Theme Profile – At a Glance
- Focus: Honour as reputation: a man’s standing among men, a woman’s chastity as her whole worth, and the public shaming that follows when either is thought to be lost.
- Key Characters: Claudio, Hero, Don Pedro, Leonato, Beatrice, Benedick, Don John.
- The Core Tension: Hero’s honour is held by the men around her and can be destroyed by what three of them think they saw. The only remedies Messina’s men know are shame and the sword, and neither can give it back.
- Key Manifestations: The cuckold jokes (A1S1); "it would better fit your honour" (A3S2); the church (A4S1); Leonato’s "mine and mine" (A4S1); "O that I were a man" (A4S1); Benedick’s challenge and the old men’s (A5S1); the epitaph at the tomb (A5S3).
- Famous Quote:
"Death is the fairest cover for her shame
That may be wished for."
(Act 4, Scene 1) - The Outcome: Hero’s name is cleared by a constable’s watch, not by any man of honour. Claudio is forgiven, the prince is never asked to pay, and Hero is married into the code that nearly killed her.
Stuffed with All Honourable Virtues
The play opens with honour in its military sense. A messenger reports that Claudio has done "the feats of a lion" and been given "much honour" by the prince, and Beatrice immediately asks after another soldier, and is told what he is worth.
Original
A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honourable virtues.
(Messenger, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
As good as a lord, as good as any man; he is stuffed with many great strengths.
Beatrice’s answer is that Benedick is a stuffed man, and the stuffing is in question. The joke sets the pattern: honour in Messina is a reputation held among men, measured by men, and the women are allowed to mock it but not to hold it. Benedick’s own creed, in the same scene, is built on the other kind of male honour, the fear of horns: he will trust no woman because he cannot be sure of any, and he says so as a point of pride.
Between the soldier’s honour and the husband’s fear lies the woman’s honour, which is her chastity, and which belongs to her father until it belongs to her husband. Nobody states this in Act 1. Everybody acts on it in Act 4. The theme of gender and patriarchy and the theme of honour are, in this play, nearly the same thing seen from two sides.
It Would Better Fit Your Honour
Don John understands the code perfectly, which is why his lie works. He does not tell the prince and Claudio that Hero is unfaithful and leave it there. He tells them that their honour is at stake, and the prince takes the point before he has seen anything.
Original
And, as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her.
(Don Pedro, Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And as I was the one who wooed her for you, I will join you in bringing disgrace on her.
The prince made the match, so if the match is bad the prince is shamed, and the remedy for shame is more shame, inflicted in public. Claudio has already said what he will do if the charge proves true: not break the engagement quietly, but humiliate her in the congregation. Both men agree to a punishment before the trial, because the trial is not the point. Their standing is.
The window gives them what they came for. The theme of deception and noting supplies the sight; the code of honour supplies the certainty, because a man who has engaged his honour cannot afford to be wrong, and so decides he is right.
Mine and Mine I Loved
In the church the accused woman asks the obvious question, and it is the only time anyone invites the men to say what she has actually done.
Original
Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name
With any just reproach?
(Hero, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Am I just not called Hero? Who can blemish
My name with honest reason?
Claudio’s answer is that Hero itself can blot out Hero’s virtue, which is a pun, not an answer, and then the prince declares her no maiden and the men leave. Her father’s reaction is the scene’s true measure of what honour means. Leonato does not defend her. He wishes her dead, and explains why in a speech about ownership.
Original
Grieved I, I had but one?
Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?
O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?
(Leonato, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Did I grieve I’d just one?
Should I scold frugal Mother Nature’s scrimping?
One child was one too many! Why have one?
One child was one too many, because her shame is his. "Mine and mine I loved and mine I praised": the word that repeats is possession, and what has been stolen is the father’s good name. A daughter’s chastity, in Messina, is her father’s honour held in trust, and when it appears to be lost the father experiences theft, not grief. The theme of courtship and marriage has been conducted throughout as a transfer of this property from one man to another, and the church is where the property is found damaged.
