Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: The street before Leonato’s house, the day after the wedding.
- What Happens: Leonato and Antonio challenge the prince and Claudio and are laughed off; Benedick challenges Claudio in earnest; then the watch bring in Borachio, who confesses the whole plot. Leonato sets Claudio’s penance: an epitaph at Hero’s tomb tonight and marriage to his niece tomorrow.
- Key Characters: Leonato, Antonio, Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Dogberry, Verges, Borachio, Conrade, the Sexton, the Watch.
- Dramatic Function: The turning point of Act 5: three challenges that come to nothing, then the truth arriving by constable. The scene converts the tragedy of the church into the penance that makes a comic ending possible.
- Famous Quote:
"Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast killed my child:
If thou kill'st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man."
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 1) - Why It Matters: It is the scene in which the men of rank are shown to be wrong by the men without it, and in which Claudio, told he has killed an innocent woman, says he sinned only in mistaking.
Scene Summary
Antonio is trying to talk his brother out of his grief, and Leonato will not be talked. Bring him a father who has lost a child as he has and can still counsel patience, he says, and he will learn patience from him; there is no such man, because everyone can preach comfort to a grief they do not feel. He will be flesh and blood: no philosopher ever bore the toothache patiently. Antonio shifts ground and tells him to make the men who wronged him suffer, and Leonato agrees: Hero is belied, and Claudio and the prince shall know it.
Don Pedro and Claudio come by in a hurry and try to pass. Leonato stops them, and when the prince calls him a good old man and tells him not to quarrel, he challenges Claudio to a trial of arms, grey hairs and all: Claudio has belied his innocent child, who lies buried with her ancestors, and Leonato will prove it on his body. Claudio refuses to fight him. Leonato tells him that if he kills an old man he will at least have killed a man, and Antonio, beside himself, calls the young lords boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks and milksops, and offers to whip Claudio from his fencing. The prince says he is sorry for Hero’s death but swears on his honour that she was charged with nothing but the truth, and will not hear more. The old men leave, promising that they will be heard.
Benedick arrives, and the prince and Claudio greet him with jokes about having nearly had their noses snapped off by two old men without teeth, and about needing his wit to beat away their melancholy. Benedick does not play. Taking Claudio aside, he calls him a villain, tells him he has killed a sweet lady, and challenges him to a duel. Claudio and the prince treat it as another jest, and the prince tells the story of how Beatrice praised Benedick’s wit; they return to the old joke about the savage bull and Benedick the married man. Benedick takes his leave coldly: the prince’s brother has fled Messina, they have killed an innocent lady among them, and he and Lord Lackbeard will meet. Only when he is gone do the two men realise he was in earnest, and the prince remembers that his brother has fled.
Dogberry, Verges and the watch bring in Borachio and Conrade bound. Asked what the prisoners have done, Dogberry gives a list in his own numbering, false report, untruths, slanders, sixth and lastly belying a lady, and the prince, giving up on the learned constable, asks Borachio himself. Borachio confesses everything: how Don John set him on, how the prince and Claudio were brought to the orchard to watch him court Margaret in Hero’s clothes, how they disgraced her when they should have married her. The lady is dead on his false accusation, and he asks only a villain’s reward. The prince feels the speech like iron in his blood; Claudio has drunk poison; and both learn that Don John paid for it and has fled.
Leonato returns with the sexton and asks which is the villain, so that he can avoid the type in future. Borachio owns the deed alone, and Leonato refuses to let him: a pair of honourable men stand there too, and a third has fled, and he thanks the princes for his daughter’s death. Claudio asks for whatever penance Leonato’s invention can devise, insisting that he sinned only in mistaking; the prince says the same. Leonato cannot bid them bid his daughter live, so he sets the terms: tell Messina she died innocent, hang an epitaph on her tomb and sing it tonight, and tomorrow morning marry his brother’s daughter, who is almost the copy of the dead girl and heir to them both. Claudio accepts in tears. Leonato orders that Borachio be confronted with Margaret, whom he believes was hired to the plot; Borachio swears she knew nothing. Dogberry asks that it be remembered in the punishment that the prisoner called him an ass, and that the watch heard talk of one Deformed. Leonato thanks him and pays him, Dogberry blesses him at length and hopes God will prohibit a merry meeting, and the lords part until morning. Claudio will mourn with Hero tonight.
