Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: A room in Leonato’s house, on the morning of the second wedding.
- What Happens: Leonato prepares the masked wedding. Hero unveils as Claudio’s veiled bride, Beatrice and Benedick are caught out by their own love sonnets, Don John is reported captured, and the play ends with a dance.
- Key Characters: Leonato, Antonio, Benedick, Beatrice, Friar Francis, Hero, Margaret, Ursula, Don Pedro, Claudio, the Messenger.
- Dramatic Function: The resolution: both plots are brought to the altar at once, the slandered bride is restored, the sworn enemies of marriage are married, and the comedy claims its dance before anyone can ask hard questions.
- Famous Quote:
"One Hero died defiled, but I do live,
And surely as I live, I am a maid."
(Hero, Act 5, Scene 4) - Why It Matters: It is Shakespeare’s most self-aware comic ending: Claudio gets his wife back without having earned her, Beatrice and Benedick are proved in love by paperwork, and Benedick’s last word on marriage is a cuckold joke.
Scene Summary
The scene opens with the friar’s I-told-you-so. Friar Francis reminds everyone that he said Hero was innocent, and Leonato agrees that the prince and Claudio are innocent too, having been deceived; only Margaret bears some blame, and that against her will. Benedick says he is glad, since otherwise he would have had to fight Claudio. Leonato sends Hero, Beatrice and the gentlewomen out, telling them to return masked when he calls, and reminds his brother Antonio of his part: he is to play the father and give away his supposed daughter to Claudio.
Benedick then asks the friar for a service, to bind him or undo him, and tells Leonato that his niece looks on him with favour and that he returns it. Leonato, enjoying himself, replies that the eye of favour was lent her by his daughter and that Benedick got his loving eyes from the prince, Claudio and himself; Benedick finds the answer enigmatical but asks for his blessing on a wedding that day, and gets it. The prince and Claudio arrive. Asked whether he still means to marry Antonio’s daughter, Claudio says he would hold his mind were she an Ethiope. Noticing Benedick’s gloomy February face, the prince and Claudio tease him with the old joke about the savage bull and the cuckold’s horns, and Benedick gives as good as he gets.
Antonio brings in the masked women. Claudio asks which lady he must seize upon, is given one, and is told he may not see her face until he has taken her hand before the friar and sworn to marry her. He does. The bride unmasks: it is Hero. Claudio can only say another Hero, and Hero answers that one Hero died defiled, but she lives, and is a maid. The prince recognises the Hero who was dead; Leonato explains that she died only while her slander lived; and the friar promises to explain everything after the ceremony.
Benedick stops the procession to the chapel and asks which of the masked women is Beatrice. She unmasks, and the two of them, in front of everyone, each ask the other whether they are in love and each deny it, no more than reason, insisting that the others must have been deceived. Leonato says he is sure she loves him; Claudio produces a sonnet in Benedick’s hand addressed to Beatrice; Hero produces one in Beatrice’s hand stolen from her pocket. Benedick calls it a miracle, their own hands against their hearts, and agrees to take her, for pity; she yields on great persuasion, partly to save his life. He kisses her to stop her talking. The prince asks how Benedick the married man is doing, and Benedick replies that no college of wit-crackers can mock him out of his humour, since man is a giddy thing, and lets Claudio off the beating he had planned. He calls for a dance before the weddings. A messenger reports that Don John has been captured and brought back to Messina; Benedick tells the prince to think about him tomorrow, and to get himself a wife, and the pipers strike up.
Did I Not Tell You?
The last scene begins by tidying up. The friar takes his credit, Leonato apportions blame, and the two speeches between them settle the play’s moral accounts in six lines: the accusers were deceived, Margaret was at fault but not willingly, and nobody is to be punished for anything.
Original
So are the prince and Claudio, who accused her
Upon the error that you heard debated:
But Margaret was in some fault for this,
Although against her will, as it appears
In the true course of all the question.
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
So are the prince and Claudio, who accused her
Based on the error you have heard debated:
But Margaret must bear some blame for this,
Though unintentional, as it appears
Throughout the course of the investigation.
