Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: A church in Messina, at the wedding of Claudio and Hero.
- What Happens: Claudio rejects Hero at the altar as unchaste, the prince confirms the window, and Hero faints. Leonato wishes her dead; the friar, who believes her innocent, proposes that she be given out as dead. Alone, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love, and Beatrice asks him to kill Claudio.
- Key Characters: Claudio, Hero, Leonato, Don Pedro, Don John, Friar Francis, Benedick, Beatrice.
- Dramatic Function: The climax. The slander is sprung in the one place it cannot be taken back, the comedy comes within a line of tragedy, and the play’s two plots meet: the lovers of the subplot are the ones who must answer for the main plot’s wreck.
- Famous Quote:
"Kill Claudio."
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1) - Why It Matters: Everything the play has said about honour, seeing and believing is tested here, and the men of rank fail the test; the scene’s two acts of faith come from a friar who watched a blush and a woman who asks for a death.
Scene Summary
Leonato tells the friar to be brief and keep to the plain form of marriage. Friar Francis asks Claudio whether he comes to marry this lady, and Claudio says no; Leonato covers for him, and the friar asks Hero, who says she does. Asked whether either knows any impediment, Hero says none and Leonato answers for Claudio, who bursts out on what men dare do. Benedick takes it for a joke. Claudio then asks Leonato to give him his daughter with a free soul, and when Leonato does, asks what he can give back of equal worth; Don Pedro says nothing, unless he returns her. Claudio does. He hands Hero back as a rotten orange, the sign and semblance of her honour, whose blush is guilt and not modesty; he will not knit his soul to an approved wanton.
Leonato, bewildered, suggests that if Claudio has himself taken her virginity the sin is excusable, and Claudio denies ever tempting her: he loved her as a brother loves a sister. Hero asks whether she ever seemed otherwise, and Claudio turns on the word seeming. She seemed Dian in her orb, and is more intemperate than Venus. Hero asks whether he is well. The prince, pressed to speak, says he is dishonoured for having tried to link his friend to a common stale, and Don John confirms that these things are true. Benedick observes that this looks not like a nuptial. Claudio asks Leonato to make Hero answer one question truly, and Leonato charges her to; Claudio asks what man she talked with at her window between twelve and one last night, and Hero says she talked with no man. Then she is no maiden, the prince says: he, his brother and Claudio saw and heard her with a ruffian who confessed to a thousand secret encounters. Don John says the encounters are not fit to be named. Claudio bids her farewell, most foul, most fair, and swears to lock up the gates of love. Leonato asks for a dagger. Hero faints, and the prince, Don John and Claudio leave.
Beatrice thinks her cousin dead and calls for help. Leonato asks Fate not to lift its hand: death is the fairest cover for her shame. When Hero stirs, he tells her not to live and not to open her eyes, says that he would strike at her life himself if he thought she would not die, and wishes he had never had a child or had taken up a beggar’s at his gates instead. She was his, and praised and loved as his, and she has fallen into a pit of ink that the sea cannot wash. Benedick asks him to be patient; Beatrice swears her cousin is belied. Benedick asks whether Beatrice was Hero’s bedfellow last night, and she admits that for the first time in a year she was not, which Leonato takes as confirmation: would two princes and Claudio lie?
The friar, silent until now, speaks. He has been noting the lady, has seen a thousand blushes and a thousand innocent shames cross her face and a fire in her eye that burns the princes’ errors, and he stakes his age, calling and divinity on her being guiltless under some biting error. Leonato objects that she does not deny it; the friar asks Hero what man she is accused of, and she answers that her accusers know, she knows none, and if she knows more of any man than maiden modesty warrants, let her father torture her to death. The friar suspects some strange misprision in the princes; Benedick, loyal to two of them, suspects the practice of John the bastard. Leonato swears that if they speak truth his hands will tear her, and if they wrong her the proudest of them shall hear of it.
The friar proposes his plan. Let Hero be kept secretly within and published as dead; let the family mourn and hang epitaphs on the monument. Slander will change to remorse, and Claudio, hearing she died on his words, will find her image creeping sweetly into his imagination and mourn her, and wish he had not accused her even if he thought it true. If that fails, the supposed death will at least quench the wonder of her infamy, and she can be hidden in a religious life. Benedick urges Leonato to take the advice and promises, despite his love for the prince and Claudio, to deal in it secretly and justly. Leonato, flowing in grief, says the smallest twine may lead him. The friar sends them off: die to live, this wedding day is perhaps only postponed.