No Philosopher Could Endure the Toothache
The scene opens on a Leonato the play has not shown before. The host and credulous father of the first four acts has become a man in grief, and his first speech is a refusal of comfort that runs for thirty lines before it lets anyone else talk.
Original
I pray thee, peace. I will be flesh and blood;
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh, please be quiet. I’m only flesh and blood;
As yet, there’s no philosopher who’s lived
Who could endure a toothache patiently,
Despite the fact they write majestically
And strive to push all suffering aside.
The speech is an argument against argument. Antonio has counselled patience, and Leonato answers that counsel is cheap to those who do not suffer, that men can charm ache with air and agony with words until they taste the ache themselves, and that no philosopher, however he wrote in the style of gods, ever endured a toothache patiently. The toothache is the exact image: a small, bodily, undignified pain for which there is no philosophy, and Leonato is claiming the right to feel it. The audience knows that Hero is alive and the grief is for a stratagem, and the play does not let that knowledge make the grief ridiculous. What it does is turn the grief into action. Antonio’s second piece of advice, to make those who offended him suffer too, is the one Leonato takes, and the theme of honour and shame shifts in a line from a father’s shame to a father’s challenge.
Good Old Man
The prince and Claudio try to walk past, and the old men will not let them. What follows is the scene’s first challenge, and the play lets it be comic and intolerable at once: two civilians past sixty calling out two soldiers, and the soldiers laughing.
Original
DON PEDRO: Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.
ANTONIO: If he could right himself with quarrelling,
Some of us would lie low.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
DON PEDRO: Don’t start a fight with us, my dear old boy.
ANTONIO: If he could fix his problems now by fighting,
Some of us would lie dead.
The prince’s good old man is kindly and it is a dismissal, and Antonio hears both. Leonato’s challenge that follows is the speech of a man who knows how he looks: he is not bragging under privilege of age of what he did when young, he says, but laying his reverence by, grey hairs and all, to challenge a man. Claudio’s reply, that he will not have to do with him, produces the scene’s most quoted line, and the line is about rank as much as grief. If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man: the boy is a count and the man is a governor, and in Messina the count has the standing. Antonio’s tirade against scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys is the play’s angriest speech, and it is given to a minor character so that it can be angrier than the plot can afford. The theme of status and class is here in the open. The prince ends the matter on his honour, which is the one word that cannot be argued with, and refuses to hear more.
You Are a Villain; I Jest Not
Benedick’s arrival is the second challenge, and the play stages it as a comedy of misreading: the two men who have just laughed off a pair of old men now try to joke with a friend who has come to call one of them out.
Original
You are a villain; I jest not: I will make it good how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare. Do me right, or I will protest your cowardice. You have killed a sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you. Let me hear from you.
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You are a villain; and I’m not joking. I will prove it in any way you dare, with whatever weapon you dare use, at whatever time you dare. Accept this challenge, or I’ll call you a coward. You have killed a sweet lady, and you will pay the price for her death. Tell me your answer.
The aside is the plainest speech Benedick makes in the play, and it is addressed to the one person who will not hear it. He has promised Beatrice in the church to challenge Claudio, and he does it in the form the code requires, naming the terms, how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare, and the consequence, that he will protest Claudio’s cowardice. Claudio answers with a joke about a feast, and the prince, who has not heard the aside, starts a long anecdote about Beatrice praising Benedick’s wit. The anecdote is funny and it is in the worst possible taste, since it ends with the savage bull’s horns and Benedick the married man, and Benedick’s cold leave-taking tells them so: they have killed a sweet and innocent lady, the bastard is fled, and Lord Lackbeard and he shall meet. The theme of wit and communication is turned off here, deliberately, by the character who has carried it. He is in earnest, the prince says, and the discovery takes him two lines; the prince’s next thought is that his brother has fled, which is the first time anyone of rank has wondered why.
