Theme Profile – At a Glance
- Focus: A world run by men, in which a daughter is given away with her father’s fortune, a woman’s word is worth less than three men’s eyes, and the cleverest woman in the play cannot act without borrowing a man.
- Key Characters: Beatrice, Hero, Leonato, Claudio, Don Pedro, Benedick, Margaret, Ursula.
- The Core Tension: Beatrice’s wit and Hero’s obedience are two answers to the same condition, and the play shows neither escaping it: Hero is slandered and Beatrice is silenced.
- Key Manifestations: Leonato’s instructions to Hero and Beatrice on being ruled by a clod of marl (A2S1); the proxy wooing (A2S1); the cuckold jokes (A1S1, A5S4); the church (A4S1); "O that I were a man" (A4S1); the masked brides (A5S4); "Peace! I will stop your mouth" (A5S4).
- Famous Quote:
"Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust?"
(Act 2, Scene 1) - The Outcome: Two weddings in which both brides are given away by men. Beatrice’s last words are a joke about yielding, and Benedick kisses her quiet.
Be Ruled by Your Father
Before the ball Leonato tells Hero what to say if the prince proposes, and her uncle hopes she will be ruled by her father. Hero says nothing. Beatrice says it for her.
Original
Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.'
(Beatrice, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Yes, indeed; it is my cousin’s obligation to curtsy and say, ‘Father, I’ll do whatever pleases you.’ But despite all that, cousin, make sure he is a handsome chap, otherwise you should curtsy and say, ‘Father, I’ll do whatever pleases me.’
Curtsy and say "Father, as it please you", unless the man is ugly, in which case curtsy again and say "as it please me". It is a joke about a real procedure. A daughter’s consent in Messina is a formality performed after the men have agreed, and the only freedom Beatrice can imagine for Hero is a second curtsy. Hero, for her part, has no lines in the exchange. She will have one line in the whole of the first scene and a whisper at her own betrothal.
The play does not treat this as a scandal. It is simply how a governor marries a daughter, and Leonato does it kindly. What the play does is show the price. The theme of courtship and marriage in Messina is a conversation between men, and the woman it concerns is expected to be grateful.
Adam's Sons Are My Brethren
Beatrice is an orphan with no fortune mentioned and no father to bargain her away, and she uses the freedom to announce that she will not be bargained at all. Her uncle hopes to see her fitted with a husband; she explains why not.
Original
Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
(Beatrice, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Lord, I couldn’t deal with a husband who has a beard: I’d rather sleep between scratchy blankets.
No bearded husband, no beardless one, and no husband made of earth, since Adam’s sons are her brothers and marrying them would be a sin. She will lead apes into hell instead, which is what proverbs promised old maids, and she is delighted by the prospect. It is the funniest refusal of marriage in Shakespeare, and it rests on a fact the men confirm: a woman who marries is "overmastered". Beatrice would rather not be.
Leonato’s response is affectionate and exact: she will never get a husband with so shrewd a tongue. He is wrong, but only because the men conspire to trick her into one. The theme of wit and communication is Beatrice’s weapon and the men’s objection to her, and the play lets her keep it right up to the kiss that stops her mouth.
Hero Itself Can Blot Out Hero's Virtue
In the church the play shows what a woman’s word weighs. Hero asks who can blot her name with any just reproach, and Claudio answers with a pun and a question.
Original
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.
(Claudio, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
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.
Three men say they saw her at her window; she says she talked with no man at that hour; and the prince concludes from her denial that she is no maiden. Her father believes the prince. The only people who take her side are a friar, who has been watching her face, and Beatrice, who has shared her bed for a year and was not there that one night. Hero faints, which is the one answer the scene leaves her.
What is being tested is not Hero’s virtue but the system that holds it. A woman’s chastity in Messina is a possession of the men around her, and when they believe it lost, her own testimony is worth nothing, because she is the thing in dispute, not a party to it. The theme of honour and shame is the name the men give to the possession; the theme of gender is what it costs the women to be it.