Benedick and Beatrice are left alone. She has wept and will weep longer; he believes her cousin is wronged; she says how much the man who would right her would deserve of her, and that it is a man’s office, but not his. Then he tells her that he loves nothing in the world so well as her, and asks whether that is not strange. She says it is as strange as the thing she knows not, that she could as easily say she loved nothing so well as him, and that she confesses nothing and denies nothing. He swears by his sword that she loves him; she tells him not to swear and eat it; he protests he loves her; she says God forgive her, since she was about to protest she loved him, and when he tells her to do it with all her heart, she does: she loves him with so much of her heart that none is left to protest. He bids her ask him anything. Kill Claudio, she says. He refuses, not for the wide world, and she tries to leave: there is no love in him, and he would sooner be friends with her than fight her enemy. Is Claudio her enemy? He has slandered, scorned and dishonoured her kinswoman, and she would eat his heart in the market-place. Benedick tries to interrupt and cannot. Princes and counties, Count Comfect, a sweet gallant: manhood has melted into courtesies, men are turned into tongue, and since she cannot be a man with wishing she will die a woman with grieving. Benedick swears by his hand that he loves her, and asks whether she believes in her soul that Claudio wronged Hero. As sure as she has a thought or a soul, she says. Enough: he is engaged, he will challenge him, Claudio shall render a dear account, and she should go and comfort her cousin. He must say she is dead.
Give Me This Maid, Your Daughter
The scene begins with the ceremony it is about to destroy, and Claudio uses the ceremony to do it. He asks for Hero in the formal words of a wedding, and then asks what he can give back, so that the prince can supply the answer he wants.
Original
CLAUDIO: Will you with free and unconstrained soul
Give me this maid, your daughter?
LEONATO: As freely, son, as God did give her me.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
CLAUDIO: Will you, without restriction and constraint,
Give me this girl, your daughter?
LEONATO: As freely, son, as God gave her to me.
The exchange is the play’s theory of marriage spoken aloud: a daughter is a gift between men, given as freely as God gave her, and the giver is the father. Claudio’s trap turns on that. If she was a gift, she can be returned, and the prince’s nothing, unless you render her again, is the cue. Then the orange. The speech that follows is organised around looking: behold how she blushes, would you not swear she were a maid by these exterior shows, but she is none. Claudio has read the blush once at the window and now reads it again in church, and the second reading is forced to agree with the first. The theme of honour and shame is on display in its purest form, a public accusation in the place of a public vow, and the cruelty is in the staging: the audience has been told nothing of the window except Borachio’s drunken account, and now watches a man destroy a woman on the strength of it, in front of everyone she knows.
Hero Itself Can Blot Out Hero’s Virtue
Hero is given her name and nothing else. Asked to answer truly to it, she asks who can blot it, and Claudio’s reply is a pun that turns her identity against her.
Original
HERO: Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name
With any just reproach?
CLAUDIO: Marry, that can Hero;
Hero itself can blot out Hero's virtue.
What man was he talked with you yesternight
Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?
Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
HERO: Am I just not called Hero? Who can blemish
My name with honest reason?
CLAUDIO: Hero can;
For Hero can destroy all Hero’s virtues.
Who was the man you chatted with last night
Outside your window, between twelve and one?
Now, if you are a virgin, answer this.
The interrogation is conducted as a test of chastity with a single question, and Hero’s answer, that she talked with no man at that hour, is true and convicts her. The prince’s confirmation follows on his honour, with the three witnesses named and the ruffian’s confession of a thousand encounters added, and Don John supplies the last touch, that the encounters are not fit for language. The theme of deception and noting has run on what people see; here it runs on what people say they saw, and the prince’s word closes the matter. Hero has three short lines in the whole accusation and all three are questions. Claudio’s farewell to her, most foul, most fair, pure impiety and impious purity, is oxymoron turned into a verdict, and his vow to lock up the gates of love and hang conjecture on his eyelids is a promise never to look without suspicion again. Then Leonato asks for a dagger, and the woman at the centre of it falls.
Mine and Mine I Loved
The accusers leave, and the play’s cruellest speech comes from the one man who has no reason to want Hero guilty. Leonato, believing the princes, turns on his daughter while she is lying on the floor.
