Much Ado about Nothing and the New Awareness 1666930415, 9781666930412

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Much Ado About Nothing and the New Awareness

Much Ado About Nothing and the New Awareness Edited by W. Reginald Rampone Jr. and Nicholas Utzig

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rampone, W. Reginald, editor. | Utzig, Nicholas M., editor. Title: Much ado about nothing and the new awareness / edited by W. Reginald Rampone Jr., and Nicholas M. Utzig. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023039039 (print) | LCCN 2023039040 (ebook) | ISBN 9781666930412 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666930429 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Much ado about nothing. | Social justice in literature. Classification: LCC PR2828 .M8256 2024 (print) | LCC PR2828 (ebook) | DDC 822.3/3–dc23/eng/20230927 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039039 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039040 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

for my parents, William R. Rampone, Sr, and Louise Wilkins Rampone W. Reginald Rampone, Jr. to all who had a hand in bringing this collection together, thank you Nicholas Utzig

Contents

Introduction 1 W. Reginald Rampone Jr. and Nicholas Utzig PART I: EPISTEMOLOGY AND TRUTH IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Chapter 1: “Change Slander to Remorse”: Acknowledgment and (Self)-Recognition in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing Sélima Lejri Chapter 2: “Deceivers Ever”: Much Ado About Nothing and Cultures of Deception Kathleen Kalpin Smith

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PART II: PRESENT AND PAST IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Chapter 3: The Threat of the Stranger in Much Ado About Nothing Stephanie Chamberlain

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Chapter 4: “In Messina Here”: Shakespeare’s Use of Setting in Much Ado About Nothing 67 Philip Goldfarb Styrt Chapter 5: A Bird of My Tongue, a Beast of Yours: Much Ado’s Anxious Transformations Christine Hoffmann

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Contents

PART III: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Chapter 6: Punishing Wrongdoers and Other Things I Didn’t Know I Needed from a Romantic Comedy: Messina as a Post-Conflict Society 107 Kelsey Ridge Chapter 7: Slut Shaming, Revenge Porn, and the Making of Meaning by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing Anthony Guy Patricia

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Chapter 8: Margaret’s Complicated Consent: An Overlooked Victim in Much Ado About Nothing 141 Jolene Mendel PART IV: SHAKESPEAREAN ADAPTATION AND PERFORMANCE Chapter 9: “till all graces be in one woman”: Archetypes of Womanhood in YA Adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing Anna Graham

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Chapter 10: Much Ado About Nothing, Performance and Cultural Identity 173 Jami Rogers Chapter 11: Teaching “Kill Claudio” in the Age of Streamed Shakespeare 191 Joseph Sullivan Chapter 12: “Almost the copy of my child that’s dead”: Ghosts and Adaptation in Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing 207 Jim Casey Afterword 223 Claire McEachern Index

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About the Editors and Contributors



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Introduction W. Reginald Rampone Jr. and Nicholas Utzig

Much Ado About Nothing is the most modern of all of Shakespeare’s comedies. Unlike A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing has no fairies governed by Oberon, King of the fairies, and Titania, Queen of the fairies. Unlike As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing sports no appearance of Hymen, appearing in deus ex machina fashion in order to usher in the wedding of Rosalind to Orlando after her cross-dressing as Ganymede. Unlike Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing has no twins like Sebastian and Viola, no sister dressing as her brother and causing endless gender confusion for other characters. Much Ado About Nothing even lacks the rustic rowdiness of The Merry Wives of Windsor in which Falstaff is tossed about in a clothes hamper where he is hiding. The realistic representations of how men and women interact make Much Ado About Nothing a romantic comedy, one darkly evocative of the crisis that prompted the #MeToo Movement. The play’s all-too-apparent misogyny and public shaming of Hero and Margaret even isolates Beatrice, the outspoken and sometimes sardonic interlocutor of Benedick with whom she has had a bad breakup. Despite all of the claims of progress having been made in gender relations by various organizations and associations, in many ways our own twenty-first-century American society remains beset by similar problems regarding gender, power, and authority as early modern English society, a disappointing persistence, unquestionably, but one that leaves opportunity for sincere improvement. This book concerning Much Ado About Nothing is assembled at a time when some of our most prominent political leaders at the highest levels are resigning and coming under scrutiny in court cases because of their alleged sexual misconduct. The most recent iterations of sexual misconduct reflect a continuing sign of abuse of men’s power and authority over women’s sexuality and gender. This book is as much about 1