It is a strange sort of forgiveness, and the play means the strangeness to be felt. Leonato has spent the previous act challenging the prince and Claudio to duels and calling Claudio a boy; now, with Hero alive and the plot exposed, he excuses them on the ground that they were lied to, which was true in Act 4 as well. The one person actually blamed is the maid who wore her mistress’s clothes, and she is excused in the same breath. The theme of honour and shame has been running on the premise that a sight is proof; the scene quietly replaces that premise with another, that a mistake made in good faith is no crime, and then moves on before anyone can object. Benedick’s line is the only hint of what the alternative would have been: he was ready, by faith enforced, to call young Claudio to a reckoning.
Which Is the Lady I Must Seize Upon?
The second wedding is a repeat of the first with the sight removed. Claudio is given a masked woman, and he must take her hand and swear before he may look at her face; the scene insists on the order of events, because the order is the correction.
Original
LEONATO: No, that you shall not, till you take her hand
Before this friar and swear to marry her.
CLAUDIO: Give me your hand: before this holy friar,
I am your husband, if you like of me.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
LEONATO: No, you will not until you take her hand
Before this friar and swear to marry her.
CLAUDIO: Give me your hand: before this holy friar,
I’ll be your husband, if you want me to.
In the church, Claudio looked and then judged; here he must swear and then look. The verb he uses for marrying, seize upon, is the language of property, and the play does not soften it. What it does is make him commit blind, to a woman he has agreed to marry sight unseen as a penance, and his willingness to do so, were she an Ethiope, is the whole of his reform. The theme of deception and noting ends with a benign version of the trick that nearly killed Hero: a woman presented as someone she is not, for a good purpose, to a man who cannot see. Hero’s unmasking is Shakespeare’s favourite device, the supposed dead returned, and he will use it again for Hermione; but Hero’s two lines are sharper than wonder. She was his other wife when she lived, and he was her other husband when he loved. Both verbs are in the past.
No More Than Reason
Benedick halts the procession to the chapel, and the play gives its real couple the last fifty lines. What follows is the merry war’s final battle, fought in public, with both sides denying that there is anything to fight about.
Original
BENEDICK: Do not you love me?
BEATRICE: Why, no; no more than reason.
BENEDICK: Why, then your uncle and the prince and Claudio
Have been deceived; they swore you did.
BEATRICE: Do not you love me?
BENEDICK: Troth, no; no more than reason.
BEATRICE: Why, then my cousin Margaret and Ursula
Are much deceived; for they did swear you did.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: Well, don’t you love me?
BEATRICE: No; well, no more than is reasonable.
BENEDICK: Well, then your uncle and the prince and Claudio
Have been deceived; they swore you did.
BEATRICE: Well, don’t you love me?
BENEDICK: In truth, I don’t; no more than reasonably.
BEATRICE: Well, then my cousin Margaret and Ursula
Have got it wrong, for they both swore you did.
The symmetry is exact and it is comic because it is exact: the same question, the same answer, the same list of deceived witnesses, with the gullers turned into the gulled. Each believes the other loved first, because that is what they were made to overhear, and now each discovers that the other overheard the same thing. The trick is exposed, and the exposure gives them a last chance to retreat into wit, which they take at once. The play has argued since the first scene that the sparring was a form of love, and the scene proves it by showing what happens when the pretext is removed: nothing changes. Leonato has to intervene, as he did at the ball, because the two cleverest people in Messina cannot say the plain thing to each other without help. The theme of wit and communication here reaches its limit, and the limit is written down.
Our Own Hands Against Our Hearts
The evidence that convicts them is paperwork. Claudio has a sonnet in Benedick’s hand; Hero has one stolen from Beatrice’s pocket; and the lovers who have denied everything are caught, like Borachio, by what they wrote and said when they thought nobody was noting.
Original
BENEDICK: A miracle! Here's our own hands against our hearts.
Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take
thee for pity.
BEATRICE: I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield
upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life,
for I was told you were in a consumption.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: A miracle! Our own handwriting damns our hearts.
Come on then, I’ll take you; but, I assure you that I only do this
out of pity.
BEATRICE: I wouldn’t refuse you; but, rest assured, I’m only doing this
after much persuasion; and partly to save your life,
for I heard you were wasting away without me.