Original
Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes:
For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,
Strike at thy life. Grieved I, I had but one?
(Leonato, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Do not live, Hero; don’t open your eyes,
For, if I didn’t think that you’d die quickly
If I believed your soul outweighed your shame,
Then, after I had scolded you, I would
Stab you to death. Did I grieve I’d just one?
He tells her not to open her eyes, and says that if he thought she would not die of shame he would kill her himself. The speech that follows is grief for a possession: she was mine, and mine I loved, and mine I praised, and mine that I was proud on, and the word mine beats through it until the daughter has disappeared into the pronoun. The ink image completes it, a pit the sea cannot wash her out of, and the father who began the play boasting that her mother had told him she was his is now wishing he had taken a beggar’s child from his gates instead. The theme of gender and patriarchy is at its starkest here. Hero’s chastity was her father’s honour, and her shame is his loss; nobody in the speech asks whether she did it. Beatrice’s one line, on my soul, my cousin is belied, is the only defence anyone offers before the friar speaks, and Benedick’s question about the bedfellow, meant to help, confirms the case.
By Noting of the Lady
The friar has been silent for the whole ceremony, and when he speaks it is to say that he was watching. His speech is the play’s one example of noting done well, and it comes from the person with least rank in the room.
Original
By noting of the lady I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire,
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool...
(Friar Francis, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
So I could watch the lady, and I’ve seen
Her start to blush a thousand times or more,
But shame, arising out of innocence,
Has fought the blushes with angelic whiteness;
And there’s a fierce resolve within her eyes
That burns the accusations of the princes
Who claim she’s not a virgin. Call me foolish...
He has seen a thousand blushes and a thousand innocent shames, and a fire in her eye; he stakes his age, his calling and his divinity on it; and he asks the question nobody else has asked, what man is she accused of. Hero’s answer is her longest speech in the play and it is an oath: if she knows more of any man than maiden modesty warrants, let her father torture her to death. The friar reads the blush and the princes read the blush, and the readings are opposite, which is the scene’s point about evidence. Claudio saw guilt in it because he had been told to; the friar sees innocence because he has nothing to defend. The theme of deception and noting turns here, quietly, towards its undoing. Benedick’s guess that the practice lives in John the bastard is the first time anyone of the prince’s party has suspected a trick, and it comes from the one of them who stayed in the church.
Die to Live
The friar’s plan is the play’s turn from tragedy back towards comedy, and it is a plan built on the same thing that caused the catastrophe: a false report, deliberately spread.
Original
Let her awhile be secretly kept in,
And publish it that she is dead indeed;
Maintain a mourning ostentation
And on your family's old monument
Hang mournful epitaphs and do all rites
That appertain unto a burial.
(Friar Francis, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Let her be hid in secret for a while,
And then announce that she, indeed, has died;
Keep up appearances that you’re in mourning
And on your family’s age-old mausoleum
Write sad words, and conduct the funeral service
Suggesting there has been a burial.
Give out that she is dead, mourn her, hang epitaphs, and let the slander change to remorse. The friar’s psychology is exact and slightly cynical: what we have we prize not while we have it, and Claudio, hearing she died on his words, will find her image creeping into his imagination more precious than she was alive. If it fails, hide her in a convent. Leonato, flowing in grief, says the smallest twine may lead him, and the theme of love and romance is handed to a stratagem. Benedick’s intervention matters more than it looks. He is the prince’s man, he says so, and he promises nonetheless to deal in this secretly and justly; the man who was gulled in the orchard is now choosing a side, and the choice is Hero’s. The friar’s die to live sends the family off and leaves two people behind.
Kill Claudio
The scene has one more movement, and it is the one the play is remembered for. Alone in the wreck of the wedding, the two wits say the plain thing, and then Beatrice says the unplayable one.
Original
BENEDICK: I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is
not that strange?
BEATRICE: As strange as the thing I know not. It were as
possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as
you: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess
nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: There is nothing I love more in the world than you: isn’t
that strange?
BEATRICE: It’s as strange as something I know nothing about. It is as
possible for me to say that I loved nothing more than
you. But don’t believe me, though I’m not lying; I’m confessing
nothing, nor am I denying anything. I feel awful for my cousin.