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our time as Shakespeare’s as the recent scandals concerning men’s criminal mistreatment of women’s sexual identity continue to accumulate. The chapters of this collection reflect upon current social concerns and how Much Ado About Nothing speaks to them. Through the lens of critical theory, they explore culturally relevant topics such as epistemology and truth, crime and punishment, and the treatment of women by men in the present and the past, women’s agency and lack of it, and adaptations and performances of the play. The hope is that these chapters will speak to many readers’ concerns, and in the process the readers will become more cognizant of the New Awareness. PART I: EPISTEMOLOGY AND TRUTH IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Sélima Lejri’s chapter, “‘Change Slander to Remorse’: Acknowledgment and (Self)- Recognition to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing,” demonstrates how interconnected “notions of revenge and repentance in the Protestant discourse” are to the “dynamics of love and friendship that involves mimetic desire, rivalry, self-abnegation, and forgiveness.” Moreover, Lejri uses two theories of intersubjectivity, specifically René Girard’s anthropological and psychological thesis on mimesis, and Stanley Cavell’s philosophical concept of acknowledgment, in order to elucidate the dynamics of these concepts’ relationships, but at the same time this study is constituted by “the theological and ethical background of Shakespeare’s Post-Reformation England.” Lejri uses a Girardian lens by which to interpret the relationship between Claudio and Don Pedro and concludes that Claudio in his admiration of Don Pedro “makes him a model and a mediator of his desire.” Don Pedro functions as Girard’s “‘mimetic’ double in this relationship with his mimetic partner.” Using Girard’s anthropological thesis, Lejri claims Claudio projects his own feelings for Hero onto the prince; hence, desire comes not from one’s own psyche or from lack, as Sigmund Freud argues in his own theories of psychoanalysis but rather from imitating someone else’s desire. Lejri makes a strong case for the process of by which one comes to the recognition of one’s behavior through “the joint process of self-knowledge and acknowledgment.” Given Claudio’s situation, he comes to a recognition of his hurtful actions of shaming Hero as Lejri suggests through “a self-reflexive gaze and Augustinian self-examination.” One could easily argue that Claudio’s most poignant recognition of his guilt is demonstrated by his outward and visible display of contrition at Hero’s funeral monument. The stylized solemnity of the penitential rite involving a funeral procession with torches, music accompanying march, and Claudio’s reading of the scroll in which he obliquely confesses his transgression by “slanderous tongues,” and

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the plangent song sung presumably by Balthazar publicly proclaims his culpability in Hero’s death. The fact that Claudio states that he will enact this ritual on a yearly basis reinforces his sense of guilt and his need for it to be expiated through this penitential rite at Hero’s tomb. To be sure, this encourages remorse on Claudio’s part, and the “shame of the Other” would serve to function within Messina as in the “same contagious way as of Girardian mimetic desire and Cavellian dynamics of perceptual knowledge-through-the-other.” The final section of Lejri’s chapter concerns Hero’s Resurrection Scene in which both Claudio and Don Pedro express wonder and repentance when Hero is finally unveiled having been earlier identified as Antonio’s daughter. Lejri even goes so far as to claim that “Hero’s resurrection is the most important moment in Claudio’s and even Don Pedro’s repentance.” The unveiling of Hero is the culminating moment in which recognition and acknowledgment converge. Ironically, she is at once Hero and not Hero. In many ways this scene anticipates the moment in The Winter’s Tale when Paulina unveils the statue-like form of Hermione, who at the playing of music appears to become alive and experience a second life after presumably being dead for sixteen years; to be sure, similar scenes are repeated in other plays, most notably in Pericles in which Thaisa, long thought to be dead, is presented to Pericles, but the far more significant concern is that both Leontes and Claudio realize the profound enormity that their hurtful actions have caused their beloveds and the significance of their having been given a second chance to experience love and affection in their own lives and those of others. In “‘Deceivers Ever’: Much Ado About Nothing and Cultures of Deception,” Kathleen Kalpin Smith uses the Rand Corporation’s 2018 report, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, written by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, as a springboard to begin her discussion of deception and misinformation in Much Ado About Nothing. She argues, “While the authors of Truth Decay suggest that looking to the past can help to find solutions for the present, this chapter seeks to work in the opposite direction by considering the ways in which our current era of misinformation can reorient our understanding of one of Shakespeare’s plays famously associated with deception and misinformation: Much Ado About Nothing.” Smith argues categorically that Messina was a “culture of deception” and that the slander that Hero suffered was part and parcel of a culture in which deception was its stock in trade. Smith focuses on three significant moments of deception around which the play is structured: first, Prince Don Pedro’s wooing of Hero, the duping of Beatrice and Benedick, and Don John’s machinations against Hero. Without a doubt Much Ado About Nothing is rife with deception. Smith points out how Claudio is first deceived by Don John when Don John deliberately calls