I Will Stop Your Mouth
The play ends with two brides given away by men, both masked. Hero is handed to Claudio by her uncle under a false name; Beatrice is convicted of love by a stolen sonnet. Benedick makes his terms.
Original
Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Come on then, I’ll take you; but, I assure you that I only do this out of pity.
She answers that she yields upon great persuasion, and partly to save his life. They are still sparring, and the sparring is now the form their love takes. Then he ends it.
Original
Peace! I will stop your mouth.
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Be quiet! I will stop your mouth from talking.
With a kiss. It is a shared joke, since Beatrice spent the play telling other people to stop his mouth, and it is also the last time she speaks. The woman who said "O that I were a man" is married, kissed quiet and led into a dance, and Benedick gets the last long speech, in which he tells the prince to get a wife. The theme of love and romance has its happy ending, and the ending is a man talking.
"To read others in this play is an act of aggression; to be read is to be emasculated."
— Carol Cook, The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor, PMLA, 1986
Key Quotes on Gender and Patriarchy
Quote 1
What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman?
(Beatrice, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
What would I do with him? Dress him in my clothes and make him my lady-in-waiting?
Quote Analysis: Beatrice, asked whether she might not find a husband without a beard. She would dress him in her clothes and make him her maid: the joke is that a man without a beard is not a man, and the joke underneath is that she would rather command than be commanded. Beatrice’s whole position on marriage is in the image. The only husband she can imagine tolerating is one she could put in a skirt, and the play will give her Benedick, who has just shaved.
CLAUDIO: Stand thee by, friar. Father, by your leave:
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: Friar, you stand aside. Father, please tell me:
Will you, without restriction and constraint,
Give me this girl, your daughter?
LEONATO: As freely, son, as God gave her to me.
Quote Analysis: Claudio and Leonato at the altar, performing the transfer. Will you give me this maid? As freely as God gave her to me. The language is of gift and property, and it is the ordinary language of a wedding; what makes it terrible is that Claudio is asking only so that he can give her back. Hero stands between them while the men establish who owns her, and the next thing she hears is that she is a rotten orange. The scene shows the form of marriage in Messina and then shows what the form permits.
I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I cannot become a man by wishing I was one, hence I will die a grieving woman.
Quote Analysis: Beatrice to Benedick, at the end of the speech that begins with "Kill Claudio". She has wished three times to be a man, and the wish each time means the same thing: a man could challenge Claudio and she cannot. The sentence is as bleak as anything in the comedies. Wishing will not make her a man, so she will die a woman, grieving, and the only action left to her is to send a man to do what she would do herself. Benedick goes, and the play lets him; it does not let her.
Give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own.
(Margaret, Act 5, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Give us your swords; we have buckler shields of our own.
Quote Analysis: Margaret to Benedick, who has just conceded a bout of wit by giving her the bucklers, the small shields fencers used. Women have shields of their own, she says; what they want are the swords. It is a bawdy joke and a demand at once, and Benedick keeps it bawdy. Nobody in the play gives women the swords. Beatrice spent the previous act asking for one and was given a man instead. The waiting-woman says in a line what the lady said in a speech, and both are laughed off.
Key Takeaways
- A Daughter's Consent Is a Curtsy: Hero's marriage is arranged between men and her part is to say as it please you; Beatrice can mock the procedure but not change it.
- Beatrice's Freedom Has a Price: She can refuse a prince because she is an orphan with no fortune to bargain; her wit is tolerated in a niece and would not be in a daughter.
- A Woman's Word Weighs Nothing: In the church three men's eyes outweigh Hero's oath, and her father takes her denial as proof; she is the thing in dispute, not a party to it.
- The Last Word Is a Man's: Beatrice is kissed quiet and Benedick gets the final speech; the comedy's happy ending restores the order it exposed.
