Theme Profile – At a Glance
- Focus: Rank in Messina: a prince who arranges lives, a count who weighs an heiress, a bastard who cannot rise, a governor who defers, and a watch nobody will listen to.
- Key Characters: Don Pedro, Don John, Leonato, Claudio, Dogberry, Borachio, Conrade, Margaret, Antonio.
- The Core Tension: Who may act, who may speak and who is believed are questions of rank, and the play’s truth is held by its lowest officers while its highest are deceived.
- Key Manifestations: Leonato’s welcome to the prince (A1S1); Don John’s canker in a hedge (A1S3); "she is no equal for his birth" (A2S1); Borachio on rich villains and poor ones (A3S3); Dogberry and Leonato (A3S5); the examination (A4S2); the old men and the young lords (A5S1); Dogberry’s reward (A5S1); Margaret below stairs (A5S2).
- Famous Quote:
"I am a wise fellow, and, which is more, an officer, and, which is more, a householder..."
(Act 4, Scene 2) - The Outcome: The prince and the count are forgiven, the bastard is brought back in chains, the constable is paid and dismissed, and everyone dances in their proper place.
Your Grace
The play opens with the governor of Messina waiting on a prince, and the first exchange between them is a lesson in rank conducted as courtesy.
Original
Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.
(Don Pedro, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Good Signior Leonato, you go out of your way to help: most people in this world try to avoid the cost of helping others, yet you embrace it.
The prince jokes that Leonato has come out to meet his own trouble; Leonato answers that trouble never came to his house in the likeness of his grace. It is graceful on both sides and it is not equal. For the next month Leonato’s house, table and daughter are at the prince’s disposal, and he gives them gladly. When Don Pedro proposes to woo Hero on Claudio’s behalf, nobody thinks to ask the governor first; when Leonato is told, he prepares his daughter’s answer.
The theme of courtship and marriage in Messina runs downhill from the prince. He makes the match, he fills the week before the wedding with his labour on Beatrice and Benedick, and when his brother shows him a woman at a window he condemns the bride "upon mine honour". A prince’s word closes questions, and that is what rank is for.
A Canker in a Hedge
Don John is the prince’s brother and will never be the prince, and the play gives him the bitterness of a man who knows exactly where he stands.
Original
I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any...
(Don John, Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I’d rather be a weed in a hedge than a rose in his favour, and it befits my character better to be hated by everyone than to act falsely to trick people into loving me.
He would rather be the weed than the rose in his brother’s garden, and he will not put on a manner to win anyone’s love. His grievance against Claudio is a class grievance too: the "young start-up" has all the glory of his overthrow, and a bastard who cannot inherit watches a count rise by favour. His one lie at the ball turns on rank as well, telling Claudio that Hero is "no equal" for the prince’s birth, and Claudio, who has just asked whether she is an heir, believes it.
The villain is not a social rebel. He wants what his brother has and cannot have it, and the play dismisses him at the end with a promise of punishment tomorrow. The theme of deception and noting in Messina is a matter of who is believed, and the bastard, for one scene, is believed because he is a prince’s brother.
Rich Villains and Poor Ones
Below Don John are the men who do his work, and Borachio, drunk under a penthouse, explains the economics to Conrade.
Original
Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will.
(Borachio, Act 3, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You should really be asking how it’s possible any villain can be so rich; for when rich villains need the help of poor villains, the poor ones can charge whatever price they like.
When rich villains need poor ones, the poor ones may make what price they will; and Borachio has made a thousand ducats. He goes on to a lecture on fashion as a deformed thief that turns the hot bloods between fourteen and thirty-five into whatever the tapestry shows, which is a servant’s view of his betters, and the watch, listening, decide that Deformed is a real thief and hunt him for the rest of the play.
Borachio is the play’s one working-class voice with anything to say about the gentry, and what he says is that they are dupes. He proves it. The window costs a thousand ducats and a maid in borrowed clothes, and it fools a prince and a count. The theme of honour and shame is what the gentry think they are defending; Borachio knows it is a costume.
Neighbours, You Are Tedious
The truth comes up the social ladder and is stopped at every rung. Dogberry brings it to Leonato on the wedding morning and cannot get it out, and Leonato, who has a daughter to give away, calls the constable tedious. Dogberry takes it as a compliment.