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Claudio Benedick and informs him that Don Pedro woos Hero himself, and Claudio instantly believes this lie without further investigation. As Smith asserts, “Claudio’s unquestioning reception of this deception is further evidence of the problem of truth in the world of this play, for he does not evaluate, interrogate, or investigate his sources.” Despite the fact that Claudio has seen military service in Don Pedro’s army, he is quite naive about the ways of the world, and he from early in the play shows a lack of clarity as demonstrated when he states confidently, “In mine eye [Hero] is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on” (1.1.174) to which Benedick replies, “I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter” (175). Seeing clearly literally or metaphorically is a central concern in this play as will be seen again and again on many occasions. Shakespearean scholars have traditionally treated the duping of Beatrice and Benedick by their friends as a “good” deception. In the deceptions of both of them, Claudio and Ursula employ avian and piscine imagery in reference to ensnaring them. Hero’s jubilant line captures her attitude toward bringing Beatrice and Benedick together: “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps” (3.1.104). As Smith points out, “Though the language of hunting is often one of pursuit or chase, the language of fishing and bird trapping used here involves bait, deception, and traps.” On the other hand, the “evil” deception of Don Pedro and Claudio by Borachio in league with Don John engenders the infamous shaming scene by Claudio at his wedding to Hero. In this extraordinary demonstration of stagecraft, Borachio has Margaret make Hero’s bedroom accessible to them on the night before Claudio and Hero’s wedding in which he appears at the window with Margaret in which Borachio calls Margaret Hero and she in turn calls Borachio Claudio, which has puzzled literary scholars for decades. As for Borachio’s deception at Hero’s bedroom window, Smith provides a very engaging reason as to why Margaret called Borachio by the name of Claudio, for she asserts, Though we do not see on stage the moment when Borachio suggests the name exchange to Margaret, in light of the action of the revels, the request from Borachio could have been viewed as less suspicious, an extension of the fanciful play-acting from the masked event.

Perhaps Margaret’s wearing Hero’s dress was a further extension of this exchange of class identities in which both she and Borachio were imaginatively engaging in a romantic fantasy of their social betters’ lives. According to the cultural mores of the early modern period, Margaret would have known that she had no business wearing the clothes of Hero.

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PART II: PRESENT AND PAST IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Stephanie Chamberlain’s chapter, “The Threat of the Stranger in Much Ado About Nothing,” argues that while strangers in the form of merchants and immigrants were welcome in London, their presence also engendered xenophobia. Chamberlain argues that one of the central concerns in Much Ado About Nothing deals with the responsibility of hospitality that one was expected to pay to strangers. Don Pedro and his men are strangers who are welcomed by Leonato, the governor of Messina. The marriage of Leonato’s daughter to Don Pedro would “enhance Leonato’s importance within the world. Yet, Don Pedro is a stranger to the city, and the mandate requiring hospitality would apply regardless of rank or social status to any entering it.” As Chamberlain suggests, the idea of hospitality “seems incompatible with protecting borders,” but Leonato is required by custom and tradition to render it to Don Pedro and his company. Hospitality, therefore, places one within a position of vulnerability, and at the same time the concept “comes without rules, and while rarely if ever spoken, these rules are intended to govern the behavior of guests and hosts alike.” After all, hospitality is an obligation that all hosts must fulfill despite the challenges that come with the role of host. Having Don John as a guest presents certain challenges to Leonato. First, Don John’s status as a bastard makes his presence problematic as illegitimate offspring often did not enjoy legal standing, but they were tolerated. Some early modern fathers gave financial support to their out-of-wedlock sons, but they were not required to do so by Common Law. For Chamberlain, Don John is the epitome of a stranger about whom the residents of Messina were to be vigilant and someone not to be trusted despite the fact that he is Don Pedro’s brother. The deception in which Don John engages against his host’s daughter, Hero, exemplifies the “fraught and tenuous relationship between host and guest, of the only too real possibility that either may be the enemy” as Chamberlain suggests, but at the same time she also aptly points out that Don John functions as the scapegoat, as there were others who were also responsible for the way that Hero was badly treated, even by her own father, who was placed in the unenviable position of playing host to men who publicly maligned his daughter’s reputation. Philip Goldfarb Styrt’s chapter, “‘In Messina Here’: Shakespeare’s Use of Setting in Much Ado About Nothing,” firmly grounds readers in the terra firma of early modern Messina, Italy. Apparently, Messina was emblematic of Hapsburg, and more specifically Spanish, power in the Mediterranean region. Styrt argues, “Although Much Ado’s comic plots might seem distant from great power politics, therefore, I suggest that English concerns about