Study Questions and Analysis
How does the play present marriage and women’s place in it?
As a transaction between men, conducted with great courtesy and no reference to the bride. The first we hear of Hero’s marriage is a report of a conversation she was not part of.
The prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance: and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.
(Antonio, Act 1, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The prince, Don Pedro, and Count Claudio were walking through a leafy tunnel in my orchard, when a servant of mine overheard them: the prince disclosed to Claudio that he loves my niece, your daughter, and plans to let her know this evening at the dance; and if he finds that she reciprocates, he plans to grab the moment by immediately breaking the news to you.
Antonio’s servant overheard the prince telling Claudio that he loves Hero and means to "break with" her father; Leonato’s response is to prepare Hero’s answer for her. The report is wrong, since the prince is wooing for Claudio, but the procedure it describes is exactly right, and by the end of the next scene Leonato has given his daughter away "and with her my fortunes" while she stands beside him saying nothing we can hear.
Harry Berger Jr., in Shakespeare Quarterly (1982), called the play’s world "the Men’s Club of Messina" and read the courtship of Hero as the club’s business, with the woman as the object exchanged. Gail Kern Paster, in her "Modern Perspective" essay for the Folger edition, describes what the procedure asks of the bride: "The too-compliant Hero accepts the marriage proposal of a man in a mask and then learns to transfer her consent from the wearer of that mask, Don Pedro, to his young favorite." Paster also notes that marriage nonetheless "remains the basic form of social organization, the central distribution point in Elizabethan society for the social and sexual goods of adult maturity", which is why Hero, and the play, want it anyway. Carol Cook (1986) put the women’s position in a sentence: "Masculine privilege is contingent on the legibility of women", so that a woman must be readable, obedient and silent to be safe, and even then is not. The theme of courtship and marriage in this play is the mechanism; this theme is what it does to the people inside it.
How do Beatrice and Hero represent different responses to a male world?
Hero obeys and Beatrice talks, and the play puts the two side by side from the first scene. The difference is partly temperament and partly position: Hero is a daughter with an estate attached, and Beatrice is an orphan nobody is bargaining for. Beatrice knows exactly what she is refusing.
Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening.
(Beatrice, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Just so long as he doesn’t give me a husband, which is something I pray for on bended knee every morning and evening.
She prays on her knees, morning and evening, to be sent no husband, and the joke is real: a husband in Messina is a master, and she has watched enough marriages to know it. Hero, in the same scene, is told what to say to the prince and says it. Yet Hero is quick and funny with the masked prince and merciless about Beatrice in the orchard; she has the wit and uses it only where men with power over her cannot hear.
Anna Jameson, in Characteristics of Women (1832), drew the contrast the nineteenth century liked: "The character of Hero is well contrasted with that of Beatrice, and their mutual attachment is very beautiful and natural." She called Beatrice "a spirited and faithful portrait of the fine lady of his own time", and gave Hero "an intellectual beauty of her own". Barbara Everett, in Critical Quarterly (1961), argued that the play’s judgement rests with its women, who see what the men cannot, and that Beatrice’s certainty of Hero’s innocence is the moral centre. Carol Cook (1986) was less hopeful about either response: Beatrice’s wit and Hero’s silence are two strategies for surviving the same condition, and neither escapes it, since Hero is slandered and Beatrice is finally silenced. Gail Kern Paster adds the twist in the gulling, that "While Benedick must be led to believe in Beatrice as Different from all other women, Beatrice must be brought to accept herself as just the Same." The exception has to be taught that she is ordinary before the play will marry her. The theme of wit and communication is Beatrice’s difference, and the play both loves it and tames it.
What do the cuckold jokes reveal?
That the men of Messina are frightened of women, and bond by laughing at the fear. The jokes begin with the father of the bride, who says Hero’s mother has often told him he is her father, and they run to the last scene, where Claudio is still at it.