The declaration comes in prose, after a church full of verse, and it is the plainest sentence Benedick has spoken. Beatrice’s answer is a tangle of negatives, believe me not, and yet I lie not, I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing, which is the sound of a woman who has armoured herself in wit for four acts trying to take the armour off. She manages it in a sentence, and he asks what he can do for her. Kill Claudio. The two words turn the scene. He refuses; she goes; she tells him he would sooner be friends with her than fight her enemy; and the speech that follows, O that I were a man, is the play’s most direct account of what a woman in Messina cannot do. She has the judgement and the rage and no standing to act, and manhood, she says, is melted into courtesies and men turned into tongue. The theme of gender and patriarchy meets the theme of honour and shame here and the collision produces a challenge: Benedick asks her once whether she believes in her soul that Claudio wronged Hero, and when she says yes, he is engaged. He kisses her hand, promises a dear account, and tells her to comfort her cousin, whom he must now call dead.
Language and Technique
- Ceremony inverted: The scene uses the wedding service as its weapon: do you come to marry this lady, no; will you give me this maid, as freely as God gave her; what can I give back, nothing unless you return her. Every formula of the rite is turned into a step of the rejection.
- Oxymoron: Most foul, most fair; pure impiety and impious purity: Claudio’s farewell is built on opposites jammed together, which is what he believes he has seen, a chaste face on an unchaste woman.
- The blush read twice: Claudio reads Hero’s blush as guiltiness, not modesty; the friar reads the same blushes as innocent shames in angel whiteness. One sign, two readings, and the scene’s argument is which reader to trust.
- The pun on Hero: Hero itself can blot out Hero’s virtue: her name is turned against her, and Johnson in 1765 thought it a poor conceit. Poor or not, it is the moment the accusation becomes personal.
- Mine: Leonato’s speech repeats mine six times in four lines; the pronoun of ownership swallows the daughter, and the modern verse keeps the repetition.
- Verse to prose: The ceremony, the accusation, Leonato’s grief and the friar’s plan are in verse; the moment Benedick and Beatrice are alone, the scene drops into prose, and the plainest words in the play, I love you, Kill Claudio, are spoken without metre.
Key Quotes from Act 4, Scene 1
Quote 1
O, what men dare do! What men may do! What
men daily do, not knowing what they do!
(Claudio, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh, things that men dare do! Things men might do! Things
men do every day, unaware of what they are doing!
Quote Analysis: Claudio’s outburst when Leonato answers the impediment question for him: men dare, men may, men daily do without knowing what they do. Benedick takes it for a joke about interjections. The line is Claudio’s accusation of himself before he makes it of Hero, since the man who is about to do something without knowing what he does is the speaker, and the modern verse keeps the three men.
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
Comes not that blood as modest evidence
To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear,
All you that see her, that she were a maid,
By these exterior shows? But she is none:
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.
(Claudio, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh, with what confidence and show of truth
Can cunning sin disguise itself so well!
Doesn’t the fact she’s blushing now suggest
That she is pure and simple? Won’t you swear,
All you that see her, that she is a virgin,
By how she now appears? But she is not:
She knows the lust of sleeping with a man;
Her blush shows guiltiness, not modesty.
Quote Analysis: The heart of the accusation. Claudio invites the congregation to look at Hero’s blush and swear she is a maid by exterior shows, and then tells them she is none: she knows the heat of a luxurious bed, and the blush is guilt. The modern verse keeps the argument. It is the play’s thesis about seeing turned into a weapon, and the friar will read the same blush the other way.
Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,
I am sorry you must hear: upon mine honour,
Myself, my brother and this grieved count
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window
Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confessed the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret.
(Don Pedro, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Well, then you are no virgin. Leonato,
I’m sorry you must hear this: by my word,
Myself, my brother, and this grieving count
All saw and heard her at that time last night
Talk with a thug outside her bedroom window,
And, like a filthy villain, he indeed
Confessed to sordid dalliances they’d had
A thousand times in secret.
Quote Analysis: The prince’s confirmation, on his honour, with the witnesses counted: himself, his brother, the grieved count. The ruffian’s confession of a thousand encounters is Borachio’s boast at the window, reported by a man who believes it. The modern verse keeps the count. A prince’s word is what ends the argument in Messina, and the prince has given it.
Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?
(Leonato, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Does no one have a dagger I can use?
Quote Analysis: Leonato’s one line before Hero faints: he asks for a dagger, for himself. It is the speech of a man whose honour has just been destroyed in public, and the modern verse keeps the question. Within twenty lines he will be wishing the dagger for his daughter instead.