Manhood Is Melted into Courtesies
The second half of the play is a series of attempts to recover honour by the sword, and each one is slightly absurd. Beatrice demands that Benedick kill Claudio, and rages that she cannot do it herself: manhood is melted into courtesies, and men are only turned into tongue. Benedick challenges his friend in a whisper. And Leonato and his brother, two old men, stop the prince and the count in the street.
Original
Scrambling, out-facing, fashion-monging boys,
That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander,
Go anticly, show outward hideousness,
And speak off half a dozen dangerous words,
How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;
And this is all.
(Antonio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Aggressive, cocky, self-conceited boys
That lie and cheat and jeer, corrupt and slander,
Parading in their godforsaken costumes,
And shout out half a dozen threatening words
Of how they’d hurt their foes, if they but dared;
And that is all they do.
Antonio’s catalogue of what young gentlemen are, liars, cheats, slanderers who speak half a dozen dangerous words and do nothing, is the play’s angriest speech about honour, and it is delivered by a man too old to fight, to men too embarrassed to answer. Nobody draws a sword in earnest. Borachio confesses, the challenge lapses, and the code that destroyed Hero is never put to the test it claims to live by.
What restores her is not a duel but a constable, a sexton and a friar’s lie. The men of honour are left to make amends, which they do by mourning at a tomb and marrying a masked woman. The theme of status and class is in the contrast: honour is the gentry’s possession, and the people who actually clear Hero’s name have none to lose.
"Masculine privilege is contingent on the legibility of women, whose ambiguous ‘seeming’ gravely threatens the men of Messina and provokes them to use various defensive strategies against it, from the exchange of tendentious jokes to the symbolic sacrifice of Hero."
— Carol Cook, The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor, PMLA, 1986
Key Quotes on Honour and Shame
Quote 1
Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again? Go to, i' faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays.
(Benedick, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Will I never see a sixty-year-old bachelor again? Go on then, get married, and then you’ll have to put your neck in the yoke that oxen use to pull carts and give up all your leisure time.
Quote Analysis: Benedick to Claudio, who has just confessed he wants Hero for a wife. The yoke is the ox’s, and the print of it is the mark a husband wears; the sighing is for the horns to come. Every joke Benedick makes about marriage in the first act is a joke about cuckoldry, and the audience is meant to laugh. Three acts later the same fear, that a woman will shame the man who trusts her, is used to destroy Hero, and nobody is laughing. The jokes and the slander come from the same place.
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.
Quote Analysis: Claudio to Leonato, who has asked what he means by handing Hero back. "Approved" means proved, and nothing has been proved; the word is doing the work that evidence should have done. The line is also a statement of what marriage is for in Messina: a knitting of souls, which cannot be done with a woman whose honour is in doubt, however the doubt arose. Claudio is not being cruel by his own lights. He is being correct, and the play lets us see how much cruelty correctness can hold.
I say thou hast belied mine innocent child;
Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart,
And she lies buried with her ancestors...
(Leonato, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I claim you’ve shamed my child, who’s innocent;
Your slanderous lies have stabbed her through the heart,
And she lies buried with her ancestors...
Quote Analysis: Leonato to Claudio in the street, the first time anyone has told the young man to his face what he did. "Belied" is slandered, and slander, Leonato says, has gone through and through her heart. The old man who wished his daughter dead in the church is now ready to die for her name, and the change has taken one night and one friar. The play does not mock him for it. The speech is the moment honour is used, for once, in a woman’s defence rather than against her.
Pardon, goddess of the night,
Those that slew thy virgin knight...
(Song, Act 5, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Pardon, goddess of the night,
Those who killed your virgin knight...
Quote Analysis: The hymn at Hero’s tomb, sung at Claudio’s orders. The goddess is Diana, patron of chastity; the virgin knight is Hero, given the title of a man who died in honour; and "those that slew" are the singers themselves. It is the only moment in the play when the men who shamed Hero call themselves her killers, and it is done in ritual, in the dark, in someone else’s words. Leonato set the penance, and it is exactly the right size for Messina: a public ceremony of regret, followed in the morning by another wedding.