Sixth and Lastly
The watch arrive with their prisoners, and the scene’s third authority is a constable who cannot count. Dogberry’s indictment is the play’s last great piece of nonsense, and it precedes, by a few lines, the play’s one wholly truthful speech.
Original
Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
(Dogberry, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Well, sir, they have lied; and what is more, they’ve not told the truth; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have lied about a lady; thirdly, they have said things are true that are false; and, finally, they are lying scumbags.
The charge is correct in every particular and useless as a document: false report, untruths, slanders, sixth and lastly, thirdly, and to conclude, with the numbers in no order and the same offence named five ways. The prince’s reply reproduces the muddle back at him, item by item, and Claudio admires the reasoning. The joke is at Dogberry’s expense and the scene turns it round at once, because the learned constable who is too cunning to be understood is also the man who has brought the prince his brother’s agent in chains. The theme of deception and noting has run on the gentry’s failure to note what was in front of them; here they are handed the evidence by a man they cannot stop laughing at, and the laughter is the last thing they get to do before the truth arrives. The prince gives up on the officer and asks the prisoner, which is what Leonato should have done in Act 3, Scene 5.
What Your Wisdoms Could Not Discover
Borachio’s confession is the scene’s hinge and the play’s. It is delivered in prose, by the man who devised the window, to the two men who watched it, and it tells them what the audience has known since Act 3.
Original
Sweet prince, let me go no farther to mine answer: do you hear me, and let this count kill me. I have deceived even your very eyes: what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light: who in the night overheard me confessing to this man how Don John your brother incensed me to slander the Lady Hero, how you were brought into the orchard and saw me court Margaret in Hero's garments, how you disgraced her, when you should marry her: my villany they have upon record; which I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my shame. The lady is dead upon mine and my master's false accusation; and, briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a villain.
(Borachio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Dear prince, I won’t wait for my verdict in court: after you’ve heard me, let this count kill me. I have even tricked your eyes: what your wise heads could not uncover, these silly fools have got to the bottom of, for they overheard me one night confessing to this man how your brother Don John incited me to slander the Lady Hero, how you were brought into the orchard and saw me courting Margaret who was dressed in Hero’s clothes, how you humiliated her when you should have been marrying her. They have my crime written down, and I’d rather die than have to repeat this story of shame over again. The lady is dead because of me and my master’s false accusation; and, being brief, I want nothing more than to be treated as a villain.
The speech is complete and it is unforced. Borachio has been examined by the sexton, knows the record exists, and asks only to be killed; what he adds is the sentence the play has been building towards, that what their wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light. It is the play’s own verdict on its gentry, spoken by a villain in front of the fools, and neither the prince nor Claudio answers it. What they answer is the news of Hero: the prince feels it like iron through his blood, Claudio has drunk poison, and Claudio’s next lines are not about Hero but about her image, which now appears in the rare semblance that he loved it first. He loved a picture, and the picture has been restored. The theme of honour and shame is about to be settled by the restoration of a name, and the speech that settles it says nothing about the woman.
Yet Sinned I Not but in Mistaking
Leonato returns to find the villain and finds, as he says, three. The scene’s last movement is the setting of the penance, and it is conducted with a formality that the play means the audience to weigh.
Original
I know not how to pray your patience;
Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself;
Impose me to what penance your invention
Can lay upon my sin: yet sinned I not
But in mistaking.
(Claudio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I don’t know how to ask you for your patience,
But I must speak. Choose how you take revenge;
Inflict on me whatever punishment
You think appropriate, but I did not sin,
But simply made an error.
Claudio asks for any revenge Leonato can invent and in the same breath declares that he did not sin except in mistaking; the prince says by my soul, nor I, and offers to bend under any weight. Leonato’s answer is the play’s most carefully worded speech. He cannot bid them bid his daughter live; he asks them to tell Messina she died innocent, to hang an epitaph and sing it tonight, and to marry tomorrow a niece who is almost the copy of his child and heir to them both. And so dies my revenge: the father who called Hero’s shame his own loss in the church now disposes of her double as a settlement, and the penance for killing a daughter is to marry another. Claudio’s over-kindness wrings tears from him and he embraces the offer. The theme of courtship and marriage closes the scene as it opened the play, with a marriage arranged between men, and Hero, alive in the house behind them, is not mentioned except as a body to be sung to. Then Margaret is accused and defended, Dogberry asks that his being called an ass be remembered in the punishment, is paid, and goes, hoping God will prohibit a merry meeting.