FRIAR FRANCIS: There is some strange misprision in the princes.
BENEDICK: 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.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
FRIAR FRANCIS: The princes both seem very much mistaken.
BENEDICK: 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.
Quote Analysis: The friar suspects a misprision, a mistake; Benedick, loyal to two of the three accusers, names the third. It is the first time anyone on the prince’s side has guessed at Don John, and the guess is exactly right. The modern verse keeps the bent of honour. Benedick’s loyalty is divided here and he says so, and then chooses.
Enough, I am engaged; I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go, comfort your cousin: I must say she is dead: and so, farewell.
(Benedick, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Enough, then, I’m committed; I’ll challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and then I’ll leave you. By my hand, I will ensure Claudio pays for what he’s done. When you hear of me, think of me accordingly. Go on, comfort your cousin: I have to say she’s dead. And so, goodbye.
Quote Analysis: Benedick’s acceptance of the task, in prose, with a kiss on the hand. He is engaged, in both senses; Claudio shall render a dear account; and Beatrice is to comfort her cousin, who must be called dead. The modern verse keeps the double meaning of engaged. The scene that began with a wedding ends with a challenge, and the man issuing it is the one who swore never to marry.
Key Takeaways
- The rite becomes the weapon: Claudio uses every formula of the wedding service to stage the rejection; the public vow becomes a public shaming.
- A prince’s word is proof: The prince confirms the window on his honour, and nobody of rank asks another question; Hero’s denial is taken as the lie.
- The father believes the accusers: Leonato wishes his daughter dead and mourns her as a possession, mine and mine, before anyone has proved anything.
- The friar reads the blush: The one act of careful noting in the play comes from the man with least standing, and it saves Hero.
- Die to live: The remedy for a false report is another false report: Hero’s death is announced so that slander may turn to remorse.
- Love and a death demanded: Alone, Benedick and Beatrice say I love you in prose, and Beatrice’s price is Claudio’s life; Benedick accepts the challenge.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why does Claudio reject Hero in public rather than confronting her privately?
Because the slander was a public injury, as he sees it, and the code he lives by requires a public answer. He told the prince in Act 3, Scene 2 that if he saw anything at the window he would shame her in the congregation where he should have wedded her, and the prince agreed; the church is the fulfilment of that promise. The scene also makes a quieter point. Claudio never speaks to Hero alone in the play, and his love was conducted entirely through intermediaries, the prince wooing for him and Leonato giving her away. A private conversation is not something he knows how to have with her.
Not to be married,
Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.
(Claudio, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I won’t get married,
And will not give my soul to this known slut.
Gail Kern Paster, in the Folger edition, notes that the play takes pains to construct Claudio as inexperienced, and reads his insistence on seeing Hero’s blush as guiltiness rather than modesty as the collapse of the distinction between women as different and women as the same: the chaste one and the wanton are, in his eyes, the same face. August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) called the church scene a grand piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable sense, and thought the impression would have been too tragical had Shakespeare not softened it to prepare for a fortunate catastrophe. Carol Cook (1986) argued that the men’s privilege in this play depends on being able to read women, and that a woman whose seeming cannot be read is a threat to be destroyed; Claudio’s I will write against it, provoked by Hero’s single word seemed, is her evidence. The theme of honour and shame explains the publicity: honour is a public possession, and its loss has to be announced.
Why does Leonato believe the accusers rather than his own daughter?
Because two princes and a count say they saw it, because Hero’s only defence is a denial, and because Benedick’s well-meant question reveals that Beatrice was not her bedfellow that night. Would the two princes lie, and Claudio lie, who loved her so that he washed her foulness with tears? For Leonato the weight of rank settles the question before the evidence is examined, and the evidence is never examined. The speech he makes over his fainting daughter is the play’s most shocking, and it is a speech about ownership: she was mine and mine I loved, and now she has fallen into a pit of ink.
But mine and mine I loved and mine I praised
And mine that I was proud on, mine so much
That I myself was to myself not mine,
Valuing of her...
(Leonato, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
But you were mine; I loved that you were mine,
And proudly praised that you were mine; so much so
That my life was no longer mine to live
Because I valued her so much.
