Theme Profile – At a Glance
- Focus: Two kinds of love set side by side: the conventional romance of Claudio and Hero, love at first sight and arranged between men, and the fought-for love of Beatrice and Benedick, which has to be tricked into the open.
- Key Characters: Beatrice, Benedick, Claudio, Hero, Don Pedro, Margaret, Balthasar.
- The Core Tension: The couple who talk like lovers nearly destroy each other on a rumour; the couple who refuse to talk like lovers are the play’s one sure match. The play asks which of them is the real thing.
- Key Manifestations: Claudio’s "soldier’s eye" and Benedick’s creed (A1S1); the proxy wooing and the betrothal (A2S1); "Sigh no more, ladies" (A2S3); the two gullings (A2S3, A3S1); the church (A4S1); "I love you with so much of my heart" (A4S1); Benedick’s failed rhymes (A5S2); the stolen sonnets (A5S4).
- Famous Quote:
"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."
(Act 4, Scene 1) - The Outcome: Two weddings and a dance. The couple who chose each other did so against their will, the couple who were matched by others are matched again, and the prince who arranged both has nobody.
A Soldier's Eye
The play’s first love is the conventional kind, and it arrives by the conventional route. Claudio comes home from the war, looks at Hero, and tells the prince that he liked her before he left and now, with the "war-thoughts" gone, "soft and delicate desires" have moved in. He asks whether she is Leonato’s heir. Don Pedro offers to do the wooing.
Original
If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it,
And I will break with her and with her father,
And thou shalt have her.
(Don Pedro, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
If you’re in love with Hero, just enjoy it,
And I will raise it with her and her father,
And then she will be yours. Now, wasn’t this...
Love, here, is a thing to be cherished privately and arranged publicly, by a greater man speaking to a father. Claudio accepts at once, and we never hear him speak to Hero before they are betrothed. When the prince hands her over at the ball, Claudio is so happy he cannot speak, and Beatrice has to tell Hero to stop his mouth with a kiss. It is romance as Messina understands it: sincere, sudden, and conducted almost entirely between men.
The play does not mock this love. It shows how little it rests on. Claudio has looked at Hero and seen a jewel; he has not noted her, and when he is shown another woman at her window he cannot tell the difference. The theme of deception and noting will do its worst to the lovers who know each other least.
Sigh No More, Ladies
In the orchard, before the trick on Benedick begins, the prince calls for a song, and Balthasar sings the play’s statement about men.
Original
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never:
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.
(Balthasar, Act 2, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men have forever cheated,
They’re half at sea and half on shore,
That always is repeated:
So do not sigh, but let them go,
And stay happy and bonny,
And swap your endless sounds of woe,
Singing, ‘Hey nonny, nonny.’
Men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore; so let them go, and turn your sighs into nonsense. It is a cheerful song about faithlessness, sung at a wedding party by a man who has just protested that his voice will slander music, and Benedick in the arbour complains that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies. The audience knows what Benedick does not, that the song is the overture to a trick that will make a lover of him.
The song also describes, before it happens, what Claudio will do: swear love, hear a rumour, and go. The women of Messina are advised to expect it and be blithe. Hero, who hears no such advice, will take the deceiving in earnest and be left for dead. The theme of gender and patriarchy is in the song’s refrain: it is the ladies who are told to stop sighing, not the men who are told to stop deceiving.
I Will Be Horribly in Love with Her
The play’s second love has to be manufactured, and the manufacturing is the funniest thing in it. Benedick overhears that Beatrice is dying for him and talks himself round in a single speech; Beatrice overhears that she is too proud to be told and bids her pride farewell in rhymed verse. Benedick’s reasoning is worth following.
Original
They say the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous; 'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her.
(Benedick, Act 2, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
They say the lady is beautiful; that is true, I can see that for myself; and virtuous, which I cannot disprove; and wise, except for loving me; in truth, it doesn’t make her any smarter, but nor does it suggest she is foolish, because I will fall head-over-heels in love with her.