Original
Yea, an 'twere a thousand pound more than 'tis; for I hear as good exclamation on your worship as of any man in the city; and though I be but a poor man, I am glad to hear it.
(Dogberry, Act 3, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Yes, even if it was worth a thousand pounds more than it is; for I hear you are the most exclaimed – I mean ‘acclaimed’ – man in the city; and though I am only a poor man, I am pleased to hear it.
Though he be but a poor man, he is glad to hear that his worship is well spoken of: the sentence is pure deference, and it is spoken by the man who could stop the catastrophe if anyone would give him three minutes. Leonato gives him wine and goes to church. When the truth has finally arrived by other means, Dogberry is paid for his pains.
Original
LEONATO: There's for thy pains.
DOGBERRY: God save the foundation!
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
LEONATO: Take this money for your troubles.
DOGBERRY: God save the charity!
God save the foundation is what a beggar says at the gate of a charitable house, and Dogberry says it to a governor who is relieving him of his prisoner and his usefulness. He leaves hoping God will prohibit a merry meeting, and never learns what he has done. The theme of wit and communication gives the constable the play’s funniest words and the theme of class takes away his hearing: nobody of rank listens to him until it is nearly too late, and nobody thanks him in terms he could understand.
"Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimitable specimens of quaint blundering and misprisions of meaning; and are a standing record of that formal gravity of pretension and total want of common understanding, which Shakespeare no doubt copied from real life, and which in the course of two hundred years appear to have ascended from the lowest to the highest offices in the state."
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, 1817
Key Quotes on Status and Class
Quote 1
LEONATO: Please it your grace lead on?
DON PEDRO: Your hand, Leonato; we will go together.
(Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
LEONATO: Would you care to lead the way, your grace?
DON PEDRO: Give me your hand, Leonato; we will leave together.
Quote Analysis: Leonato and Don Pedro going in to dinner. The governor asks the prince to lead; the prince gives him his hand and says they will go together. It is a small, courtly moment and it describes the whole relationship: Leonato defers, the prince is gracious, and the graciousness is a gift that can be withdrawn. Four acts later the prince will leave Leonato’s church with his daughter on the floor, and Leonato will have to stop him in the street to be heard.
To have no man come over me! Why, shall I always keep below stairs?
(Margaret, Act 5, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
To have no man climb on top of me! So, shall I always stay in the servants’ quarters downstairs?
Quote Analysis: Margaret to Benedick, who has promised her a sonnet so high that no man shall come over it. She takes "come over" the bawdy way and adds a second meaning: shall she always keep below stairs, in the servants’ quarters, with no man of rank to come up to her? It is the play’s one joke about class made by someone at the bottom of it, and it is a good one. Margaret can out-talk a gentleman and will still fetch Beatrice when he asks, and she knows both things at once.
DON PEDRO: Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.
ANTONIO: If he could right himself with quarrelling,
Some of us would lie low.
(Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
DON PEDRO: Don’t start a fight with us, my dear old boy.
ANTONIO: If he could fix his problems now by fighting,
Some of us would lie dead.
Quote Analysis: The prince to Leonato, who has stopped him in the street, and Antonio’s reply. "Good old man" is kindly and it is dismissive: the prince is speaking down, to a subject and to an elder, and Antonio hears the condescension and answers that if quarrelling could right his brother some of the young lords would be lying dead. The two old men have no standing against a prince and a count except their age, and the scene lets age be ridiculous and right at the same time.
CONRADE: I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.
DOGBERRY: Write down, master gentleman Conrade. Masters, do
you serve God?
(Act 4, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
CONRADE: I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.
DOGBERRY: Write down, ‘Master Gentleman Conrade’. Gentlemen, do
you obey the laws of God?
Quote Analysis: Conrade giving his name at the examination, and Dogberry writing it down. "Master gentleman Conrade": the constable records the rank with the name, because rank is the first fact about anyone in Messina, and then asks a gentleman whether he serves God as if the two might be in doubt. Conrade will call him an ass before the scene is out, and Dogberry will want that written down too. The prisoner outranks the officer, and both of them know it, and it makes no difference to the evidence.
