled, I would bite; if I had my freedom, I would do what I like. In the meantime, let me be who I am and don’t try to change me.
Muzzled, clogged, caged: his brother’s pardon feels to him like a kennel. If he had his mouth he would bite. The self-pity is real and so is the honesty; he calls himself "a plain-dealing villain" and means it as a point of pride, since the alternative, "a flattering honest man", is what he thinks his brother’s court is made of.
Shakespeare gives him no soliloquy in which he plans, gloats or doubts. Everything we know about Don John comes from what he says to his two followers, and it amounts to this: he is unhappy, he blames his birth and his brother, and he will hurt whoever is nearest. The theme of deception and noting in this play has a strange author, a man who cannot lie about himself and lies about everyone else.
Food to My Displeasure
Borachio tells him that the prince is going to woo Hero for Claudio, and Don John finds his target at once.
Original
That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow: if I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
That young upstart is taking all the glory of my defeat by my brother. If I can get one up on him, I’ll count myself blessed.
Claudio has "the glory of my overthrow": he distinguished himself in the war that Don John lost. To cross him in anything is to be blessed in everything. The first attempt, at the ball, is cheap and quick, a word in Claudio’s ear that the prince is wooing for himself, and it very nearly works. The second is Borachio’s idea, and Don John buys it.
Original
Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put it in practise. Be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a thousand ducats.
(Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Whatever harm this may grow into, I will put it into practice. Be shrewd and cunning as you do this, and I’ll pay you a thousand gold coins.
"Grow this to what adverse issue it can" is the whole of his moral reasoning. He does not care what happens to Hero, who has done him no harm; he does not care about the prince’s honour, which he will damage; he wants Claudio unhappy and he will pay a thousand ducats to see it. The theme of honour and shame in this play is a thing the villain understands perfectly and does not possess.
The Lady Is Disloyal
His one scene of real villainy is brief. He finds the prince and Claudio together, asks to speak with them, and performs a reluctant honesty that he has clearly rehearsed.
Original
I came hither to tell you; and, circumstances shortened, for she has been too long a talking of, the lady is disloyal.
(Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I came here to tell you, and, to be brief, for we’ve already spent too long talking about her, the lady is disloyal.
"Circumstances shortened" is a clever touch: he pretends to spare them a long story, and so avoids telling one. When Claudio asks "Who, Hero?", it is the prince, not Don John, who answers "Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero", and the villain has only to agree. He offers proof, not argument. If they will come with him tonight they will see her chamber window entered.
His finest stroke is the sentence that forecloses doubt: "If you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you know." He has made seeing the test, and he controls what they will see. In the church he adds one speech, that Hero’s sins are "not to be named", and lets Claudio and the prince do the rest. The theme of deception and noting works in this play by giving honest men a staged sight and letting their honour do the damage.
Fled Upon This Villany
Don John is gone before the truth comes out. The sexton reports that he "is this morning secretly stolen away", and the play never shows his flight or his capture. His name is spoken in his absence, and it is Benedick who first speaks it as a charge.
Original
Two of them have the very bent of honour;
And if their wisdoms be misled in this,
The practise of it lives in John the bastard,
Whose spirits toil in frame of villanies.
(Benedick, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Two of these men epitomise respect;
And if their wise opinions have been skewed,
The culprit’s sure to be that bastard John,
Whose rotten soul is always planning evil.
Benedick reasons it out in the church: the prince and Claudio are honourable, so if they have been misled, the misleading is John’s, "whose spirits toil in frame of villanies". It is the right answer, reached by the only character who thinks instead of looking. When Borachio confesses, the prince calls his brother "composed and framed of treachery", and the messenger’s last news is that John has been taken in flight and brought back with armed men.
Benedick tells the prince not to think about him until tomorrow. The villain who began the play with thirteen words ends it with none, and the comedy goes on dancing. The theme of love and romance in this play is restored in his absence, which is perhaps the point: Don John was never more than a spoiler, and the play dismisses him as one.
"Don John is the main-spring of the plot of this play; but he is merely shown and then withdrawn."
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, 1818
Key Quotes
Quote 1
There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
It’s impossible to measure these things; and hence my sadness is limitless.
Quote Analysis: Don John to Conrade, who has asked why he is so immeasurably sad. The answer is a riddle that means nothing and a confession that means a great deal: the cause of his sadness has no measure, so the sadness has no limit. He will not say what the cause is. The audience is left to guess at bastardy, defeat, humiliation, or simply temperament, and the play, deliberately, never settles it.
I make all use of it, for I use it only.
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I make every use of it, because it’s all I ever use.