Fair, virtuous, wise but for loving him: he weighs the evidence like a man buying a horse and concludes that he will be "horribly" in love, as if it were a decision. It is a decision, and that is the point. Benedick and Beatrice have been talking about each other since the first scene; the trick does not create the feeling, it gives them permission to admit it, and each has to be told something true about their own pride before they will.
What they fall into is not the romance Claudio has. There is no soldier’s eye and no jewel. There is a man who has just shaved his beard and a woman who comes to call him in to dinner against her will, and each reading love into the other’s rudeness. The theme of wit and communication is the medium of their love: they fell in love quarrelling and will go on quarrelling, and the play plainly thinks this is the better bargain.
Our Own Hands Against Our Hearts
By the last act the two couples have swapped fortunes. Claudio and Hero are to be remarried by a trick; Beatrice and Benedick, who have declared themselves in the church and quarrelled about it ever since, are asked in front of everyone whether they love each other and both say no more than reason. In the garden, a scene earlier, Beatrice had given the truest account of what they have.
Original
In spite of your heart, I think; alas, poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that which my friend hates.
(Beatrice, Act 5, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You love me in spite of your heart, I think; oh dear, poor heart! If you spite your heart for my sake, I will spite my heart for your sake; for I can’t ever love someone my friend hates.
Loving against one’s heart, and spiting one’s heart for the other’s sake: it is a lovers’ exchange made entirely out of contradictions, and it is as tender as anything Claudio says to Hero. Benedick’s reply is that the two of them are too wise to woo peaceably. They are rescued, in the end, by paperwork.
Original
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.
(Claudio, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
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.
A halting sonnet in his hand, another in hers, and the match is proved against their denials. "Here’s our own hands against our hearts," says Benedick, and takes her, he says, for pity, and she yields upon great persuasion, and he stops her mouth. The theme of courtship and marriage ends in the usual place, a wedding and a dance, but the play has shown two roads there and made clear which it trusts.
"Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity."
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, 1817
Key Quotes on Love and Romance
Quote 1
Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
(Benedick, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Then courtesy swaps sides. But it’s certain I am loved by all the ladies, except for you: and I wish from the bottom of my heart that I wasn’t so cold- hearted, for, honestly, I don’t love anyone.
Quote Analysis: Benedick to Beatrice, in their first exchange. He is loved by all ladies but her, and he loves none, and he wishes he could find it in his heart to be less hard-hearted. It is a boast dressed as a regret, and Beatrice answers that women everywhere should be grateful. The line sets the terms of their love: each has made a public identity out of not loving, and each will have to eat the words in front of the same audience. "Truly, I love none" is the first vow in the play to be broken, and the happiest.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.
(Claudio, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Silence is the best way to express joy: I would be just slightly happy, if I could tell you how much. Lady Hero, as you are mine, I am yours: I give myself to you and I am thrilled to do so.
Quote Analysis: Claudio at his betrothal, when Beatrice tells him it is his cue to speak. It is a graceful speech and a conventional one, built on the courtly paradox that true joy cannot be spoken, and it ends with the language of trade: he gives himself away and dotes upon the exchange. Hero’s answer is whispered in his ear and reported by Beatrice. The two lovers have now been betrothed without saying a word to each other that the audience can hear, and the play lets us notice.
You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I loved you.
(Beatrice, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You’ve stopped me at the perfect moment, for I was about to promise that I loved you too.
Quote Analysis: Beatrice in the church, when Benedick has sworn he loves her. He stopped her in a happy hour, she says, because she was about to say it first; and when he asks her to say it with all her heart, she says she loves him with so much of it that none is left to protest. The exchange happens over Hero’s body, in the wreckage of the other couple’s wedding, and the setting is the point. The love that was tricked into the open proves itself in the one scene where the conventional love has failed.
I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes...
(Benedick, Act 5, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I will live in your heart, die in your lap, and be buried in your eyes...