Key Takeaways
- Rank Is Who Acts: The prince arranges, the count accepts, the governor defers and the daughter whispers; in Messina, the higher one stands the more one does to others.
- The Bastard's Grievance: Don John's spite is a class grievance: a brother who cannot inherit watches a young count rise by favour, and strikes at him through a woman.
- Poor Villains Name Their Price: Borachio's thousand ducats and his lecture on fashion are the play's one view of the gentry from below, and the view is that they are dupes.
- Truth Stops at Every Rung: Dogberry's watch hold the facts and nobody of rank will hear them; the constable is paid, thanked and dismissed without learning what he did.
Study Questions and Analysis
How is rank structured in Messina?
From the prince down, and everyone knows their place. Don Pedro of Aragon is a sovereign on a visit; Claudio is a count and his favourite; Benedick is a lord of Padua in his service; Leonato governs Messina and hosts them all; and below the gentry are the household, the retinue, the watch and the church. The prince announces the arrangement in the first scene.
That is the sum of all, Leonato. Signior Claudio and Signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all.
(Don Pedro, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And that’s all that’s happened, Leonato. Signior Claudio and Signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato has invited you all. I’ve told him we shall stay here for...
Leonato has invited them, the prince says; and the prince tells him they will stay a month. Invitation and acceptance are both formalities. The host’s house is the prince’s for as long as he likes, and his daughter, within a scene, is the subject of a plan the prince makes without consulting him.
Jean E. Howard, in her 1987 essay on antitheatricality and the politics of gender and rank in the play, argued that the plot is a contest over who may control what others see and believe, and that the play ends by returning that control to the "better sort": the prince’s staged scenes are kindness, the bastard’s are villainy, and the difference is status. Harry Berger Jr. (1982) called the governing circle "the Men’s Club of Messina" and examined "the premises of power, cost-avoidance, and fear of love and women" on which it runs. Gail Kern Paster, in the Folger "Modern Perspective", reads Beatrice and Benedick’s love as the prince’s creation, undertaken to enliven the week before the wedding "by accomplishing a difficult thing", which is the pastime of a man with time and rank to spare. Rank in this play is not oppressive in manner; it is courteous, generous and absolute. The theme of courtship and marriage is its most visible exercise, since every marriage in Messina is made from above.
How does Don John’s bastardy shape his villainy?
It gives him a grievance and a limit. He has rebelled against his brother and lost, been pardoned and kept on terms, and he describes the terms himself.
I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
(Don John, Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My brother only trusts me wearing a dog’s muzzle and chained to a block like a horse; so I have decided to keep quiet in my corner. If my mouth wasn’t muzzled, I would bite; if I had my freedom, I would do what I like. In the meantime, let me be who I am and don’t try to change me.
Trusted with a muzzle, enfranchised with a clog: the images are of a dog and a horse, a dangerous animal kept on terms, and the terms are his brother’s. His complaint is not that he is wicked by birth but that birth has caged him, and Conrade has just reminded him that he stands out of his brother’s grace only lately and must take root in fair weather of his own making. The "young start-up" Claudio, a count risen by favour, is the nearest thing he can bite.
Gail Kern Paster reads the bastardy as design rather than psychology: "Shakespeare assigns the function of destroyer with evident symmetry to Don Pedro’s brother, Don John the Bastard", so that the maker and breaker of matches share a father and differ in legitimacy. The maker and the breaker both treat other people as material; only one of them has the rank to be thanked for it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818) thought him "the main-spring of the plot of this play" and "merely shown and then withdrawn", which is also a remark about rank: a prince’s bastard brother is useful to a plot and expendable to a comedy. The Folger editors call him a "virulent force" rather than a character, "the kind of malice that strikes out at whatever promises to make someone else happy". The play agrees with all of them and adds one detail: his lie at the ball is about birth, that Hero is "no equal" for the prince, and Claudio believes it at once. The theme of deception and noting works because the deceiver has a title.
Why does the lie about Hero’s birth work on Claudio?
Because it tells him something he half believes, that a greater man would take what he wants, and because it is delivered by a prince’s brother. Don John pretends to mistake Claudio for Benedick and gives him a reason to intervene.