Quote Analysis: His answer when Conrade asks whether he can make no use of his discontent. The line is a small masterpiece of sullenness. He makes every use of his unhappiness because it is the only thing he has, and the implication is that he has nothing else he wants to use. It is the closest Don John comes to explaining himself, and it explains a man for whom spite is not a means to anything but an end in itself.
If you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you know: if you will follow me, I will show you enough; and when you have seen more and heard more, proceed accordingly.
(Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
If you can’t trust what you observe, then don’t admit you know about it; if you will come with me, I’ll show you enough to convince you; and when you’ve seen and heard it all, act accordingly.
Quote Analysis: Don John to the prince and Claudio, who have hesitated. The sentence is a trap built out of their own values. Honourable men trust their eyes; if they will not trust what they see, they cannot claim to know anything. He has turned "noting", the play’s great word for watching and judging, into a snare, and he has done it by telling them exactly what he is going to do: show them "enough". They go, and they see what he has arranged.
Fie, fie! They are not to be named, my lord,
Not to be spoke of;
There is not chastity enough in language
Without offence to utter them. Thus, pretty lady,
I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Good grief! We can’t repeat what we have seen,
We mustn’t speak of that;
There’s insufficient subtlety in words
To speak without offence. Hence, pretty lady,
I’m sorry for your dreadful misbehaviour.
Quote Analysis: His only speech in the church, and a masterly one. Hero’s offences are too shameful to be spoken, so he will not speak them, and the refusal does more than any accusation could. "There is not chastity enough in language" to describe them. Then the final turn, "pretty lady", and sorrow for her "misgovernment", delivered by the man who hired the slander. He never raises his voice. He does not need to; the prince and Claudio are already shouting.
Key Takeaways
- The Plain-Dealing Villain: Don John is honest about his malice and dishonest about everything else; he has no plan beyond spoiling whatever his brother loves.
- A Canker in a Hedge: His bitterness is the bitterness of a bastard, a defeated rebel and a pardoned man, and he prefers hatred to gratitude.
- Seeing Is Believing: His method is to stage a sight and let honourable men draw the conclusion; he never has to lie about what they saw.
- Gone Before the End: He flees before the truth is known and is caught offstage; the comedy dismisses him with a promise of punishment tomorrow.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why is Don John a villain?
The play gives us circumstances rather than a reason. He is a bastard; he rebelled against his brother and lost; he has been pardoned and is kept on terms; and the man who won the war for his brother is Claudio. His first words in the play are an answer to Leonato’s welcome.
I thank you: I am not of many words, but I thank you.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I thank you. I’m not a man of many words, but I thank you.
The repetition is the point. He thanks Leonato twice because he has nothing else to say to him, and the formality is a kind of refusal. He is in the house of his conqueror, being made welcome by his conqueror’s friend, and he will not pretend to enjoy it.
The sources explain some of it. In Bandello’s story, the play’s main source, the slanderer is a rival in love with a motive anyone can understand; Shakespeare removed the motive and replaced it with a bastard brother who has no interest in Hero at all, so that the villainy becomes general spite rather than particular jealousy. The Folger editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine describe the result as "the virulent force of Don John, who acts with the kind of malice that strikes out at whatever promises to make someone else happy". Gail Kern Paster, in her "Modern Perspective" essay for the Folger edition, reads the character as a structural choice: "Shakespeare assigns the function of destroyer with evident symmetry to Don Pedro’s brother, Don John the Bastard", the maker of matches and the breaker of them sharing a father. Harry Berger Jr. (1982) read the two brothers as a pair, the legitimate prince who arranges lives for their good and the illegitimate one who arranges them for harm, and suggested that the play is less interested in John’s motive than in the resemblance. He belongs to the stage family of melancholy malcontents, and he looks forward to Shakespeare’s later bastard, Edmund in King Lear, though he is Edmund without the energy: he resents his position but does nothing to change it except make others miserable. What the text insists on is that he is unhappy, and that he has decided to stay so. The theme of status and class in this play produces one man who cannot rise and will not bend, and the comedy needs him only to set the plot going.
How does Don John compare with Iago?
Badly, and on purpose. Both are malcontents who destroy a marriage with a staged scene and a borrowed accomplice, and Don John’s window is an early sketch of Iago’s handkerchief. But Iago has wit, plans and soliloquies, and Don John has none of them. What he has is candour.
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any...
(Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I’d rather be a weed in a hedge than a rose in his favour, and it befits my character better to be hated by everyone than to act falsely to trick people into loving me.