Benedick’s miracle is the play’s last word on noting: the only reliable evidence in Messina is a confession, and these two have confessed in verse. Even then they will not say it plainly. He takes her for pity; she yields on persuasion, partly to save his life, having heard he was in a consumption; and he stops her mouth with a kiss, which is what the prince said Hero should do to Claudio at the betrothal. The theme of love and romance in this play has always been love caught rather than declared, and the ending keeps faith with that. Then Benedick turns to the prince, dismisses the wit-crackers, concedes that man is a giddy thing, forgives Claudio, calls for music, and tells Don Pedro to get a wife, with a cuckold joke attached. The last speech in the play about marriage is about horns, and the man who makes it has just been married. Don John’s capture is reported and postponed until tomorrow. Shakespeare had, as Johnson said, no mercy on the cuckold; nor, it turns out, on the villain, who is not even allowed to interrupt the dance.
Language and Technique
- Symmetry: Beatrice and Benedick’s exchange is built as a mirror: the same question asked twice, the same answer given twice, the same witnesses cited. The shape of the lines tells the audience that the two of them are the same, before the sonnets prove it.
- The masked bride: The play ends as it began, at a masked meeting where a man is given a woman he cannot see. The device repeats the ball in Act 2 and corrects the window in Act 3: this time he must swear before he looks.
- Prose for the giddy thing: The scene is in verse until Benedick says a miracle; then it drops into prose for the lovers’ last denials, Benedick’s speech to the prince and the horn joke. Verse is for ceremony, prose for the people who refuse to be ceremonial.
- The horn: The savage bull, Europa and Jove, the calf that bleats like Claudio, the staff tipped with horn: the cuckold’s horns run through the scene as a joke every man makes and no man quite believes is a joke.
- Past tense: Hero’s two lines to Claudio put both their marriage and his love in the past: when I lived, when you loved. The grammar is the only reproach she makes.
Key Quotes from Act 5, Scene 4
Quote 1
Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
(Don Pedro, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Good morning, Benedick. Well, what’s the matter,
That you have got a face like February,
All full of frost and storms and cloudy grey?
Quote Analysis: The prince on Benedick’s face: February, frost, storm, cloud. Benedick is about to be married and looks like a man about to fight, and the prince, who made the match, pretends not to know why. The modern verse keeps the February face. It is the image of a man who has lost a long argument with himself, and the mockery that follows is the friends’ way of welcoming him into the club he swore he would never join.
And when I lived, I was your other wife:
And when you loved, you were my other husband.
(Hero, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And when I lived, I was your other wife:
And when you loved, you were my other husband.
Quote Analysis: Hero’s unmasking, in two balanced lines. She does not say she forgives him and she does not say she loves him; she says that she was his wife when she lived, and he was her husband when he loved, and the two past tenses carry everything the scene will not say aloud. The modern verse keeps them. Claudio’s reply is two words, and the play moves on before either of them can be examined.
CLAUDIO: And I'll be sworn upon't that he loves her;
For here's a paper written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashioned to Beatrice.
HERO: And here's another
Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
CLAUDIO: And I will swear upon it that he loves her;
For here’s a letter in his own handwriting,
A poorly written sonnet from his mind
That he’s addressed to Beatrice.
HERO: Here’s another
That Beatrice wrote herself, pinched from her pocket,
Describing all her love for Benedick.
Quote Analysis: Claudio and Hero produce the sonnets. His is a halting sonnet of his own pure brain, hers was stolen from her pocket: the lovers who mocked everyone’s love letters are convicted by their own, and it is the couple whose romance they mocked who hold the evidence. The modern verse keeps the halting. The scene gives Claudio and Hero this small revenge, and it is the only one they take.
First, of my word; therefore play, music. Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
No, let’s do it first; so play the tunes, musicians. Prince, you are sad; get yourself a wife, go get a wife. There’s no staff more venerable than a cuckold’s horn.
Quote Analysis: Benedick’s last lines, and the play’s. He overrules Leonato on the order of events, dancing first, then tells the prince, who is sad, to get a wife, and seals it with the cuckold joke the play has been making since Act 1. The modern verse keeps the horn. The man who swore in the first scene to wear the horns rather than marry now recommends them to his prince as a staff of office, and the play ends on the word.