Quote Analysis: Benedick to Beatrice, when Ursula brings the news that Hero is cleared. Live in your heart, die in your lap, be buried in your eyes: it is the most extravagant thing he says in the play, and it is a joke, since "die" and "lap" meant what they still mean, and he goes straight on to say that he will also come with her to her uncle’s. Benedick cannot make a rhyme for lady, but he can make love sound like this, in prose, with a pun in it. The play prefers it to a sonnet.
Key Takeaways
- Two Roads to the Altar: Claudio and Hero's love is sudden, sincere and arranged between men; Beatrice and Benedick's has to be tricked out of them, and the play trusts the second.
- Men Were Deceivers Ever: Balthasar's song states the play's view of male constancy before Claudio proves it, and tells the women to expect no better.
- Permission, Not Invention: The gulling does not create love in Beatrice and Benedick; it tells each something true about their pride and lets them admit what was already there.
- Proved by Paperwork: The witty lovers deny their love to the last and are convicted by their own sonnets; love in this play is a thing people are caught at.
Study Questions and Analysis
What is the difference between Claudio’s love and Benedick’s?
Claudio falls in love the way the poems say one should, at a look, with a jewel, and lets a prince do his wooing; Benedick falls in love against every word he has ever said and has to be tricked into it. Benedick himself draws the contrast in the orchard, describing what love has done to his friend.
He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes.
(Benedick, Act 2, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
He used to be a straight talker, getting to the point, like an honest man and a soldier; but now he talks like a dictionary; he uses elaborate words, like a bizarre meal with many strange dishes.
Claudio used to talk like a soldier; now he is "turned orthography", a man whose words are a fantastical banquet. Within a hundred lines Benedick is reading double meanings into "Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner", and the joke is on him. But the two conversions are not alike. Claudio’s love is a change of vocabulary; Benedick’s is a change of mind, argued through step by step and ending in "the world must be peopled".
William Hazlitt (1817) admired both. Claudio’s confession is "as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined", and Benedick’s "character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less happily effected". Gail Kern Paster, in her "Modern Perspective" essay for the Folger edition, is harder on Claudio, whose love the play constructs as "inexperienced" and superficial, arising "at a moment of postcombat mental vacancy", and sceptical of Benedick too: she takes the second love "as the creation of Don Pedro", not as a hidden passion revealed. Stephen Greenblatt, in Will in the World (2004), came down on the side most audiences take, that "only Beatrice and Benedick, among all the couples of Shakespeare’s principal comedies, seem to hold out the possibility of a sustained intimacy". The play gives Claudio the romance and Benedick the relationship, and asks us to notice which survives a rumour. The theme of deception and noting tests both and breaks only one.
Is Claudio really in love with Hero?
As far as he knows himself, yes; and the play keeps asking how far that is. His first exchange about her is with a man who refuses to take the question seriously.
BENEDICK: Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?
CLAUDIO: Can the world buy such a jewel?
BENEDICK: Yea, and a case to put it into.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: Do you want to buy her? Is that why you’re asking about her?
CLAUDIO: Is it possible to buy something so precious?
BENEDICK: Yeah, and a case to put her in.
Benedick’s joke about buying her is a joke, and Claudio’s jewel is a lover’s word; but Claudio’s next question to the prince is whether Leonato has a son, and the answer, that Hero is his only heir, is given as a matter of course. His love is real and conventional at once, which is to say it comes with the inheritance attached and sees nothing odd in that.
Gail Kern Paster argues that the play "takes pains to construct Claudio as inexperienced and to emphasize the superficiality" of his love, and that the proxy wooing and the masked betrothal are the play’s way of showing how little of Claudio is in it: Hero "accepts the marriage proposal of a man in a mask and then learns to transfer her consent" to the man behind him. Harry Berger Jr. (1982) read the match as a transaction in what he called "the Men’s Club of Messina", arranged between the prince, the count and the father, with the bride informed afterwards. The Folger editors Mowat and Werstine are gentler, blaming the catastrophe on "Claudio’s own weak jealousy" rather than on any want of love. Hazlitt, remember, found the confession speech pleasing, and it is. What it lacks is any knowledge of the woman. Claudio loves what he sees, and the play will shortly show him something else. The theme of courtship and marriage in Messina does not require the lovers to know each other, and Claudio is its model customer.
