We cannot know the wellspring of the emotion we call love, neither where it comes or where it goes, but we should embrace it, lest the entire species should falter. Such is the weight of our dalliances, which are about a lot more than nothing – as is the play itself.
Much Ado About nothing would likely be a trifling affair in lesser hands than William Shakespeare. The plot, such as there is one, centers around a troupe of nobles who are returning home from a victorious battle and rest on their way at a fine villa in Italy. There, the youngest of the nobles falls in love with the daughter of their host at something close to first sight. They had met previously when neither was ready for marriage, presumably given they’d yet to be bloodied by war either in the field or the home front, and their nuptials proceed until the villain of the play tricks the young noble into believing his future wife is carrying on an affair with a servant. Shakespeare being Shakespeare, the truth can only be revealed by the young woman faking her own death at the urging of a friar, upon which the young noble realizes the error of his ways. We do not even learn what happens to the villain in the aftermath, only that he fled and was captured, so inconsequential do all these events seem that he receives no comeuppance on stage. If this were the totality of the work, as Shakespeare himself titled it, a lot of happenings that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, it might never have been written, much less performed or remembered centuries later, but two characters, who by all rights should be supporting players, mark the material as something rather profound and timeless. Benedick and Beatrice rise dramatically and comedically above the rest to create a classic Shakespearean archetype and pose two timeless questions: What does it mean to love someone and how do you know for sure? Shakespeare presents a couple that the audience knows is madly in love before they know it themselves. Instead, they pretend to hate each other, arguing and bickering. To this pair, romance becomes a battle of the wits, as each seeks to outshine the other in public, sparring and verbally jousting before the gathered villa, and ultimately needing to be tricked by their friends into recognizing their feelings for each other. They too have something of a backstory, admittedly vague but where we are led to believe that Benedick courted Beatrice at some point in the past, only to mislead her.
In the intervening years, Beatrice has embraced her role as a spinster and Benedick his as a bachelor, committed never to marry. As he sees his young friend Claudio fall in love, however, he questions himself and delivers one of the most funny, insightful, and touching monologues in all of literature. He begins by noting that everyone pokes fun at those in love, until they fall in love themselves. “I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love—and such a man is Claudio.” He continues by comparing the old Claudio to the new, claiming his taste in music had changed from the thrilling sound of a battle march to the softer “tabor and the pipe,” that once he would have marched ten miles for a fight, but now he wastes ten nights wondering what to wear, considering the fashion of a new doublet. He was plain spoken as well, but now fancies himself a poet, “his very words are a fantastical banquet.” Benedick then wonders if the same transformation could ever happen to him. He cannot say for sure, but thinks not, and even if it does “shall never make [him] such a fool.” At this point, he considers the women he’s known and how they haven’t had the same dramatic effect on him personally. “One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another virtuous, yet I am well.” Finally, he imagines the sort of woman that could capture his own heart, listing her characteristics in order of importance:
Rich she shall be, that’s certain;
wise, or I’ll none; virtuous, or I’ll never cheapen
her; fair, or I’ll never look on her; mild, or come not
near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good
discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall
be of what color it please God.
Benedick is interrupted in this musings by the arrival of Claudio himself and their Prince, but rather than deal with this lovestruck friend he hides himself and overhears their conversation, little knowing that he is about to be the victim of an experiment in love himself. His comrades have surmised that his feelings for Beatrice might be rather different than he claims, and have designed to have him overhear their conversation, wherein they will insist that Beatrice is, in fact, madly in love with him. Beatrice herself will be the subject of a similar plot, being made to overhear her friends professing Benedick’s undying love. Benedick is too experienced an operator to believe his friends alone, but they have recruited the lord of the villa, Leanato to their service, who states that her feelings are real. “I should think this a gull but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.” The Prince, Claudio, and Leanato end their little scheme by turning Benedick’s own personality back against him. When the Prince remarks that, “It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will not discover it.” Claudio replies by insisting, “To what end? He would make but a sport of it and torment the poor lady worse.” Yes, the Prince agrees, “’tis very possible he’ll scorn it, for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.” As a result, they resolve to never inform him of Beatrice’s true – completely falsified at this point – feelings for him. Benedick is left dumbstruck, believing “This can be no trick” and immediately convinces himself that he’s, in fact, in love with her. The lady, after all, is “fair,” “virtuous,” 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!” Of course, he realizes that, having railed against love for so long, he might well be the subject of some well-deserved mockery, but:
…doth not the appetite alter? A
man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot
endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and
these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the
career of his humor? No! The world must be peopled.