A canker is a wild dog-rose, or the worm that eats a cultivated one. He would rather be the weed than the flower in his brother’s garden, and he will not "fashion a carriage", put on a manner, to win love. Iago fashions carriages for a living. Don John cannot, and says so, and the inability is his whole character.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his 1818 lectures, used the play to argue that Shakespeare’s interest lies in character rather than plot. Strip out everything not needed for the story, he said, "take away Benedick, Beatrice, Dogberry, and the reaction of the former on the character of Hero, — and what will remain?" The villain is part of the machinery: "Don John is the main-spring of the plot of this play; but he is merely shown and then withdrawn." On that view Don John does not need to be interesting, and is not. The genre explains the thinness: a comedy cannot afford a villain who absorbs the audience’s attention, so Shakespeare gives Don John enough malice to move the plot and not enough personality to compete with the lovers. The one quality that is distinctively his, the refusal to dissemble about himself, makes him in a strange way the most honest character in a play about deception. The comparison with Iago is therefore instructive in both directions. Iago shows what a Don John could become with intelligence and leisure. Don John shows what Iago would be without them: a sulk with a budget. The theme of deception and noting in this play is carried out by a man who finds lying easy and pretending impossible.
Why does Don John hate Claudio in particular?
Because Claudio won. The messenger in the first scene tells us that the prince has "bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio", and the honour was earned in the war against Don John. When Borachio brings news of the marriage, John’s reasoning is immediate: the "young start-up" has all the glory of his overthrow, and anything that crosses him is a blessing. In the next scene he makes the feeling plainer still.
Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his affection ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?
(Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Any barrier or obstacle that stops this happening will be like a medicine to me. I am sick with hatred for him, and whatever can get in the way of his affections sits well with me. How can you thwart this marriage?
"Sick in displeasure to him" is the phrase. Hatred is an illness and spoiling Claudio’s happiness is the medicine. Hero does not enter into it; she is the nearest thing to Claudio that can be broken.
This is the only motive the play supplies and it is enough for the purpose: an audience that has seen a sullen man welcomed into his enemy’s house will accept that he wants revenge on the enemy’s favourite. There is a class note in "start-up", an upstart, since Claudio is a count and John a prince’s son, and his contempt for Claudio’s rise is part of a larger resentment of a world in which merit and favour, rather than blood, decide who is honoured. Gail Kern Paster sees the hatred as structural rather than personal: the play "assigns the function of destroyer with evident symmetry" to the prince’s brother, so that whatever the prince builds, John will pull down. A. P. Rossiter (1961) was less interested in the motive than in the mechanism, and his account of the play’s "impetuous exuberance" rests on how little Don John has to do: the first lie, at the ball, succeeds only because Claudio is already disposed to believe that a greater man would take what he wants. The villain supplies the story and the victim supplies the credulity. All these readings agree that Hero is incidental. She is destroyed because she happens to be what Claudio loves. The theme of honour and shame in this play is a system in which a woman’s reputation can be spent in a quarrel between men, and Don John understands the system well enough to use it.
Whose idea is the window plot?
Borachio’s. Don John wants to stop the marriage and does not know how; his man has a plan, and the plan is built on Margaret.
The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the prince your brother; spare not to tell him that he hath wronged his honour in marrying the renowned Claudio – whose estimation do you mightily hold up – to a contaminated stale, such a one as Hero.
(Borachio, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The poison in that is yours to mix. Go and see the prince, your brother; make sure you tell him that he has done himself wrong by marrying the well-thought-of Claudio – whom you have a high opinion of – to a dirty prostitute like Hero.
Borachio will woo Margaret at Hero’s window, calling her Hero; Don John will bring the prince and Claudio to watch; and the sight will do the rest. "The poison of that lies in you to temper" is a neat division of labour. Borachio supplies the scene, Don John the interpretation, and the victims the conclusion.
Jean E. Howard (1987) read the plot as the play’s central example of unauthorised theatre: Borachio and Don John stage a scene exactly as the prince staged the orchard, with a script, a cast and a hidden audience, and the difference between the two productions is only that one is run by a prince and the other by a bastard and his hireling. The play, in Howard’s reading, disciplines those who try to control theatre without the rank for it and hands the stage back to the "better sort". August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) had seen the mirroring long before and enjoyed it: "the drollery, however, lies in the very symmetry of the deception." Bertrand Evans (1960) noted a technical choice: Shakespeare keeps the window scene offstage, so that the audience, which has known the plan since A2S2, never sees how convincing it was; we are spared the sight and so cannot share Claudio’s error, only judge it. Borachio’s later remark that poor villains can charge rich ones what they like is a small, sour comment on the whole arrangement. Don John’s contribution is the easiest part and the most important: he vouches for what the others will see. Without a prince’s brother to say "the lady is disloyal", the window is a servant flirting with a maid. The theme of deception and noting in this play depends on who tells you what you are looking at.
Is Don John a convincing villain?
Not in the way Iago or Edmund is, and the play does not try. His effect on the others is noted before he has done anything at all.
How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.
(Beatrice, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
That man always looks so sour! I can’t set eyes on him without getting heartburn an hour later.