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the political realities of the Spanish Mediterranean play an important part in shaping the play’s events and the audience’s presumed reaction to them, particularly the dual marriage plots and the bumbling of the watch.” Styrt firmly grounds Messina in the geopolitical space of its time. According to a number of early modern English texts. Messina was identified as a significant venue in which Spain could trade commodities and convey its power around the Mediterranean, and so Messina was a locus of commercial exchange, military operations, and travel. In fact, it was the place of departure for military preparation for the Battle of Lepanto, so one may see that Messina was an essential base of operations for Spanish power in the Mediterranean, and analogously, the Shakespearean Messina is significant for the same reason as it provides a nexus between Spain and its territories in the Mediterranean world. Styrt concludes this section of his chapter by arguing that “the action of the play centers on the relationships established by the Messinese setting.” The fact that Messina was in the middle of the Spanish empire no doubt added to the international quality of the characters in the play, and so this international quality reinforced the two comic plots of the play with Beatrice and Benedick and Hero and Claudio. Styrt makes a point of emphasizing the political implications of these marriages with Count Don Pedro marrying Hero, the daughter of the governor of Messina. Some critics have accused Leonato of being a social climber, but it is Claudio who asked Don Pedro if Leonato has any children other than Hero; that question implies that if Leonato has more than one offspring, then his future wife would receive significantly less of an inheritance than if she were an only child, and Styrt, too, notes that Claudio asks if Hero is the sole heir to her father’s estate. On the other hand, Styrt thinks that Benedick may be less aware of the ideological implications of his marriage to Beatrice, yet is Beatrice, who exclaims, “Good Lord, for alliance” (2.1.292) when she learns of her cousin’s engagement. Without a doubt, the majority of the relationships in this play are at once political and personal. Christine Hoffman’s chapter, “A Bird of my Tongue, a Beast of Yours: Much Ado’s Anxious Transformations,” is a triptych of literary analysis as she moves from Ovid’s Metamorphosis to the avian imagery of Much Ado About Nothing to the postmodern social media platform Twitter. Hoffmann makes the argument that she interprets “Beatrice’s trans-corporeal nature—that is, the image of her speaking self extended across multiple material sites (woman/ bird/tongue)—an endeavor to evaluate the cramped moral economy of which it is a part, and to share the notes of her critical evaluation.” Hoffman goes on to say that she perceives “Beatrice as a (recovering) metamorph struggling with the lack of (social) change that accompanies (personal, traumatic) transfiguration sets up a larger critique of Much Ado as an anxious text.”

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In many ways the process of metamorphosis dominates this chapter. For example, Beatrice’s statement, “ A bird of my feather is better than an beast of yours,” according to Hoffmann “draws herself and Benedick into metamorphosis’s abusive orbit, and it invites the question—how much is bettering a beast worth boasting?” Again making a comparison between Ovid and Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s play, Hoffmann notes, “will demonstrate that is often ‘violent male desire’ that ‘energizes’ this cycle,’ forcing the hand of female creativity and setting the stage for an illimitable opposition/alliance of gendered/subjects.” Beatrice imagines herself in many iterations of humanity: a man, a cannibal of men, and a grieving woman. Beatrice’s highly emotional outbursts express her desire for a physical change in her body, which are caused by profound frustration. After Hero has been slandered, Beatrice is very angry that she cannot as a woman challenge Claudio to a duel as a man would be able to do, and it is only for this reason that she insists that Benedick kill Claudio. Hoffman concurs with Jonathan Hall that a comic plot would disallow a duel in a romantic comedy, for “the play’s transformation of violence into harmony is nevertheless ‘shot through with anxiety over the possible alternative resolution.’” As we all know, Shakespearean comedies and comedies in generation are all about transformations. One can hardly think of Greek mythology without envisioning Daphne’s metamorphosis into a laurel tree as Apollo chases her or Philomel’s transformation into a nightingale after she has been raped, both of whom are referred to in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, another romantic comedy, but in the case of Much Ado About Nothing, Hoffmann observes that Hero’s pain “deserves recognition before it is translated into something else,” and despite the play’s happy ending, the play “manages to teach a grim but reverberating lesson about whom and what we risk abandoning to civility’s ruinous procedures for correcting harm.” Nonetheless, the play’s characters still await Don John’s transformation into a law-abiding citizen of Messina. PART III: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING The chapters in this part of the book broaden our understanding of accountability in Much Ado About Nothing beyond the simple dynamic of law and order, focusing instead on socially produced discipline and accountability. Discipline, of course, ought not be conflated with justice, as these chapters show, for social correction can be harsh, unjust, and even outright harmful at times. Nevertheless, accountability is fundamentally a social responsibility in these chapters. In her chapter “Punishing Wrongdoers and Other