Of his prior life, he concludes in an ultimate bit of self-rationalization, “When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.” Beatrice herself arrives immediately after, having been sent by the Prince to call Benedick to dinner, much against her will, we presume. Though the same trap has yet been sprung upon her by her friends, Benedick insists that he spies “some marks of love in her” and attempts to engage in some witty banter, thanking her for her “pains” at asking him to dinner. She replies in earnest, “I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come.” He wonders if she took pleasure in it in that case. “Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife’s point,” but she too is soon convinced that she’s as madly in love with Benedick as he is with her. Much later in the play, the deception that led them to fall in love in the first place is revealed. Benedick asks Beatrice, “Do you not love me?” Beatrice replies, “Why no, no more than reason.” “Why then, your uncle and the Prince and Claudio Have been deceived. They swore you did,” sputters Benedick. Beatrice is now aware that she too might have been tricked. “Do not you love me?” She asks. “Troth, no, no more than reason.” “Why then, my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula Are much deceived, for they did swear you did.” She protests. At first, they revert to their usual selves, remaining adamant that they are not in love with each other, but when Claudio and his new bride Hero confront them with the love poems they have written one another in secret, it’s impossible for them to deny it. Benedick remarks, “A miracle! Here’s our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light I take thee for pity.” Beatrice teases in return, “I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.” The two kiss and are married, along with Claudio and Hero, making for a happy ending all around (though without quite the number of marriages in As You Like It), but one which prompts the questions from earlier: What does it mean to love someone and how do you know for sure? Putting this another way, were Benedick and Beatrice in love with each before they were tricked and simply didn’t know it yet, or were they tricked into loving each other?
Of course, Shakespeare himself provides no easy answers. Their enthusiasm for verbally sparring with one another in the opening scenes suggests any intensity of emotion that can’t exist without some underlying fire. When you don’t care about something, you can’t be bothered to remark on it, but when you do care deeply, either positively or negatively, your feelings have a way of manifesting themselves one way or another. As Shakespeare put it succinctly in another play, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” There is also the fact that Benedick is a bachelor, Beatrice a maid, and neither appears to have had another serious love interest in their entire lives, especially if you assume there was some intensity of emotion to their only hinted at backstory. In this view, they could’ve been Claudio and Hero once upon a time, before they became older and more hardened as to the way of the world. Perhaps, they were unconsciously saving themselves for one another in the intervening years, rationalizing their single existence as people frequently do. Then again, Benedick immediately begins rationalizing why it is better to be in love than without, going so far as to claim he’s willing to subject himself to the pangs of romance and marriage simply because the “world must be peopled.” Is the double rationalization meant to suggest his behavior springs from love the entire time or is Shakespeare making the point that we are forever malleable to the situations we find ourselves in, justifying whatever comes our way even if it’s the opposite of what we’d just insisted? The end of the play repeats this trick in reverse. Benedick and Beatrice realize they’ve been manipulated into their feelings for each other, only to insist they don’t have them, and then decide that they do. This makes it difficult to escape the conclusion that something, however hard to describe, lies beneath their vacillating exteriors, but what that might be for sure, the audience is left to imagine. At the same time, perhaps the use of the phrase the “world must be peopled” serves as a clue. Whatever we may think or feel, people have to meet and fall in love if the human race is to continue. We cannot know the wellspring of the emotion we call love, neither where it comes or where it goes, but we should embrace it when the opportunity presents itself, lest the entire species should falter. Such is the weight of our dalliances, which are about a lot more than nothing – as is the play itself.
On a side note, the enduring nature of the couple that loves to hate one another and the plot of the play itself should be obvious considering a modern adaptation, Anyone But You, came out just last year and grossed almost $215 million in the United States alone. If nothing else, this certainly suggests that the underlying tension of the play still resonates with millions of people to this day.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 