Beatrice gets heartburn from the sight of him; Hero calls him "of a very melancholy disposition"; and the audience, which has already heard him in private, knows that the sourness is not a mood. He is on stage for a few minutes in each of five scenes, speaks in short, flat sentences, and never once surprises us. That is the design.
William Hazlitt, in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817), mentions him once, as "the villain Don John", and moves on, which is a fair indication of how the character struck a reader who loved the play. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818) thought him "merely shown and then withdrawn", and did not think the play the worse for it. The Folger editors Mowat and Werstine treat him as a force rather than a person, a malice "that strikes out at whatever promises to make someone else happy", and put the real blame on the men inside Messina who let it work. The thinness is functional: the plot needs a slanderer, the comedy cannot afford a tragic one, and a man who announces his own villainy saves the audience from having to work it out. Modern productions that cast a charismatic actor in the part are, on this view, fighting the text; the most faithful Don Johns are the dullest, because the point is that so small a man can do so much harm. There is something in this. The play’s real argument is not that villains are dangerous but that honourable men are credulous, and a cleverer Don John would let Claudio and the prince off the hook. As written, he gives them almost nothing: a sentence, a window, a silence in church. They do the rest themselves. The theme of deception and noting in this play is less about the deceiver than about the deceived, and Don John is kept small so that we look at them.
What happens to Don John at the end?
He runs, and is caught, and we see neither. The sexton tells us he has "secretly stolen away" on the morning of the wedding, before the plot has even been exposed; the messenger brings the last news in the last minute of the play.
My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight,
And brought with armed men back to Messina.
(Messenger, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My lord, your brother John has been arrested,
And brought back to Messina by some soldiers.
Benedick, who has just told the prince to get a wife, tells him to think about his brother tomorrow, and promises "brave punishments". Then the pipers strike up. Don John’s fate is deferred to a day the play does not show.
Northrop Frye (1965) saw the deferral as typical of Shakespearean comedy, which expels or postpones its blocking figures rather than punishing them on stage, because punishment is not what the form is for; Malvolio and Shylock get harsher treatment and the plays are the darker for it. Don John’s flight is itself a confession, and the play uses it in place of a trial: the sexton reports it as evidence against Borachio, and nobody afterwards needs to argue about guilt. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818) thought this exactly right for a character who is "merely shown and then withdrawn". Barbara Everett (1994) found the ending characteristically evasive, a society that has nearly destroyed an innocent woman turning its attention to music and leaving the reckoning for another day. It is a fair description and the play would not dispute it. Don John was never the problem; he was the occasion. The men who condemned Hero are dancing at her wedding, and the only person punished is one who could not have done it without them. The theme of honour and shame in this play ends with its villain in custody and its honourable men forgiven, which is probably how Messina would have wanted it.
What does Don John’s bastardy have to do with his villainy?
Everything and nothing. The play calls him "John the bastard" in its stage directions and lets Benedick use the word in the church, and his own speeches are full of the language of a man who cannot inherit, cannot rise and cannot be trusted. Conrade’s advice to him at the start assumes all of this.
Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.
(Conrade, Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Yes, but you mustn’t go shouting about all this until you can do so without people trying to restrain you. You recently rebelled against your brother, and he has only just forgiven you; whenever that’s not possible, you can’t put down real roots unless you create the warm weather yourself: you have to use the good times to benefit yourself.
Hide your discontent until you can afford it; you have only just been forgiven; make your own fair weather. It is the advice of a man who knows his master has no standing except what his brother allows him, and Don John rejects it because the standing is exactly what he cannot bear.
He belongs to the Elizabethan stage tradition of the bastard as natural malcontent, a figure whose birth is taken to explain his nature, and Shakespeare both uses the convention and makes it feel personal: John’s complaint is not that he is wicked by blood but that he is caged by circumstance. Gail Kern Paster treats the bastardy as a piece of design, the "evident symmetry" by which the play gives its destroyer the same father as its matchmaker. Harry Berger Jr. (1982) read it as the play’s way of marking the limit of the prince’s benevolence; Don Pedro forgives his brother as he arranges everyone else’s happiness, from above, and the forgiveness is experienced as a muzzle. Against making too much of it stands the plain fact that the play gives John no speech about his birth comparable to Edmund’s, and treats the bastardy mainly as a label that tells the audience what to expect; Coleridge’s "merely shown and then withdrawn" covers the birth as well as the man. The honest answer is that the play uses his birth as a shorthand and then shows us a man, briefly, who is more than the shorthand: unhappy, articulate about his unhappiness, and determined to make it everyone’s problem. The theme of status and class in this play is mostly a matter of who may speak to whom. Don John is the one character who has decided not to speak at all, except to do harm.