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Things I Didn’t Know I Needed From A Romantic Comedy: Messina as a Post-Conflict Society,” Kelsey Ridge examines the trauma of war lurking in Much Ado’s penumbra, arguing that a failure of retribution (in the sense of retributive justice)—a failure to properly account for Don John’s wartime crimes—enables the villain’s mischief. Although the play begins with a report announcing the end of the war, Ridge reminds readers that the consequences of the conflict, even the casus belli, linger through the play’s final act. This postwar context is essential to Ridge’s reading of the play. While contemporary “productions sometimes approach Shakespeare’s Messina as a country idyll,”—Branagh’s 1993 film and the RSC’s 2014 Love’s Labour’s Won come to mind—“it is not a place of healing. Not after this conflict,” Ridge argues. Messina’s failure to correct, contain, or otherwise properly punish Don John’s wartime conduct, allows the conflict to smolder, ultimately inciting Claudio’s assault on Hero. “Because these problems result from the unaddressed traumas of the war and those who caused them,” Ridge explains, “a proper resolution must go beyond merely Claudio getting absolution from Hero.” Ridge makes it clear that no sincere healing can occur in this play—no lasting healing anyway—until the lingering wartime trauma is satisfactorily addressed. While for Ridge retribution is a type of postwar corrective needed to heal society and allow it to grow into something more sustainable than the status quo ante bellum, Anthony Guy Patricia considers the darker side of social sanction. Patricia’s “Slut Shaming, Revenge Porn, and the Making of Meaning by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing” considers the assault on Hero as early modern form of what is today popularly called “slut shaming,” a vengeful, public castigation of someone’s (almost always a woman’s) sexual activity. Patricia finds parallels between Hero’s slander, what Hazlitt understatedly called “the hard trial of her love,” and the smear campaign against Katie Hill, a congressional representative from California forced to resign in the wake of a relentless onslaught of tabloid inquiry into her personal life.1 Patricia reminds us early on that there is nothing new under the sun, and that the early modern print world was filled with erotic fare. In doing so, Patricia’s chapter critiques our own involvement in this disconcerting practice, noting that as an audience, we are uncomfortably aligned with the consumers of this “slut shaming.” It’s an awkward position, one in which the audience finds itself unwillingly. That uncomfortable perspective finds its dramatic analogue in Margaret, whose unknowingly observed tryst with Borachio becomes a kind of illicit performance. She doesn’t know she’s being watched and watched with bad intent. Jolene Mendel, too, is deeply interested in Margaret, and Mendel makes Hero’s gentlewoman the focus of her chapter. In “Margaret’s Complicated Consent: An Overlooked Victim in Much Ado About Nothing,” Mendel makes a compelling case for the outsized importance of Margaret in the play. Mendel

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employs a contemporary understanding of “enthusiastic consent”—a positive expression of consent to every intimate act—to reexamine Margaret’s role in the play. Mendel finds that the play, contra its sources, takes pains to maintain Margaret’s loyalty to Hero. Margaret, Mendel shows, had no sense that her liaison with Borachio would be used to shame her mistress. By including Margaret among the deceived, the play dramatizes an incomplete consent between Margaret and Borachio, complicating the web of deceit that threatens the play’s comedic arc. Mendel begins by historicizing Margaret’s function, expanding her role beyond personal service and recovering her courtly function. Reading the role alongside Annibal Guasco’s conduct manual Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter and Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, Mendel reminds readers of Margaret’s courtly function. She is expected to participate in Messina’s highly stylized romantic games. Margaret “understands the roles all must play in the public sphere,” Mendel notes, even if these “interactions do not go further than the ballroom or great hall.” But in the tightly choreographed Messinese household, there are limits to Margaret’s erotic freedom, and Mendel points out that Margaret’s rendezvous with Borachio likely pushes the bounds of courtly acceptability. Margaret’s readiness to transgress Messina’s romantic protocols may even speak to something like affection for Borachio, but regardless of the depth of her affinity for Don John’s henchman, Borachio’s betrayal anticipates contemporary conversations about the nature of sexual consent. As Mendel points out, enthusiastic consent demands full, positive consent for all elements of an intimate encounter, a kind of consent Margaret seems likely to have withheld when it comes to the hoodwinking of Claudio and Don Pedro. Mendel’s chapter offers a model of one way in which contemporary understandings of consent can help us understand Much Ado by giving a character who is too often overlooked a richly complex dramatic function. PART IV: SHAKESPEAREAN ADAPTATION AND PERFORMANCE The collection concludes with an outward look, considering how recent contemporary life has influenced recent performance choices and modern adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing. What makes this comedy so appealing to writers, directors, filmmakers, and teachers? What makes Much Ado so ready for reconfiguration and adaptation? The diverse chapters in this part of the book examine young adult prose adaptations, multicultural productions in the United States and the UK, online streaming performances, and Joss Whedon’s most recent Hollywood film adaptation. Together, these