Why do Beatrice and Benedick have to be tricked into love?
Because neither will say it first, and both have built a public character out of not saying it. The prince sees this and designs the trick accordingly.
I will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I, with your two helps, will so practise on Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice.
(Don Pedro, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I will teach you how to win your cousin round so that she will fall in love with Benedick; and I, with the help of you both, will work on Benedick, so that in spite of his wittiness and fear of getting married, he will fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this...
"His quick wit and his queasy stomach": Benedick’s obstacles are his cleverness and his distaste for marriage, and the prince proposes to go round both by letting him overhear. The plan assumes something about the two of them, that the feeling is there and only the admission is missing, and the plan is right.
August Wilhelm Schlegel (1808) had seen this before anyone staged it as psychology: "the exclusive direction of their raillery against each other is in itself a proof of a growing inclination." People who only ever fight with one person are thinking about that person. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818) added why one trick serves for both, "the vanity in each being alike": they are caught through pride, and pride is what makes them believe they were being talked about. Alexander Leggatt, in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love (1974), described the play’s method as finding "the idea of human reality at the heart of convention", and the gulling is the case in point: a stock comic device that produces, in the arbour and the honeysuckle, two of the most convincing changes of heart in the comedies. The Folger editors put the obstacle precisely: the two "are kept apart not by a vicious outsider but by their pride in their own brilliance and by their mutual antagonism and distrust". A trick is the only thing that could get past that, and the play, which distrusts most tricks, blesses this one. The theme of wit and communication is both the barrier and the bridge.
Does the play believe in romantic love?
It believes in marriage, and it is funny about love, and the two are not quite the same. Every declaration of love in the first act is a joke or a bet.
DON PEDRO: I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.
BENEDICK: With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord,
not with love...
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
DON PEDRO: I know I’ll see you, before I die, look pale with love.
BENEDICK: Perhaps through anger, sickness, or with hunger, my lord,
but I’ll never go pale with love.
The prince wagers that Benedick will fall; Benedick offers to be hung up as a sign if he does; and the whole company treats love as a disease that strikes bachelors and makes them ridiculous. Balthasar’s song says men were deceivers ever. Beatrice says courtship is a jig, a measure and a long repentance. Nobody in Messina speaks of love without a joke attached, except Claudio, and look what happens to him.
Gail Kern Paster finds the jokes revealing rather than cynical: "Cuckoldry jokes are in the air in Messina", and for a soldier like Benedick "marriage threatens loss of a valued form of masculine singleness, a loss of control"; the mockery of love is the sound of men protecting themselves from it. She draws a larger conclusion that the play half supports, that "the history of misogyny is also the history of romantic love", since the same culture that idealises Hero destroys her on a rumour. Hazlitt (1817) took the warmer view, and his sentence about the play is the one most readers end up agreeing with: it hits "that middle point of comedy" where "the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity". Benedick’s follies turn round against themselves; that is the whole of his conversion. The play believes in love the way it believes in Benedick, as a thing that can be laughed at and trusted at once. The theme of gender and patriarchy is where the laughter stops being harmless.
Why do Beatrice and Benedick declare their love in the church?
Because the church has just shown them what the other kind of love is worth. Hero has been accused, abandoned and left for dead by her bridegroom, the prince and her father; the church empties; and the two people left are the two who have spent the play refusing to say anything plainly. Benedick says the plainest thing he can. Then he tries to swear it.
BENEDICK: By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.
BEATRICE: Do not swear, and eat it.
BENEDICK: I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make
him eat it that says I love not you.
(Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
BENEDICK: I swear by my sword that you love me, Beatrice.
BEATRICE: Don’t swear in case you have to eat your own words later.