Key Takeaways
- Forgiveness by decree: The friar is vindicated, the accusers excused for being deceived, and Margaret blamed and pardoned in one line; the play settles its accounts fast and moves to the altar.
- Swear first, look second: Claudio must take the masked bride’s hand before he sees her face: the second wedding reverses the order of the church and corrects what went wrong there.
- Convicted by their own hands: Beatrice and Benedick deny everything in public and are proved in love by their stolen sonnets; the merry war ends in paperwork and a kiss.
- Horns to the last: The savage bull, Europa, the bleating calf and the staff tipped with horn run to the final line; marriage in Messina is celebrated and mocked in the same breath.
- The villain can wait: Don John’s capture is reported and postponed till tomorrow; the comedy ends with pipers, not punishment.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why does Hero marry Claudio after what he did to her?
Because the play is a comedy and that is the ending its plot was built to reach; the better question is what the scene does to make the audience feel the cost. Hero speaks three lines to Claudio and they are all about tenses: when she lived she was his other wife, when he loved he was her other husband, and one Hero died defiled. She does not forgive him on stage. The friar’s plan from Act 4 was that Claudio’s accusation would turn to remorse, and the plan has worked exactly as a plot; whether it has worked as a reconciliation the play does not say, and Hero is not given the lines to say it.
She died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived.
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
She only died whilst slander was alive.
Critics have divided on whether the ending redeems Claudio. Algernon Charles Swinburne (1880) thought the marriage of Hero and Claudio “a doubtfully desirable consummation” but allowed that the play “could not otherwise have been wound up at all”; Carol Cook (1986) argued that the comic conclusion “leaves unresolved crucial conflicts that the play has generated”, and that Hero remains dead in her resurrection, restored to the men who misread her. William Hazlitt (1817) took the warmer view, finding the justification of Hero and her restoration to “the confidence and arms of her lover” brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave Shakespeare was fond of. The scene gives both readings room: Claudio swears blind, which is a reform, and seizes upon his bride, which is the language of the church. The theme of honour and shame ends with the honour restored and the woman silent.
Why do Beatrice and Benedick deny their love at the end?
Because denying it is how they have always talked about it, and because each has just discovered that the other was tricked. The exchange is symmetrical by design: Benedick asks, Beatrice says no more than reason and names the men who swore otherwise; Beatrice asks, Benedick says the same and names the women. In that moment both of them learn that the love they overheard was staged, and both retreat into the only register they trust, which is wit. The sonnets end the retreat. Produced by Claudio and Hero, the two people whose love they mocked, the poems are evidence in their own hands, and Benedick’s response, a miracle, is a joke about noting: they are convicted by their own writing, as Borachio was by his own talk.
August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) read the lovers’ raillery as proof of attraction from the start, since “the exclusive direction of their raillery against each other is in itself a proof of a growing inclination”, and the last scene bears him out: they have no other way of speaking to each other, and the play does not ask them to find one. Gail Kern Paster, in the Folger edition, notes that the final entrance brings on not just the reborn Hero but all the women masked, and reads it as a sign that the old suspicions remain largely untouched; on that reading, the lovers’ denials are of a piece with a world in which nobody says what they mean in public. Benedick’s kiss, which stops her mouth, is the play’s answer: when the words run out, the body settles it. The theme of wit and communication ends with the wittiest character silenced, by consent.
What does the masked wedding mean, and why does Leonato stage it?
Formally it is the friar’s plan reaching its end: Hero was given out as dead, Claudio was told to marry her cousin as a penance, and the cousin is Hero. Leonato stages the masking so that Claudio must commit before he can look, and the play makes the order explicit: he may not see her face until he has taken her hand before the friar and sworn. In Act 4 Claudio looked at Hero and read guilt in her blush; here he is denied the look altogether. The masked wedding is the play’s correction of the window, a woman presented under a false identity for a good end instead of a bad one.
CLAUDIO: Which is the lady I must seize upon?
ANTONIO: This same is she, and I do give you her.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
CLAUDIO: Which is the lady I am going to marry?
ANTONIO: This is the lady; I give her to you.