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final chapters highlight the breadth of contemporary engagements with and reimaginings of Much Ado. Anna Graham sets Shakespeare’s text on the sideline to start this collection’s final part. Her chapter “‘till all graces be in one woman’: Archetypes of Womanhood in YA Adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing” considers four young adult prose adaptations published since 2016: Laura Wood’s Under a Dancing Star, Nothing Happened by Molly Booth, Lily Anderson’s The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, and I Think I Love You by Auriane Desombre. While Graham notes that all of these novels were written firmly in the #MeToo era, she finds an unfortunate fealty to one aspect of Much Ado, noting that “all of them ultimately reinforce archetypes for female behavior.” Aligning Shakespeare’s play with YA fiction allows Graham to parse how Much Ado might sit uncomfortably with contemporary views of romantic love. Her conclusions aren’t always comfortable, as Graham writes: “Despite YA being intended to aid young people in developing their identity, YA adaptations for Much Ado fail to provide diverse representations of femininity for young women.” Graham’s chapter offers a model for YA readers to see how these novels’ complicated approaches to feminism can reveal the mechanisms through which Shakespeare’s play can reinforce gender performance. Indeed, following a kind of subversion and containment paradigm, Graham finds many YA novels perform a kind of hollow feminism, gesturing toward a kind of conspicuous, performative feminism, only to uphold the very social structures feminism labors to reform. Jami Rogers’ Much Ado About Nothing, Performance and Cultural Identity examines Iqbal Khan’s 2012 Much Ado for the RSC/London Cultural Olympiad and Timothy Douglas’s 2009 production at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. Rogers unites these two productions by considering each’s approach to race- and culture-conscious casting and production design. With Khan’s Much Ado set in a present-day Delhi and Douglas’s production in Washington, DC’s H Street Corridor, “a setting that reflected the immigration melting pot that is contemporary America,” Rogers shows how the power of place can bring new meaning to Much Ado. Exploring how these productions’ incorporation of particular cultural traditions reshapes Much Ado, often in unexpected and complicated ways, Rogers reminds readers how such innovative approaches can resonate with contemporary audiences. While Rogers invites us to look at global influences on individual productions of Much Ado, Joseph Sullivan’s “Teaching ‘Kill Claudio’ in the Age of Streamed Shakespeare” moves in a different direction, exploring the way global access to Shakespearean productions online shapes approaches to teaching the play. Sullivan focuses on Beatrice’s demand that Benedick “Kill Claudio,” a line that dampens Benedick’s romantic pleas and returns the chapel scene’s emotional register to the seriousness of Claudio’s assault on Hero’s

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character (4.1.288). Thinking of the line as a kind of barometer for various digitally available productions, Sullivan suggests how advances in streaming technology, especially the near-ubiquity of YouTube in web-enabled classrooms, can shape pedagogy. Jim Casey’s “‘Almost the copy of my child that’s dead’: Ghosts and Adaptations in Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing” leans into the complicated relationship between audience and artist. While taking seriously Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado, Casey does not shy away from Whedon’s own behavior, tackling the larger and “difficult question of how modern audiences should react to an artist whose work they love, but whose views or actions are incompatible with their own.” Broadly employing Gérard Genette’s work on hypertexts and hypotexts, Casey uncovers the “ghosts” lurking behind Whedon’s Much Ado—Shakespeare’s play, of course, along with Whedon’s own body of cinematic work, the actors’ previous roles, etc. (Casey notes that Whedon packed the film with actors from “the Whedonverse,” regular performers who starred in Whedon’s other popular films and television series and with whom fans of Whedon’s work would have a complex history.) The resulting adaptation infuses the familiar play with a youthful energy. “In Much Ado, Whedon ejects not only the old man Antonio but old age itself, creating a version of Shakespeare that is young and hip and ready to party.” Such a banishment, however, is not unequivocally a positive attribute in a film that seems haunted, not only by Whedon’s actors’ popular roles, but by the director’s personal behavior. “Ready to party” seems, in Casey’s chapter, as much a warning as an invitation. A NEW AWARENESS Emerging from a variety of critical directions, the chapters in this volume offer exciting new perspectives on Much Ado About Nothing. Uniting all of the chapters is a sense of a new kind of cultural awareness, the recognition that the trials of our time inevitably influence our approach to reading and viewing, criticism and activism. Many of the chapters that follow are avowedly presentist in their approach, but all demonstrate that contemporary cultural critique remains an important part of ethical scholarship. We are certain that the chapters in this collection contribute meaningfully to our understanding of Much Ado About Nothing, and, perhaps more importantly, we hope that this volume serves as a model for a criticism that is at once rigorous and compassionate. Finally, we feel that it is particularly important to note that many of the chapters in this book are greatly indebted to the #MeToo movement. The social change inspired by this movement has had, and continues to have, a

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profound impact on scholars, educators, filmmakers, and theater practitioners. These perspectives come at a real human cost. It is our hope that this collection will not only inspire new Shakespeare scholarship but further reaffirm that central role the humanities can play in shaping culture for the better. The ethical, responsible, and innovative criticism inspired to justice and compassion by a new awareness will unquestionably improve Shakespeare studies in the years to come. BIBLIOGRAPHY Hazlitt, William. Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. London, 1817.