Language and Technique
- The counsel speech: Leonato’s refusal of comfort is built on a conditional: bring me a man who has suffered this and can still preach patience, and I will learn it from him. The if that never closes is the shape of grief that will not be argued with.
- Boy: Leonato and Antonio call Claudio and his friends boy, or boys, six times between them, and Benedick adds boy and Lord Lackbeard. The word is the old men’s only weapon, and the play lets it land because the count’s youth is exactly what let him be deceived.
- Mock-legal numbering: Dogberry’s firstly, secondarily, sixth and lastly, thirdly: the form of an indictment with the order scrambled. The prince answers in the same broken sequence, which is a joke and also an admission that the gentry can only mock the man who has done their work.
- Prose for the truth: The scene is in verse for the challenges and the penance and drops into prose for Benedick’s aside and Borachio’s confession. The two speeches that tell the truth are the two that are not in metre.
- Image and semblance: Claudio’s response to the news is that Hero’s image appears in the rare semblance that he loved at first. Image, semblance, picture: the vocabulary is the same he used to condemn her, and the restoration is of a sight rather than a woman.
Key Quotes from Act 5, Scene 1
Quote 1
Bring me a father that so loved his child,
Whose joy of her is overwhelmed like mine,
And bid him speak of patience...
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Show me a dad that loved his child so much,
Whose joy in her is overwhelmed, like mine,
And have him talk to me of being patient...
Quote Analysis: The heart of Leonato’s argument against counsel: find him a father whose loss matches his, and let that man preach patience. The challenge is impossible by design, and the modern verse keeps its shape. It is the speech of a man who has, as far as he knows, buried his only child the day after her wedding, and the audience, who know she is alive, are asked to feel the grief anyway.
Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!
(Antonio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Boys, apes, braggers, wimps, mummy’s boys!
Quote Analysis: Antonio’s five-word volley at the prince and Claudio, and the angriest line in the play. Each word is an insult to the young lords’ manhood: boys, then apes who imitate men, then braggarts who talk of fighting, then Jacks, which is knaves, then milksops. The modern verse keeps the force. It is given to the minor brother so that it can say what the play’s design will not let Leonato say and keep his dignity.
Fare you well, boy: you know my mind. I will leave you now to your gossip-like humour: you break jests as braggarts do their blades, which God be thanked, hurt not. My lord, for your many courtesies I thank you: I must discontinue your company: your brother the bastard is fled from Messina: you have among you killed a sweet and innocent lady. For my Lord Lackbeard there, he and I shall meet: and, till then, peace be with him.
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Goodbye, boy: you know what the plan is. I will leave you to your puerile gossip: you tell jokes as show-offs flash their swords, which, thank God, don’t hurt. My lord, I thank you for all your kindness; but I’m leaving you now. Your brother, that bastard John, has fled from Messina; between you all you have killed a sweet and innocent lady. As for Lord No-Beard over there, he and I will meet to fight; but until then, peace be with him.
Quote Analysis: Benedick’s exit, and the end of his friendship with the prince’s company. He thanks the prince for his courtesies and discontinues his company; he tells them the bastard is fled and that they have killed a sweet and innocent lady among them; and he names Claudio Lord Lackbeard. The modern verse keeps every charge. The jokes stop here, and the two men left on stage take two lines to notice.
DON PEDRO: Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?
CLAUDIO: I have drunk poison whiles he uttered it.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
DON PEDRO: Well, don’t these words just make your blood run cold?
CLAUDIO: It was like drinking poison as he spoke.
Quote Analysis: The prince and Claudio’s response to Borachio’s confession: iron in the blood, poison drunk. Both images are of something taken in and felt from inside, which is the first time either man has described feeling anything about Hero. The modern verse keeps both. Neither of them says the word innocent, and neither asks after the woman; the poison is the knowledge, and the knowledge is about themselves.