It also closes the circle with the ball in Act 2, where Hero was wooed by a masked prince on Claudio’s behalf, and where Claudio believed a lie within a few lines. The play has three masked meetings, and in each a man is deceived about a woman; the last deception is kind. Gail Kern Paster sees in the masks evidence that the categories which produced the slander survive the ending, and there is a less severe reading available too: that Claudio’s willingness to marry blind is the one thing he can do to show he has learned. The theme of deception and noting ends where it began, with a hidden face and a man who must decide what to believe.
Why does the play end with a dance rather than with Don John’s punishment?
Because it is a comedy, and because Benedick, who has taken charge of the ending, will not have the mood spoiled. The messenger’s news that Don John has been taken in flight arrives in the last ten lines and is dismissed in two: think not on him till tomorrow, Benedick tells the prince, and he will devise brave punishments. The villain who nearly killed Hero does not appear, does not speak, and is not sentenced. The dance is called for before the weddings, against Leonato’s preference, because Benedick wants the hearts lightened and the wives’ heels along with them.
The choice is deliberate and it is Shakespeare’s habit: Malvolio is left vowing revenge, Shylock leaves before the last act, and Don John is left to tomorrow. Gail Kern Paster suggests that Benedick insists on ending the play not with a wedding but with the regulated movements of a communal dance in which the couples move together and, as she puts it, no man is yet wearing horns. The horns are the point. The last lines before the messenger are a cuckold joke, the last line before the dance is a punishment deferred, and the play puts both out of sight with pipers. The theme of courtship and marriage ends with marriage celebrated and marriage mocked in the same breath, which is where the play has kept it throughout.
What does Benedick mean by “man is a giddy thing”?
That men change their minds, and that he has changed his. The prince has just greeted him as Benedick the married man, which is the sign Benedick swore in Act 1 he would hang over his own door if he ever married, and Benedick answers with a speech that refuses to be ashamed: a college of wit-crackers cannot flout him out of his humour, he does not care for a satire or an epigram, and nobody is to mock him for what he said against marriage, because man is a giddy thing, and that is his conclusion. Giddy meant unstable, dizzy, inconstant; Benedick admits the inconstancy and claims it as the human condition rather than a personal failure.
Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No: if a man will be beaten with brains, a' shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my...
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Do you think I’m worried about ridicule and nicknames? No: if a man fears criticism, he will never wear attractive clothing. In short, since I do intend to marry, I will not hear anything from anyone who has a bad word to say about it; and so don’t ever ridicule me for what I’ve said against getting married, for a man can be a fickle thing, and...
It is the best exit line a converted bachelor could ask for, and it has a sting. William Hazlitt (1817) admired how Benedick’s “character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less happily effected”; the conversion is complete here, and the man who was converted is the one laughing. Samuel Johnson’s note on the play’s horn jokes, that Shakespeare had no mercy upon the poor cuckold, applies to Benedick’s own last line a few moments later, when he recommends a staff tipped with horn to the prince. The theme of courtship and marriage closes with its chief opponent as its advocate, and still joking about horns.
Is the ending of Much Ado About Nothing a happy one?
It is a comic one, which is not quite the same thing, and the scene seems to know the difference. On the surface everything is resolved: Hero is alive and married, Beatrice and Benedick are matched, the villain is caught, the prince calls for the dance he has worked all play to arrange. Underneath, Hero has three lines, the prince is told to get a wife because he looks sad, Claudio is forgiven without a word of apology, and the final joke is about horns. Carol Cook (1986) argued that the multiple marriages close the play without resolving the conflicts it raised; Gail Kern Paster reads the masked women as a sign that the categories which produced the slander survive the ending. William Hazlitt thought the play hit “that middle point of comedy” where the ludicrous blends with the tender, and the last scene is where the blend is most exact.
Think not on him till to-morrow:
I'll devise thee brave punishments for him.
Strike up, pipers.
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Don’t think of him until tomorrow:
I’ll dream up some fine punishments for him.
Play the music, pipers.
The play’s own answer is the dance. Benedick, who has spent five acts refusing to be solemn, takes charge of the ending and will not let it be solemn either; the duel with Claudio is cancelled, the villain is postponed, and the pipers are told to strike up before anyone has married anyone. Whether that is a happy ending or a brilliant way of not asking is the question every production answers for itself, and the text supports both. The theme of love and romance finishes with two couples on the floor and one man watching, and the music covers the rest.