NOTE 1. William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (London, 1817), 298.

PART I: EPISTEMOLOGY AND TRUTH IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Chapter 1

“Change Slander to Remorse” Acknowledgment and (Self)-Recognition in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing Sélima Lejri

In her study that rehabilitates the role of the human body in Protestant theology, Jennifer Waldron readjusts the traditional binary opposition between the latter’s spiritualizing and introspective methods of worship and the materialist and performative Catholic faith. The participation of the intellectual and the physical in the performance of sacraments and the apprehension of God’s Grace not only in one’s mental landscape and in the Word, but also in the natural world and in the living body, confers a phenomenological dimension to the reformed theology which offers “a different kind of somatic piety.”1 In this context, despite the fact that the traditional conceptual value of penitence and the ways to exercise it had been shifted, resulting in the “de-sacramentalization of penance,”2 the vitality of this mode of repentance through auricular confession, both public and private, as well as the significance of its physical expression, did persist along the new understanding of conversion from sin through internal change or metanoia. Similarly, if the scholastic delineation of conscience had been discarded by the theologians of the Reformation, this faculty still occupied a central position in the debate around works versus faith and participated in the shaping of the mind in its connection to the soul, the affects, and the body. Written in this period of religious contention over mental and cognitive faculties and bodily actions, Elizabethan drama mirrors the intricately woven notions of revenge and repentance in the Protestant discourse.3 The argument of this chapter is to demonstrate how this interconnectedness, shaping and driving the tragic plot of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About 13

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Nothing, replicates the dynamics of love and friendship that involves mimetic desire, rivalry, self-abnegation, and forgiveness. It focuses on the rite of passage toward penitence and (self)-knowledge through both modes typical of “Shakespeare’s resurrection theatre”4 to which the play belongs: memory and recognition, therefore conscience, on the one hand, and acknowledgment, hence empirical appraisal and interaction with the external world, on the other hand. While it is framed in the theological and ethical background of Shakespeare’s Post-Reformation England, this study takes its bearing from two theories of intersubjectivity, namely René Girard’s anthropological and psychological thesis on mimesis, and Stanley Cavell’s philosophical concept of acknowledgment. The need for “another self,” a like-minded and virtuous friend, to achieve self-knowledge is an idea that Aristotle develops in his ethical writings, insisting on the fact that such partnership is a necessary step toward growth in moral perception.5 But if Aristotle rules out self-sufficiency as impossible for mortals to achieve, the stoic philosophy that developed in the Hellenistic period and flourished under the Roman Republican advocates autonomy in friendship premised on the assumption that the perfectly wise man is self-sufficient and morally perfect and is therefore attracted to a friend not out of need or want, but solely because he finds in that other who is morally as excellent as himself, “a second self,” an alter ego or alter idem, as Cicero puts it in his treatise De Amicitia.6 This stoic ideal as best exemplified by Cicero and Atticus’s epistolary exchange in that treatise was much celebrated by Italian and English humanists who stressed personal autonomy and individualism.7 But, as John Cox demonstrates, albeit his admiration and endorsement of this Stoic ideal, Shakespeare was sceptical of its potential actualization in that his characters are neither social equals nor immune to competitiveness.8 The Claudio–Don Pedro pair would fail the test of the neo-Stoic ideal in light of which John Cox assesses the ethics of friendship in a cluster of other Shakespearean pairs, only to find them morally deficient.9 Indeed, Claudio’s failure to measure up to the Ciceronian ideal of autonomy in friendship shows in his need to see his love for Hero sanctioned and approved by Benedick, his war companion, but most importantly, when the latter disappoints him, by Don Pedro, his military commander and social superior with more prestige than him. Girard’s take on this situation, premised on his theory about mimeticism ruling all human relationships, is that the count, in his admiration and trust of the prince, makes him a model and a mediator of his desire.10 Only in this case, he runs the risk of making this model a rival who would imitate his desire for Hero and consequently “woo[s] for himself,” as he, indeed, suspects (2.1.130).11 As Girard puts it: “The disciple thus becomes model to his own model, and the model, reciprocally, becomes disciple of his own