I cannot bid you bid my daughter live;
That were impossible: but, I pray you both,
Possess the people in Messina here
How innocent she died; and if your love
Can labour ought in sad invention,
Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb
And sing it to her bones, sing it to-night...
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I can’t demand you make my daughter live;
That is impossible. But I ask you both
To make sure people in Messina know
That she died innocent; and if your love
Is able to create something in sadness,
Then write a tribute to her on her tomb
And sing it to her body there tonight.
Quote Analysis: Leonato’s penance, first half: he cannot ask them to raise the dead, so he asks for a public declaration of innocence, an epitaph, and a hymn at the tomb tonight. The modern verse keeps the three demands in order. The second half, marriage to a niece who is almost the copy of the dead girl, follows at once, and the audience knows what the men do not, that the copy is the original.
Key Takeaways
- Grief refuses counsel: Leonato’s thirty-line answer to Antonio is the play’s one sustained speech of sorrow, and it ends with the toothache no philosopher could bear.
- Three challenges, no duel: Leonato, Antonio and Benedick each call Claudio out; the first two are laughed off, the third is not noticed until Benedick has gone, and none is fought.
- The fools bring the truth: Dogberry’s scrambled indictment and Borachio’s plain confession arrive together; what the wise could not discover, the watch found out.
- Sinned only in mistaking: Claudio and the prince ask for penance and deny any sin but error; Leonato sets terms that end his revenge in another marriage.
- Honour restored, Hero unmentioned: The scene clears a name and arranges a wedding; the living woman in the house behind them is spoken of only as a body to be sung to.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why does Leonato refuse Antonio’s comfort?
Because comfort, he argues, is only ever offered by people who are not in pain. His speech is a sustained attack on the whole idea of counsel: men can preach patience to a grief they do not feel, can charm ache with air and agony with words, but the moment they taste the grief themselves their counsel turns to passion. Bring him a father who has lost what he has lost and can still smile and stroke his beard, and he will learn patience from that man; there is no such man. The speech ends with the toothache, the most ordinary pain there is, which no philosopher has ever endured patiently however godlike his prose.
But there is no such man: for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it...
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
But there is no such man: because, brother,
A man can try to comfort someone’s grief,
Although they haven’t felt it; but if they had...
Samuel Johnson (1765) noted of Leonato in the church that men overpowered with distress eagerly listen to the first offers of relief and believe every promise; here he has stopped listening to anything, and the two moments belong together, since the man who grasped at the friar’s scheme is now living inside it and finding it no comfort at all. The irony is that the grief is for a stratagem: Hero is alive, and Leonato knows it, and the speech is still true. Shakespeare gives the fussing host of the first acts the play’s only real lament, and lets it stand without a joke. The theme of honour and shame has been a public matter until now; Leonato’s speech is the first time anyone in the play feels its cost privately.
Why do the prince and Claudio laugh at the old men’s challenge?
Because by the code they live by it is laughable. Two civilians past their fighting years, one of them the governor who hosted them, call out a prince’s favourite in the street; Claudio refuses to draw, the prince calls Leonato a good old man and tells him not to quarrel, and when the brothers have gone the young men joke about nearly having their noses snapped off by two old men without teeth. The laughter is not cruelty by their lights. It is the reflex of men who believe, on the prince’s honour, that Hero was guilty, and who therefore see two grieving relatives making fools of themselves over a wanton.
We had like to have had our two noses snapped off with two old men without teeth.
(Claudio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
We almost had our two noses snapped off by two old men without teeth.
The scene makes the laughter cost them. The audience knows Hero is innocent and that Borachio is already in custody, so every joke the young men make falls on their own heads, and the play lets them make several before Benedick arrives to stop it. Bertrand Evans (1960) called this effect discrepant awareness, the audience’s advantage over the characters, and in this scene the advantage is total. Michael Billington, reviewing John Barton’s 1976 production, found the play’s setting among a bored officer class exactly right, and the street scene is where the officers’ pastime of mockery meets a grief it cannot mock. The theme of status and class is at its sharpest here: the old men have no standing against a prince but their age, and the prince’s good old man is the sound of standing being used.