Signior, you are very near my brother in his love: he is enamoured on Hero; I pray you, dissuade him from her: she is no equal for his birth: you may do the part of an honest man in it.
(Don John, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Signior, you are a very dear friend of my brother, Don Pedro: he is in love with Hero; I ask that you persuade him to leave her alone, because her social status is far below him; you would be an honest man for doing so.
Hero is "no equal for his birth", so the prince should be dissuaded from her, and Claudio, as an honest friend, should do the dissuading. The lie flatters and alarms at once. Claudio, who asked in the first scene whether Hero was Leonato’s heir, is exactly the man to believe that the prince would weigh her birth, and exactly the man to conclude that the prince, being greater, has kept her.
Bertrand Evans (1960) called the play’s method "discrepant awareness", the audience holding an advantage over the characters for most of its length, and the advantage is sharp here: we know the truth before Claudio hears the lie, and watch him supply the credulity the villain cannot. Gail Kern Paster argues that the play "takes pains to construct Claudio as inexperienced", and inexperience is what the lie exploits: a young count among princes, unsure of his standing, hears that his standing has been used against him and does not check. Don John’s first trick needs no window, only a mask and a rank. The class note in the lie is easy to miss and is the point. Hero’s birth is never actually in question; it is invoked because birth is the one thing in Messina that explains everything, and Claudio, who weighs it himself, cannot imagine a prince who does not. The theme of love and romance in Messina comes with a title attached, and Don John knows the price.
Why will nobody of rank listen to Dogberry?
Because he is a constable talking to a governor on a wedding morning, and because he cannot say anything briefly. His opening is a model of the problem.
Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you that decerns you nearly.
(Dogberry, Act 3, Scene 5)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Well, sir, I want to have a confidence – I mean ‘conference’ – with you that discerns – I mean ‘concerns’ – you greatly.
"Confidence" for conference, "decerns" for concerns, and Leonato answering "Brief, I pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me": the exchange lasts another forty lines and the arrest never gets mentioned until Verges manages it, after which Dogberry buries it under an apology for Verges. Leonato offers them wine, tells them to examine the prisoners themselves, and goes to church to be destroyed by a lie the constable could have exposed.
Samuel Johnson (1765) read the scene as a study in rank from below, and his note on Dogberry’s remark that of two men on a horse one must ride behind is exact: "The first place of rank or understanding can belong but to one, and that happy one ought not to despise his inferiour." Leonato does not despise him; he cannot spare him the time. George Bernard Shaw (1898) saw what the scene was for when Henry Irving cut it, calling the cut "the most audacious" of Irving’s "manifold treasons against Shakespeare", since without it Verges "is almost annihilated" and the play loses the moment when the gentry fail to hear. The Folger editors call him "the bumbling, officious Dogberry", and both adjectives cost him his hearing, the bumbling making him slow and the officiousness making him long. The irony is heavy and meant. The theme of deception and noting is undone in the end by the very men nobody would listen to, and the play does not let the gentry forget it: "what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light".
What do Borachio, Conrade and Margaret show about the servant class?
That it does the gentry’s work, including the dirty work, and is judged by a different scale. Borachio overhears the prince’s plan while doing a servant’s job.
Being entertained for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty room, comes me the prince and Claudio, hand in hand in sad conference: I whipt me behind the arras...
(Borachio, Act 1, Scene 3)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Whilst I was employed to perfume a musty room in Leonato’s house, the prince and Claudio came by, walking hand in hand, deep in serious discussion. I hid behind the curtain...
Hired to perfume a musty room, he hides behind a tapestry when the prince and Claudio walk in, and so learns the thing Don John can use. He devises the window plot, performs it with Margaret, and confesses it; Conrade, who insists he is a gentleman, counsels Don John and calls Dogberry an ass; Margaret wears her mistress’s clothes and is found "in some fault" against her will. The servants are the plot’s machinery and the play’s sharpest observers of their masters.