BENEDICK: I’ll swear by it that you love me; and I’ll make the man
eat his own words who says that I do not.
She tells him not to swear and eat it; he says he will make anyone eat it who says he does not love her. The old sparring is still there, and now it is being used to say the opposite of what it used to say. Then he asks her to bid him do anything, and she says "Kill Claudio", and the love is tested in its first minute.
A. C. Swinburne (1880) thought the scene the heart of the play: "there is more in Benedick and Beatrice than this simple quality of love that clothes itself in the strife of wits", and the proof is "the good fierce outbreak of her high true heart in two swift words". Bertrand Evans (1960) read the placing structurally: Claudio’s callousness in the church throws into relief the "humane and noble sympathy" of the love that declares itself in its ruins. Anna Jameson (1832) had put the balance of the pair in a sentence, "the power is throughout on her side, and the sympathy and interest on his", and the church is where the sentence is tested: she commands, he obeys, and the audience is on his side because he does. It matters that this love begins with a demand rather than a compliment. Claudio’s love began with a jewel and ended in a rotten orange; Benedick’s begins with a challenge he does not want to issue, and holds. The theme of honour and shame is what Beatrice asks him to risk, and he risks it.
What is the point of the sonnets at the end?
They are evidence, in a play that has run on bad evidence, and for once the evidence is good. Beatrice and Benedick, asked publicly whether they love each other, each answer no more than reason, and the match is about to collapse into wit when Claudio produces a paper in Benedick’s hand and Hero produces another.
And here's another
Writ in my cousin's hand, stolen from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
(Hero, Act 5, Scene 4)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Here’s another
That Beatrice wrote herself, pinched from her pocket,
Describing all her love for Benedick.
The poems are never read. We are told that his is halting and hers was stolen from her pocket, and that both contain what their authors have just denied. It is the one conviction in the play secured by writing rather than by sight, and it is the only one that is correct.
Alexander Leggatt (1974) made the point that Beatrice and Benedick are the lovers who refuse the conventional language of love, and that their refusal is what makes them convincing; the comedy of the sonnets is that even they, in private, reached for the convention, and badly. Frank Kermode, in Shakespeare’s Language (2000), observed that this is a play "in which great energy has gone into prose", and the two lovers who live in prose are caught out by their one attempt at verse. W. H. Auden, lecturing in 1946, called them "the characters of Shakespeare we’d most like to sit next to at dinner", and the sonnet scene is why: they are exposed, and they take it well. "A miracle! Here’s our own hands against our hearts" is Benedick’s surrender, and it is a joke, and it is also an admission that the hands were right. The theme of deception and noting ends here, with the lovers deceived by nobody but themselves and convicted by their own handwriting.
Why does Don Pedro end the play without love?
He has spent it arranging other people’s. He wooed Hero for Claudio, proposed to Beatrice and was turned down lightly, and devised the trick that made Benedick a lover; in the last scene he is the one who notices that Benedick looks unhappy, and asks why.
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?
The February face is Benedick’s, waiting to be married; by the end of the scene it is the prince who is sad, and Benedick tells him to get a wife. The matchmaker is the only principal character on stage without a match, and the play does not explain it.
Gail Kern Paster takes the prince’s matchmaking as a pastime, undertaken "to enliven the time between Claudio’s betrothal and nuptials by accomplishing a difficult thing", and on that reading his solitude is simply the position of a man who makes love for others as a hobby. Others have heard a real proposal in "Will you have me, lady?" and a real loss in the February face. Anna Jameson (1832) wrote of Beatrice that she will always have the last word, and a prince is the one suitor with whom that could never be true, which may be answer enough. What the text gives us is a man who ends the play alone, and a play that chose to end on him. Paster notes that it is Benedick who insists on the dance, "the stately, regulated movements of a communal dance in which the couples move not singly, but together", and the prince is the one man on stage with no partner for it. Love in Messina is something the prince can arrange for anyone but himself, and the theme of status and class is close by: the man at the top of the play is the one its happy ending cannot reach.