Samuel Johnson (1765), on Leonato’s later line that the smallest twine may lead him, observed that men overpowered with distress close with every scheme and believe every promise; the same credulity makes him believe the princes first and the friar afterwards. Carol Cook (1986) read the scene’s patriarchal anxiety as the fear that a man’s honour depends on a woman’s chastity he cannot verify, and Leonato is the case: his daughter’s shame is his loss, and his first wish is for her death because death is the fairest cover for it. The Folger editors call his reaction too credulous paternal fury, and the fury is the point. The theme of gender and patriarchy is laid bare in a father who, before anyone has proved anything, wishes he had taken up a beggar’s child at his gates instead of his own.
What does the friar see that the princes do not?
A blush, and a fire in the eye. The friar has been silent through the ceremony, watching, and when he speaks it is to report what he observed: a thousand blushes, a thousand innocent shames beating them away in angel whiteness, and a fire that burns the errors the princes hold against her. He stakes his age, his calling and his divinity on her being guiltless under some biting error. Claudio read the same blush as guilt. The scene puts the two readings side by side and lets the audience decide which observer to trust, and the difference between them is not evidence but motive: Claudio had been told what to see, and the friar had nothing to defend.
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.
(Friar Francis, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
If this sweet lady is indeed found guilty
Of doing something wrong.
The friar’s noting is the play’s answer to its own title. The play has been built on scenes staged for hidden watchers who believe what they are shown; here a watcher who was not meant to be watching reads a face correctly. Jean E. Howard (1987) argued that the play is a contest over who may control what others see and believe, and the friar is the one observer in the play who is not trying to control anything. William Hazlitt (1817) found Hero’s appeals to her own innocence made with the most affecting simplicity, and the friar is the one person in the church who hears them as evidence. The theme of deception and noting turns here, and it turns on a priest’s observation rather than a prince’s word.
Why does the friar propose pretending that Hero is dead?
For three reasons, which he gives in order. First, a reported death will change slander to remorse: Hero, dying on the instant of the accusation, will be lamented, pitied and excused by everyone who hears of it. Second, Claudio in particular will mourn her, because what we have we prize not to the worth while we enjoy it, and once she is lost her image will creep into his imagination more precious than she was alive, so that he will wish he had not accused her even if he thought the accusation true. Third, if none of that works, the supposed death will at least quench the wonder of her infamy, and she can be hidden in a religious life out of all eyes and tongues.
The plan is Shakespeare’s favourite device, and William Hazlitt (1817) called it one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which he seems to have been fond; he would use it again for Hermione in The Winter’s Tale. It is also a mirror of the crime. Hero was destroyed by a false report deliberately staged, and she is to be saved by one. August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) saw the whole play’s drollery in the symmetry of its deceptions, and the friar’s plan is the benign deception that answers Don John’s. The theme of deception and noting is not abandoned at the play’s crisis; it is turned to use. Whether the plan works as the friar predicts is another matter, since Claudio shows little grief until the truth is out, but as plot it works exactly, and the second wedding is its result.
Why do Beatrice and Benedick finally declare their love here, of all places?
Because the wedding has stripped away everything they used to hide behind. The church is empty, Hero is supposedly dead, the prince and Claudio have gone, and the two people left are the ones who were gulled into love a week ago and have been avoiding each other since. Benedick stayed when his friends left, which is itself a declaration; Beatrice has been weeping. He says he loves nothing in the world so well as her and asks whether that is not strange, and she, after a sentence of negatives, says she loves him with so much of her heart that none is left to protest. It is in prose, and it is the plainest thing either of them says in the play.
You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I loved you.
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You’ve stopped me at the perfect moment, for I was about to promise that I loved you too.
William Hazlitt (1817) thought the play hit the middle point of comedy, where the ludicrous blends with the tender and our follies turn round in support of our affections, and this exchange is where the blend is most exact: Beatrice’s I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing is funny and it is also the sound of a proud woman giving in. Anna Jameson (1832) read Beatrice as a character whose poetry softens and heightens her comic effect at once, and the declaration shows both. August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) had argued that the lovers’ raillery was itself proof of a growing inclination, and the scene proves it by letting the raillery stop. The theme of love and romance is answered here for these two, in a church, in the wreck of someone else’s wedding.
What does “Kill Claudio” mean, and how should it be played?