Key Takeaways
- Two Honours: A man's honour is his standing among men; a woman's is her chastity, held by her father and then her husband; the play runs on the gap between them.
- The Code Supplies the Certainty: Don John shows the prince and Claudio a sight and tells them their honour is engaged; engaged honour cannot afford to be wrong, so it decides it is right.
- Mine and Mine: Leonato's wish that Hero should die is grief for a stolen possession; a daughter's shame is her father's loss.
- The Sword Settles Nothing: Beatrice's rage, Benedick's challenge and the old men's duel are all attempts to recover honour by force, and none is fought; a constable clears Hero's name.
Study Questions and Analysis
What does honour mean for men and women in the play?
Different things, and the difference is the plot. For a man, honour is reputation among other men: courage in the field, keeping one’s word, not being made a fool of. For a woman it is chastity, and chastity is not hers to keep but her father’s and then her husband’s. Margaret, dressing Hero on the wedding morning, makes a joke that turns on the word.
Of what, lady? Of speaking honourably? Is not marriage honourable in a beggar? Is not your lord honourable without marriage?
(Margaret, Act 3, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Of what, my lady? Of speaking honourably? Isn’t marriage honourable, even in a beggar? Isn’t your fiancé honourable even without being married?
Marriage is honourable even in a beggar, and Claudio is honourable without being married; so what is dishonourable about a husband’s weight? It is a bawdy joke with a sound moral, and the woman making it spent the previous night at the window that will be used to prove Hero dishonourable. Margaret can joke about honour because she has none, in the play’s sense, to lose. Hero cannot, because she has nothing else.
Carol Cook, in her 1986 essay for PMLA, made this the play’s central mechanism: "Masculine privilege is contingent on the legibility of women", so that a woman who seems other than she is threatens every man around her, and the men respond with "defensive strategies", from cuckold jokes to "the symbolic sacrifice of Hero". Harry Berger Jr. (1982) put the double standard in a sentence, that in Messina "women are responsible for their sins but men are not", and the play bears him out: Claudio is forgiven for a slander and Hero must die to be forgiven for nothing. Gail Kern Paster, in the Folger "Modern Perspective", traces the anxiety to its source, "patriarchy’s inevitable dependence on (and inability to verify) the chastity of wives and mothers". A man’s honour can be tested in a duel. A woman’s can only be believed or disbelieved, which is why the whole play turns on belief. The theme of gender and patriarchy is this asymmetry with a plot attached.
Why does Claudio shame Hero in public rather than breaking the match quietly?
Because the injury, as he understands it, was public, and honour is a public account. He has been offered a bride by a prince in front of the court; he believes the bride is unchaste; and a quiet withdrawal would leave the court free to wonder whether the fault was his. His first words at the wedding are a riddle about what men do.
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!
Dare, may, daily do: he is working himself up, and the line is more true than he knows, since the man doing something without knowing what he does is Claudio. What follows is a performance for the congregation, with Hero’s blush held up as evidence and the prince called as witness. The shaming is the point; the breaking of the match is almost incidental.
Carol Cook (1986) read the church as the moment the men’s "defensive strategies" turn from jokes to sacrifice: Hero’s "seeming" must be publicly exposed so that no man can be said to have been fooled by it, and the audience of other men is the reason for the ceremony. August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) admired the scene as theatre, "a grand piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable sense", and noticed that Shakespeare "carefully softened it in order to prepare for a fortunate catastrophe"; the softening is the friar, who arrives only after the damage is done. Samuel Johnson (1765), annotating Claudio’s farewell to Hero, found only "a poor conceit upon the word Hero", which is a fair description of a man making puns over a woman he thinks he has caught in adultery. The Folger editors Mowat and Werstine call the fault "Claudio’s own weak jealousy", and weak is the word: strong feeling might have confronted her; weak feeling needs witnesses. The theme of deception and noting gave him the sight, but it is honour that chose the church.
Why does Don Pedro join in the shaming?