Jean E. Howard (1987) argued that the play disciplines those who illegitimately aspire to control theatricality and returns that control to the "better sort": the window is theatre staged by a bastard and his hireling with a servant for an actress, and it is punished, while the prince’s orchard plot, identical in method, is rewarded. Gail Kern Paster notes how little the play asks of Margaret, who "allows herself to be courted as Hero in Hero’s clothes" and is never required to explain; Harry Berger Jr. (1982) observed that in Messina "women are responsible for their sins but men are not", and Margaret’s small reprimand is the exception that proves the rule, a servant’s sin being too small for the men to pursue. Borachio’s own economics, that poor villains may name their price to rich ones, is the play’s one statement of what service is worth, and his confession, that shallow fools found what wise men could not, is its one statement of what the gentry are worth. The theme of gender and patriarchy and this one meet in Margaret: below stairs and a woman, she is the person in the play with least to lose and least to answer for.
What is the point of the old men challenging the young lords?
To show rank and age both failing to be heard, and being right anyway. Leonato and Antonio stop the prince and Claudio in the street, and Antonio will not be held back.
He shall kill two of us, and men indeed:
But that's no matter; let him kill one first;
Win me and wear me; let him answer me.
(Antonio, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
He’ll have to kill the both of us, both real men.
That doesn’t matter, let him kill one first;
Beat me and boast of it; let him face me.
Win me and wear me: the old man offers himself as a prize in a fight he cannot win, and goes on to call the young lords boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks and milksops. The prince answers "good old man" and will not hear them; Claudio tells them to go away. Benedick, arriving a moment later, finds the two young men laughing about nearly having their noses snapped off by two old men without teeth.
Michael Billington, reviewing John Barton’s 1976 production for the RSC, found the whole play in its British Raj setting, "an ideal background for the play about the practical jokes of a bored officer class", and the street scene is where the officers’ jokes meet their victims. Bertrand Evans’s term "discrepant awareness" (1960) describes the audience’s advantage over the characters, and it is never wider than here: we know Hero is innocent and Borachio is in custody, so every joke the young men make falls on them. Harry Berger Jr.’s "Men’s Club of Messina" (1982) takes in the prince and Claudio and not the two old men who have stopped them, and of the club’s premises Berger named, power, cost-avoidance and fear of love and women, the first two are on show in the street: the young lords have the power and decline the cost. The scene is comic by design, two old civilians challenging soldiers, and the play lets the comedy stand while giving Leonato the lines that are not funny: thou hast killed my child, and if thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man. Rank protects the young lords from the duel. It does not protect them from being wrong. The theme of honour and shame is claimed by the men of rank and vindicated, in the end, by a constable.
Does the play criticise its gentry?
Quietly, and by placement. The gentlemen deceive and are deceived; the servants and the watch find the truth; and at the end the gentlemen dance and the constable is sent home. Dogberry’s farewell to Leonato is the play’s last word on the subject, and he does not know it.
Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverend youth; and I praise God for you.
(Dogberry, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Your worship speaks like a most grateful and respectable young man; and I thank God for you.
A most thankful and reverend youth, he calls the old governor, and praises God for him. He is paid, thanked and discharged of his prisoner, and he goes, hoping God will prohibit any future meeting. The gentry he has saved do not tell him what he did. The audience is left to notice.
William Hazlitt (1817) heard the satire and extended it: Dogberry and Verges are "a standing record of that formal gravity of pretension and total want of common understanding" which, he said, had since "ascended from the lowest to the highest offices in the state". The joke on the constable was, for Hazlitt, a joke on officialdom at every level. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818) asked of Dogberry whether "no valuable allusions" were "made to reigning follies, which the poet saw must for ever reign", and A. C. Swinburne (1880) added that without this particular constable "the action and catastrophe of the whole play could never have taken place at all", which is to say the play needs the gentry to be unable to hear him. Jean E. Howard (1987) found the criticism contained: the play exposes the "better sort" and then hands control back to them. The Royal Shakespeare Company notes that Will Kemp, the company’s star clown, "is known to have played Dogberry", and the 1600 quarto prints Kemp’s name in place of the character’s in the examination scene; the man at the bottom of Messina was played by the biggest name on the stage, which is its own comment on where the play’s sympathies lay. The theme of wit and communication gives Dogberry the laughs. This theme gives him the truth, and takes away the credit.