It means exactly what it says. Benedick has declared his love and told her to bid him do anything for her; she bids him kill the man who has just destroyed her cousin. The two words are the hinge of the play, where the comedy of the merry war meets the consequences of the church, and the question of how to play them has been argued over for two centuries. Benedick’s refusal, not for the wide world, is immediate, and Beatrice’s response is to leave: there is no love in him, and he would sooner be friends with her than fight her enemy.
Ha! Not for the wide world.
(Benedick, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Ha! Not for all the world.
The line sometimes gets a laugh in the theatre, and whether it should is the critical question. Anna Jameson (1832) argued that the comic effect is kept alive precisely by the consciousness of exaggeration, the contrast between Beatrice’s real good nature and the fierce tenor of her language; Algernon Charles Swinburne (1880) admired the good fierce outbreak of her high true heart in two swift words. Both readings are available in the text, and a production chooses. What the text insists on is what follows: the speech beginning O that I were a man, which is not comic, and Benedick’s acceptance, which is not either. The theme of honour and shame has been a men’s matter for the whole play; Beatrice’s two words are a woman claiming it, through the only man she can command.
What does Beatrice mean by “O that I were a man”?
That she has the anger, the judgement and the words, and no standing to act on any of them. Claudio slandered, scorned and dishonoured her cousin, strung her along until the moment of taking hands and then destroyed her with public accusation; Beatrice would eat his heart in the market-place, and cannot, because she is a woman. Twice in the speech she wishes for manhood, and the second time she says what she would do with it. The speech ends with the admission that she cannot be a man with wishing and will therefore die a woman with grieving, and it is that line, not the rage, that moves Benedick to swear by his hand that he loves her.
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.
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
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.
Carol Cook (1986) reads the play’s language as setting up an association of the word, the sword and masculinity, and the merry war as a struggle over who controls representation; Beatrice’s speech is the moment a woman names the arrangement from inside it, since manhood is melted into courtesies and men are turned into tongue. Anna Jameson (1832) thought the fine lady of Shakespeare’s time was drawn faithfully in Beatrice, and the fine lady’s limits are drawn here too. The theme of gender and patriarchy has run through the play as a joke about husbands and horns; in this speech it stops being a joke, and the woman who has made most of the jokes is the one who stops it.
Why does Benedick agree to challenge Claudio?
Because Beatrice asks him to, and because, when he asks her the one question that matters, she answers it. Think you in your soul that the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero? Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul. Enough, he says: he is engaged. The word carries both meanings, bound to a duel and bound to her, and the scene makes the two the same act. Benedick has said earlier in the scene that two of the accusers have the very bent of honour, and he has suspected Don John; he is not acting on Beatrice’s rage alone but on his own reading of the men he knows.
The challenge is the moment the subplot takes responsibility for the main plot. Benedick is the prince’s man, and he said so to Leonato while promising to deal justly; now he chooses Hero’s side against his own company, and in the next act he will leave it. William Hazlitt (1817) admired how the woman-hater’s conversion to matrimony is effected, and the conversion is completed here by an act rather than a speech: the man who swore he would never trust a woman now takes a woman’s word against two princes. The theme of love and romance in this play is proved by what people do when noting fails, and Benedick’s engagement is the proof.
Is the church scene comedy or tragedy?
It is the scene in which the play could become either, and Shakespeare lets the audience feel the possibility before closing it. For a hundred and fifty lines there is no joke: a bride is shamed at the altar, her father wishes her dead, and the only voice raised for her is a cousin’s. The audience knows she is innocent and that the watch arrested Borachio the night before, so the scene is tragic for the characters and not for the house, which is the play’s method throughout. The friar’s plan is the turn, and it is a comic device, the false death, used to undo a tragic one.
August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) put it plainly: the impression would have been too tragical had Shakespeare not carefully softened it to prepare for a fortunate catastrophe. William Hazlitt (1817) thought the serious part of this play the most prominent, as in the other comedies, and called Hero the principal figure in the piece, whose hard trial leaves an indelible impression. Carol Cook (1986) argued that the comic conclusion leaves the scene’s conflicts unresolved, and that Hero is restored at the end to the very mode of perception that killed her here. The scene supports all three. What makes it comedy in the end is not the friar’s plan but the fifty lines of prose that follow it, in which two people say I love you in a wrecked church and one of them asks for a death. The theme of wit and communication has been the play’s medium, and the church is where it is silenced and then, in the lovers’ prose, found again.