Because he vouched for the bride, and a prince’s word, once given, is a matter of state. He made the match, wooed Hero himself in a mask, and handed her to Claudio in public; if she is false, the prince has been made the instrument of a fraud. Even after Hero is reported dead he will not withdraw.
My heart is sorry for your daughter's death:
But, on my honour, she was charged with nothing
But what was true and very full of proof.
(Don Pedro, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I’m truly sorry for your daughter’s death;
But I will promise you that all her charges
Were true, and there was proof to back this up.
Sorry for her death; certain of her guilt; "on my honour". The phrase is the whole problem. The prince has staked his honour on what he saw, and to admit error would be to admit that his honour was pledged to a lie. He cannot do that until Borachio confesses, and even then his contrition is addressed to Leonato, the man whose honour was injured, not to Hero, whose life was.
The Folger editors name the prince’s share of the catastrophe as "Don Pedro’s touchy sense of his own honor", and touchy is exactly right: it is not cruelty but a sensitivity to his own standing that makes him the slander’s most effective witness. Barbara Everett, in her 1994 essay on the play as the "unsociable comedy", read the prince and Claudio as a group rather than two men, believing together and walking out together, so that neither can doubt without breaking ranks. Carol Cook (1986) noted that nobody in the play ever apologises to Hero, and that the prince’s offer of penance goes to her father; Harry Berger Jr. (1982) saw the same thing from the men’s side, in "the Men’s Club of Messina" the injured party is always a man. Shakespeare keeps the window offstage, so we cannot judge how convincing it was and must take the prince’s certainty on trust, as Hero must. A prince who says "on my honour" has closed the question, and that is what honour is for. The theme of status and class is in the weight the word carries: the same sight, sworn to by Borachio, would have proved nothing.
Why does Leonato want his own daughter dead?
Because her shame is his, and death is the only thing that can end it. His first response to the accusation is a wish for a dagger for himself; his second, when Hero faints, is that she had better not wake.
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?
The dagger is for Leonato, not Hero, and the order matters: the first person he thinks of killing is himself, because he is the one dishonoured. What follows is the speech in which "mine" appears six times in three lines, and the wish that he had adopted a beggar’s child instead, whose shame would not have been his. Within a hundred lines the friar has talked him out of it, and Leonato’s own explanation is that a man who flows in grief can be led by the smallest twine.
Carol Cook (1986) read the speech as the play’s plainest statement that a daughter’s chastity is her father’s property, so that her disgrace is experienced as theft and he responds like a man robbed. The Folger editors call it "Leonato’s too credulous paternal fury". Samuel Johnson (1765), on the "smallest twine" line, gave the general law: "Men overpowered with distress, eagerly listen to the first offers of relief, close with every scheme, and believe every promise." The historical defence is that an Elizabethan father whose daughter was publicly proved unchaste faced a real loss of standing, and that Leonato’s violence is the violence of a man whose whole position has collapsed in an afternoon. The play accepts the defence and still lets us hear the speech. By Act 5 the same man is challenging Claudio to a duel for slandering his innocent child, and the reversal is complete: honour, which made him wish her dead, now makes him ready to die for her. Neither impulse involves asking Hero anything. The theme of gender and patriarchy is a father who loves his daughter as a possession and defends her the same way.
What does Beatrice’s "O that I were a man" have to do with honour?
Everything. Hero has been dishonoured, and the code that dishonoured her offers one remedy: a man must challenge the slanderer. Beatrice believes in the remedy and cannot apply it. Her rage against the men who could is one of the fiercest things in the play.
Princes and counties! Surely, a princely testimony, a goodly count, Count Comfect; a sweet gallant, surely!
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Princes and counts! Sure, they sounded convincing, and gave a good account, like a count made of gallant sugar!
Count Comfect, a count made of sugar: Claudio’s "princely testimony" against Hero was a sweet gallant’s lie, and the manhood that should answer it has melted into courtesies. Beatrice wants Claudio’s heart eaten in the market-place, in public, as Hero was shamed in public, and she must ask Benedick to do it because she cannot be a man with wishing.