What does “If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man” mean?
That Claudio has already killed a child, Leonato’s daughter, and that killing her father would at least be killing a grown man. Leonato says it when Claudio refuses to fight him, and the line turns Claudio’s refusal into a second insult: he will not even do Leonato the honour of a duel. Boy is the charge. Leonato and Antonio use the word, singular and plural, six times between them, and Benedick adds Lord Lackbeard; the old men’s one weapon against rank is youth, and they use it until Claudio and the prince walk away.
The line also tells the audience how Leonato has read the church scene: as a killing. Claudio’s slander went through and through her heart, he says, and she lies buried with her ancestors, and he believes it, in the sense that the shame was real whether the death was or not. William Hazlitt (1817) thought the serious part of this play the most prominent, as in the other comedies, and the street scene is where the seriousness is most exposed, since it is the one place where someone demands that the slander be answered with a sword. Nobody answers it. The theme of honour and shame promises that a man’s word must be made good on his body; the play lets the promise be made three times and kept once, by a constable.
How does Benedick’s challenge differ from Leonato’s?
Leonato challenges in public, in verse, with a speech about his grey hairs; Benedick challenges in an aside, in prose, with no speech at all. You are a villain, I jest not, and then the terms: how, with what, and when, and the consequence if Claudio refuses, that his cowardice will be published. It is the form the gentlemen’s code prescribes, delivered by the one man in the scene whose standing the prince and Claudio cannot dismiss, and they dismiss it anyway, because they cannot imagine Benedick not joking. The prince’s anecdote about Beatrice praising Benedick’s wit, which follows, is the scene’s cruellest comedy: it is funny, it is affectionate, and it is told to a man who has just promised to kill the listener’s friend.
The difference is what the challenge is for. Leonato wants satisfaction; Benedick is keeping a promise to Beatrice, and the play shows him keeping it exactly, without heat, and then withdrawing from the company he has belonged to since the first scene. Anna Jameson (1832) read Beatrice’s Kill Claudio as comic in its contrast between her good nature and the fierceness of her language; Benedick’s execution of the order is the opposite, fierce in its mildness, and the prince’s he is in earnest is the first thing anyone in the play has got right about him. The theme of wit and communication is suspended for the length of the aside, and the suspension is the point. Jests, Benedick tells them as he goes, are what braggarts break like their blades, and hurt not.
Why does Borachio confess so completely?
Because he has already been examined, and because the play needs the truth told once, plainly, by the man who knows it all. Borachio was overheard by the watch in Act 3, Scene 3, examined by the sexton in Act 4, Scene 2, and brought here bound; the record exists, and he says so. What he adds is the whole story in order, Don John’s instigation, the orchard, Margaret in Hero’s garments, the disgrace at the altar, and the conclusion that the lady is dead on his and his master’s false accusation. He asks for nothing but a villain’s reward, and later swears that Margaret knew nothing. It is the most honourable speech any man makes in the scene.
DON PEDRO: But did my brother set thee on to this?
BORACHIO: Yea, and paid me richly for the practise of it.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
DON PEDRO: But did my brother put you up to this?
BORACHIO: He did, and paid me handsomely to do it.
The sentence in the middle is the play’s verdict on itself. Jean E. Howard (1987) argued that the play is a contest over who may control what others see and believe, and that it ends by returning that control to the better sort; Borachio’s confession is the moment the control is handed back, and he hands it back with the observation that the better sort could not see what shallow fools saw. Gail Kern Paster, in the Folger edition, notes that the play assigns the function of destroyer with evident symmetry to the prince’s brother, and Borachio is careful to name him: Don John incensed him, and paid richly. The theme of deception and noting is undone here in a single speech, and the men it was practised on respond with images of iron and poison rather than with a question. Nobody asks Borachio how Margaret came to be at the window; Leonato asks later, and Borachio clears her.
What does Claudio mean by “yet sinned I not but in mistaking”?