Tush, fear not, man; we'll tip thy horns with gold
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee...
(Claudio, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Don’t worry, mate; we’ll tip your horns with gold
And everyone in Europe then will love you...
Benedick is about to be married, so Benedick must be about to wear horns: it is the only joke the men have, and they never tire of it. Benedick’s own creed in the first act was built on the same fear, the recheat winded in his forehead. The play’s last line but a few is his advice to the prince that there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.
Samuel Johnson (1765) noticed the pattern and was dry about it: "Shakespeare had no mercy upon the poor cuckold, his horn is an inexhaustible subject of merriment." Gail Kern Paster explains why it is inexhaustible in this play: "Cuckoldry jokes are in the air in Messina", because "anxiety about sexual betrayal in marriage seems endemic in Messina, sparing neither the old nor the young, neither male nor female", and the source of the anxiety is "patriarchy’s inevitable dependence on (and inability to verify) the chastity of wives and mothers". The jokes are the men rehearsing the thing they fear, and the church is where the rehearsal becomes a performance: a man convinced he has been made a cuckold before his wedding does to Hero what every joke has imagined. Carol Cook (1986) names the jokes as the first of the men’s "defensive strategies" and Hero’s sacrifice as the last. Paster’s conclusion is the uncomfortable one: "in a misogynistic culture, resistance to marriage is rational, not idiosyncratic", so that Benedick and Beatrice, who resist, are the sanest people in the play until they are tricked. The theme of honour and shame is the serious name for what the horn jokes are about.
Is Hero’s silence obedience or oppression?
Both, and the play means us to hold them together. Hero is written as the good daughter, and she is good at it; her one offer in the matchmaking plot is to help.
I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.
(Hero, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I will perform any reasonable task, my lord, that might help my cousin get a good husband.
Any modest office: she volunteers for the trick on Beatrice as a kindness and runs it beautifully, and the word "modest" is the whole of her self-description. She is modest with the prince, modest at her betrothal, modest in the church, and the modesty is what the men read as guilt the moment they are told to.
Carol Cook (1986) made Hero’s quietness the centre of her argument: in a world where "to read others in this play is an act of aggression; to be read is to be emasculated", a woman’s silence is not a trait but a position, the condition of being read rather than reading. Jean E. Howard, in a 1987 essay on theatricality and rank, pointed out that Hero is cast in scenes she did not write, the window and the church, and is given no lines in either; the oppression is in the casting. William Hazlitt (1817) saw the same silence and admired it, calling Hero "the principal figure in the piece" and her appeals in the church "made with the most affecting simplicity". The play supports both responses. Hero’s obedience is a virtue in Messina’s terms and the play shows Messina’s terms failing her; it also gives her, among women and behind a mask, a wit the men never see. Whether that makes her a victim or a survivor is for each production to decide. The theme of deception and noting falls on her twice, once in a trick she runs and once in a trick run on her, and she speaks in the first and is silent in the second.
Is Beatrice a feminist?
She would not have known the word, and the play does not give her the power the word implies; but she sees the arrangement clearly and says so, which in Messina is rare. The nearest she comes to a programme is in the church, when Benedick asks whether there is any way to show his friendship for Hero.
Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her!
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Oh, how much I would give to the man who puts this right for her!
A man’s office, but not his, she tells him; and when he presses, she asks him to kill Claudio. Her long speech afterwards is a catalogue of what she cannot do and the men will not: she cannot challenge, they have turned to tongue, and she will die a woman with grieving. It is not a demand for equality. It is a demand that the men live up to their own code, since she is not allowed to.