A. C. Swinburne (1880) heard the speech as the proof of her: "the good fierce outbreak of her high true heart in two swift words—‘Kill Claudio’—would have fluttered the dovecotes of fashionable drama to some purpose." Anna Jameson (1832) thought the comedy survives the moment because of "the very consciousness of the exaggeration", the gap between Beatrice’s good nature and her language. Carol Cook (1986) read it less warmly, as the moment the "merry war" shows itself to be "a masculine struggle to maintain control of representation": Beatrice can demand a death but cannot deliver one, and her fury only confirms that the code has no place for her. Ellen Terry recorded that Henry Irving, at the Lyceum, insisted on ending the scene with an added gag, Beatrice crying "Benedick, kill him—kill him if you can", for fear the curtain would fall in silence; she "protested, and implored Henry not to do it", and lost. The scene asks a man to risk his honour for a woman’s, which is the one thing nobody else in Messina does. The theme of love and romance is tested here, and Benedick passes.
Are the challenges ever fought?
No. Benedick challenges Claudio in a whisper, and Claudio treats it as a dinner invitation.
CLAUDIO: Well, I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.
DON PEDRO: What, a feast, a feast?
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
CLAUDIO: Well, I’ll meet you, if it means some good cheer.
DON PEDRO: What? Are we having a feast?
A calf’s head and a capon, says Claudio, and a woodcock too; the prince asks whether they are having a feast; and Benedick leaves them to their gossip-like humour. An hour earlier Leonato and Antonio challenged the same two young men and were laughed at as two old men without teeth. Then Borachio is brought in and confesses, and every challenge lapses. Nobody in the play ever fights.
Bertrand Evans (1960) pointed out that the audience watches these scenes from a position of "discrepant awareness": we know Hero is innocent and that the watch have already caught Borachio, so every joke the young men make about the challengers falls on them as evidence. The code of honour, in other words, is tested in front of us and found to be all talk, which is what Beatrice said it was. Michael Billington, reviewing John Barton’s 1976 production for the RSC, set in British India, called the setting "an ideal background for the play about the practical jokes of a bored officer class", and the challenges are where the jokes run out. What actually restores Hero’s honour is a watchman overhearing a drunk, a sexton with a pen, and a friar’s invention. The sword is never drawn in earnest because the play does not believe it would help. Honour is given back the way it was taken away, by report. The theme of status and class has its sharpest irony here: the gentlemen whose code this is are the last to learn the truth.
Is honour restored at the end, and does anyone pay for the shaming?
Hero’s name is restored; nobody pays. Leonato’s verdict in the last scene is careful.
So are the prince and Claudio, who accused her
Upon the error that you heard debated...
(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...
The friar says Hero was innocent; Leonato says so were the prince and Claudio, who accused her "upon the error". Claudio’s penance was a night’s mourning and a morning’s obedience. The prince offered to bear any weight and was asked to bear none. Margaret is found in some fault against her will. Don John is brought back for punishment tomorrow. And Hero is given to Claudio a second time, masked, with his question "if you like of me" the first he has ever asked her.
A. C. Swinburne (1880) called the marriage "a doubtfully desirable consummation" that nonetheless "makes no flaw in the dramatic perfection" of the play; the form requires it, and he accepted the form. Carol Cook (1986) refused the comfort: the comic conclusion "leaves unresolved crucial conflicts that the play has generated", and Hero "remains dead in her resurrection, as she is reappropriated to the mode of perception that killed her". Gail Kern Paster notes that the women all enter masked for the second wedding, a sign that "the old cultural categories that produce suspicion and slander remain largely untouched". William Hazlitt (1817), who loved the play, simply called Hero’s return "one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespeare seems to have been fond", and quoted the friar’s speech on valuing what we have lost as the playwright’s own explanation. What all these readers agree on is the shape: honour is restored to Hero by men, in a ceremony arranged by men, and the men whose honour did the harm walk into the dance. The theme of courtship and marriage closes over the wound. Whether it heals is a question the play, with its last masked bride, declines to answer.