That he was wrong but not wicked: he believed what he saw, and what he saw was a lie. The prince says the same, by my soul, nor I. Both men ask Leonato for a penance and both, in the same breath, deny that there is anything to do penance for beyond an error of perception. It is a legal distinction and it is also the play’s. Leonato has just thanked the princes for his daughter’s death and told them to record it with their high and worthy deeds, and the men he is addressing answer that they mistook. The scene lets both positions stand and then arranges a marriage.
Sweet Hero! Now thy image doth appear
In the rare semblance that I loved it first.
(Claudio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Sweet Hero! Now I see your face before me
Exactly as it was when I first loved you.
Claudio’s first words on learning the truth are about Hero’s image, which now appears in the rare semblance he first loved, and the vocabulary is the vocabulary of the church, where she was the sign and semblance of her honour. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1880) thought the eventual marriage of Hero and Claudio a doubtfully desirable consummation; Carol Cook (1986) argued that Hero is restored at the end to the very mode of perception that killed her, and this speech is the evidence, since what Claudio recovers is a picture. Gail Kern Paster notes that the play takes pains to construct Claudio as inexperienced, and inexperience is the defence he offers. Whether mistaking is a sin is the question the ending refuses to answer, and the theme of honour and shame is served by the refusal: honour requires that the name be cleared, not that the accuser be judged.
What is the penance Leonato sets, and why does he choose it?
Three things. First, Claudio and the prince must possess the people of Messina with how innocent Hero died, which repairs her name in public, where it was destroyed. Second, Claudio must hang an epitaph on her tomb and sing it to her bones that night, which is the mourning he did not do. Third, he must come to Leonato’s house in the morning and marry Antonio’s daughter, almost the copy of the dead girl and heir to both brothers, giving her the right he should have given her cousin. And so dies my revenge, Leonato says. The audience knows the niece is Hero, so the penance is also the friar’s plan from Act 4 reaching its end: Claudio will mourn, and then be given back what he threw away.
Leonato’s reasons are a father’s and a governor’s at once. He cannot have his daughter’s life, so he takes the three things he can have: her reputation, a public grief, and the marriage that was the whole object of Act 1. The last term is the strangest, and the play does not soften it. The penance for destroying one daughter is to accept another sight unseen, and Claudio embraces the offer with tears at Leonato’s over-kindness. Jean E. Howard (1987) read the ending as the restoration of control to the better sort, and the penance is control exercised: the prince and the count are forgiven on terms set by the host they overrode, and the terms are a wedding. William Hazlitt saw Hero’s restoration as one of Shakespeare’s temporary consignments to the grave, and the scene is where the grave is dug for the second time, with music. The theme of courtship and marriage ends the scene as it began the play, with a bride disposed of between men.
What is Dogberry doing in the scene’s final lines?
Being paid and sent away, and asking for two things on the way out. The first is that it be remembered in Borachio’s punishment that he called the constable an ass, which Dogberry has wanted on the record since the examination; the second is that the watch heard talk of one Deformed, a thief who wears a key in his ear and borrows money in God’s name, which is Borachio’s lecture on fashion from Act 3, Scene 3 turned by the watch into a wanted man. Leonato thanks him for his care and honest pains and gives him money; Dogberry blesses him, calls him a most thankful and reverend youth, and hopes that if a merry meeting may be wished, God will prohibit it.
LEONATO: There's for thy pains.
DOGBERRY: God save the foundation!
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
LEONATO: Take this money for your troubles.
DOGBERRY: God save the charity!
The comedy is the constable’s, and the discomfort is the gentry’s. Dogberry has saved Hero and does not know it; nobody tells him; he is thanked in a form he cannot parse and paid as one pays a beggar at a charity’s gate, which is what God save the foundation means. William Hazlitt (1817) called Dogberry and Verges a standing record of pretension without understanding and saw the type everywhere in public life; Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818) asked what goes to make up a Dogberry, and the answer this scene gives is a man who holds the truth and wants only to be written down an ass. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1880) observed that without this particular constable the action and catastrophe of the whole play could never have taken place at all. The theme of status and class gets its last word here: the lowest officer in Messina has done what the highest could not, and leaves without finding out.