Anna Jameson (1832) thought her the fine lady of her age, with "a touch of insolence" in her wit and "more of impulse than of passion in her vehemence", and did not look for politics in her. Ellen Terry, who played her at the Lyceum, wanted her "swift, swift, swift!" and "a great-hearted woman", which is an actress’s politics. The modern reading begins with Carol Cook (1986), for whom Beatrice’s wit is a woman’s attempt to seize the men’s weapon, language, and "O that I were a man" the admission that the weapon is not enough: she "cannot be a man with wishing" and must borrow one. Gail Kern Paster is drier, noting that the play must "bring Beatrice to accept herself as just the Same" as other women before it can marry her off. Harry Berger Jr. (1982) saw her, with Benedick, as a member of the club she mocks, complicit in its jokes until the church makes her choose. What the text gives us is a woman who names the double standard, "women are responsible for their sins but men are not" in Berger’s phrase, and cannot change it. The theme of wit and communication is the weapon she has; this theme is why it is the only one.
Does Benedick’s "I will stop your mouth" silence Beatrice?
Literally, yes: it is her last line but one, and after the kiss she does not speak again. The exchange that leads to it is the old sparring, with her uncle joining in.
BEATRICE: No, truly, but in friendly recompense.
LEONATO: Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.
(Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BEATRICE: No, truly; merely as a friend, in turn.
LEONATO: Come, cousin, I am sure you love this man.
No more than reason, no more than friendly recompense, until the sonnets are produced and Benedick takes her, he says, for pity, and she yields upon great persuasion. The kiss ends the argument. Benedick then makes the longest speech of the scene, forgives Claudio, calls for a dance and tells the prince to get a wife.
Anna Jameson (1832) had the generous reading: "Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the first word, and will have the last", and the kiss is a joke between two people who have run out of arguments, not a defeat. George Bernard Shaw (1898) refused to be charmed by either of them and thought "the Elizabethan ‘merry lady’" worse than the merry gentleman, which is at least even-handed. Carol Cook (1986) read the silencing as the play’s final act of control: the comic conclusion "leaves unresolved crucial conflicts that the play has generated", and the woman who demanded a man’s office is married, kissed quiet and folded into a dance. Gail Kern Paster makes the same point about the masks: the brides enter with "all the women wearing masks", and "the old cultural categories that produce suspicion and slander remain largely untouched". The text supports both readings and chooses neither. Beatrice and Benedick marry as equals who have each been tricked, exposed and persuaded, which is more than Hero and Claudio can say; but it is Benedick who gets the last long speech and Beatrice who gets kissed. The theme of love and romance ends happily. Whether it ends equally is the question this theme leaves open.
What does the friendship between Beatrice and Hero contribute?
The one bond in the play that no lie breaks. When Benedick, in the church, asks Beatrice whether she was Hero’s bedfellow the night before, her answer is the evidence the men needed and did not seek.
No, truly not; although, until last night,
I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
In truth, I didn’t; but, until last night,
I’ve spent the last year sleeping in her room.
A year of nights, and the one night she was absent is the night Hero is accused of. Leonato hears it as confirmation; the audience hears it as the measure of what Beatrice knows. She never doubts her cousin for a second, and her demand that Benedick kill Claudio is made on Hero’s behalf, not her own. Hero, for her part, spends her one scene of power making Beatrice happy.
Anna Jameson (1832) called their "mutual attachment" "very beautiful and natural", and it is the only relationship in the play nobody tries to spoil. Barbara Everett (1961) saw in the women’s loyalty the play’s moral centre, the place where judgement is sound while the men’s fails. Carol Cook (1986) noted the limit: the friendship cannot save Hero, because in Messina a woman’s testimony about another woman is worth no more than her testimony about herself, and Beatrice must send a man to do what her certainty cannot. The men’s friendships, by contrast, break on a rumour: Claudio abandons Hero, Benedick resigns from the prince’s service, and the club reforms only when the truth is written down by a sexton. The women’s does not need repairing. It is the steadiest love in a play about love, and the play, which gives its last word to a man, lets it go almost unremarked. The theme of love and romance is usually discussed as a matter of couples; its best example here is two cousins who shared a bed for a year and believed each other.
