Beatrice and Benedick; their very
names tell us that they are surely meant to be together. And of course, so it goes, for “Much Ado
About Nothing” is, as the title implies, a comedy—even if the last word implies,
by way of an Elizabethan pun, a slightly bawdier comedy than we are given. Indeed, the closest we come to that type of
comedy is in Signior Benedick’s very first words in the play:
[Don] Pedro:…I think
this is your daughter.
Leonato: Her
mother hath many times told me so.
Benedick: Were
you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?
Leonato: Signior
Benedick, no; for then were you a child. (I.i.92-96)
From there on, the comedy is pretty
much all chastity and virtue (okay, maybe not all); and yet, having gotten that bawdy bit out of the
way, we are still left with these two: Benedick, that blessed man, and
Beatrice, the one who blesses him (for thus do the names signify). That blessing will come in the form of
marriage, and in this play, marriage is seen as so clearly a blessing, that
when, at the last, Don Pedro refers to “Benedick, the married man” (V.iv.98),
the phrase is practically a tautology, on the order of “unmarried bachelors”
(which class, despite his promise made in the first scene, no longer includes
Benedick; cf. I.i.219). So much goes on
in that first scene, so many themes established to be played out, or played upon,
later in the play. One which may go
unnoted (in this play that is all about noting, as the title says) is
Beatrice’s characterization of her enemy in her “merry war” (I.i.54) as a
disease called “the Benedict.” This is a
bit of wit that will catch up with her, when she herself catches the Benedick
as a woman catches a cold.
In the opening scene, as Shakespeare
is busy showing us Beatrice’s wit to establish her character, he gives her the
following words to speak about the fact that Benedick “is most in the company
of the right noble Claudio” (I.i.73-74): “Oh Lord, he will hang upon him like a
disease! He is sooner caught than the
pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.
God help the noble Claudio! If he
have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere ’a be cured”
(75-79). In response to this, her uncle
says, “You will never run mad, niece.”—to which she replies, “No, not till a
hot January” (82-83)—or as we might say, “Not till a cold day in Hell”—both are
meant as images of a day that will never come…
Or will it? Leonato’s statement to his niece helps to establish her character as a woman of “cold blood” (her words; 116) who
“cannot endure to hear tell of a husband” (Don Pedro’s description of her;
II.i.310); and yet, characterizations are made to be undermined, and characters
to change—especially in Shakespeare. In
the case of Beatrice, it is the words of Ursula, Margaret, and Hero in the
third act that put “fire...in [her] ears” (III.i.107) and warm her cold blood so
that she falls in love with Benedick (or admits to the love already there). In the very next scene in which we see her (III.iv)—and
here comes the funny part—she is sick.
Ahh, now we get it. There is a meaningful pattern here, and it
answers the question: why does Beatrice get sick from the dampness of the garden when the three other women in the same scene do not? The answer is simple: William Shakespeare
wills it so. But why make his
subordinate heroine sick when her sickness changes nothing in the outworkings
of the plot? The answer can be found at
the symbolic level. Beatrice’s sickness
is not a plot device, but a symbol: for she, who, in the very first scene
originated the conceit of “a disease…[called] the Benedick” now seems to have
caught the very same illness she had lamented in others, and her physical
sickness is a sign to us to make the connection. Quite simply, her illness is a joke, and the
other characters get it. It is for this
reason that Margaret hands her some carduus
benedictus and urges, “lay it to your heart. It is the only thing for a qualm”
(III.iv.66-68). Aye, Margaret discerns
that Beatrice hath caught the Benedick and her suggested treatment is a clear
bit of ribbing. Beatrice, of course,
perceives this & asks, “Benedictus? Why benedictus? You have some moral in this benedictus?" (70-71). Of course she does, and she plows right into
it in her next speech, in spite of opening with overt denial, claiming “I have
no moral meaning” (72-73).
So we can see that the trap whereby
Cupid catches Beatrice (cf. Hero’s exiting couplet in III.i.105-06: “…loving
goes by haps; / Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”) is actually
laid in part by Beatrice herself in the very first scene. It is a fine irony that her very own witty
conceit is turned back upon her head, and she catches the Benedick, sick tune
and all, just as Benedick suffers love for her (V.ii.57-60). In the words of that other great wit,
Heathcliff Huxtable, she has “become what [she has] mocked.”