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disciple.”12 Such tight interplay dominates the conversation between the two friends as the prince offers to swap positions of tutor and pupil with the count, willing “to learn/Any hard lesson that may do [the latter] good” (1.1.218–19) before he ends up “minister[ing] to love” (1.1.238). Rather than Cicero’s alter ego, the prince is Girard’s “mimetic double” in this relationship with his mimetic partner.13 He even shows himself capable of substituting his friend and vesting his identity: I will assume thy part in some disguise, And tell fair Hero I am Claudio, And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart, And take her hearing prisoner with the force And strong encounter of my amorous tale (1.1.247–51 emphasis added)

This transfer of the young count’s emotions onto the prince corroborates the anthropological thesis about desire as triggered by or copied from someone, stemming thus from imitation, not from the psyche or from lack experienced by an autonomous subject, as Freudian psychoanalysis postulates.14 As the pair of friends’ exchange testifies, human relationships are not “interindividual,” in which “ego and other can still be meaningfully distinguished,” but rather “interdividual,” a concept developed by Girard, Oughourlian, and Lefort at the intersection of their anthropological and psychological research.15 This hypothesis about the pragmatics of invariably dynamic and reciprocal interactions in human relationships was consolidated by the empirical discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s. It demonstrated that the mirroring mechanisms in the human brains are activated whether a person performs an action or merely views another perform that action.16 This perspective sheds new light on emotional attunement in intrapersonal relations. In this case, Don Pedro cannot help being emotionally responsive to and empathetic with his friend’s state, being a “hearer” of his “book of words” and an examiner of his “complexion” altered by “love’s grief” (1.1.233, 239). The ambiguity of Don Pedro’s intentions toward Hero is quite plausible since it transpires that Don John is not the only one to misinterpret their conversation at the masked ball: Benedick too harbors suspicions and genuinely believes that the prince “[has] stolen [Claudio’s] bird’s nest” (2.1.174–75). The prince does engage an intimate exchange with Hero in the Masked Ball Scene by enticingly pointing that “within the house is Jove” (2.1.69), the archetypal womanizer, and confidently inciting her to “speak low if [she] speak[s] love” (2.1.70) and, thus, teaching her “to sing” (2.1.176). He seems to be aware of his slippery role as model and mediator of desire capable of

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turning indeed into “a stealer” (2.1.171), hence an imitator or disciple. Having played the role of Claudio’s double or twin, he cautiously chooses to “restore [Hero] to the owner” (2.1.176), liable as the ground of imitation and appropriation is to slide into rivalry and violence. Guarding himself against such scenario, yet belying his temptation in so doing, he self-consciously delivers a sentence against it: “the transgression is in the stealer” (2.1.170–71). His remark betokens awareness of not only the explicit prohibition against stealing in the Decalogue, but also of the last commandment therein which, as Girard notes, subsumes the whole moral underpinning of the previous ones: The prohibition against coveting the neighbour’s wife and belongings, and, by and large against the jealousy and rivalry spurred on by imitative desire and behavior.17 Don Pedro masters this capacity to defuse conflict not only with Claudio over Hero, but also with Benedick over Beatrice. Indeed, impressed as he is by the “pleasant-spirited” young lady (2.1.258), he approaches her first cautiously, in the role he plays with Claudio, that of a model and mediator who would present her as a desirable object in the eyes of an eligible husband. Dallying with him, Beatrice subtly exacerbates and evinces his interest in her by inverting the situation: She hyperbolically praises all his look-alike father’s issue, but singles him out from her short list, putting him insistently in a situation of imitative competition with his siblings: “I would rather have one of your father’s getting. Hath your Grace ne’er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them” (2.1.245–47). When Beatrice rejects his proposal, the prince redirects the trajectory of the mimetic game and reassumes his role of model and mediator, this time with Benedick as his targeted imitator. Nonetheless, even in this self-effacing gesture that gives precedence to the one all of them suspect Beatrice is in love with, he hardly contains his wish to have “made her half [himself]” (2.3.145), betraying thus his own rivalistic impulse toward Benedick whom he supposedly intends to turn into a rival seeking to supplant him. Therefore, in the two plots of the play, Don Pedro exemplifies the potential dangers of mimetic rivalry and the salutary effect of its timely unhinging through renunciation. As such, his initiation of and participation in the game of triangular desire, involving model/mediator, imitator, and object, has a beneficent outcome in that it kindles enough competitive and jealous energies to help the bonding of the couples. Don Pedro’s withdrawal from mimetic rivalry, which notwithstanding, leaves him “sad” and wifeless as Benedick notes (5.4.114–15), is analogous to Hero’s self-abnegation in the Repudiation Scene and self-sacrifice in the seclusion-or-death scenarios devised by the Friar. Nevertheless, successful though he is in precluding mimetic rivalry and its ensuing violence at first, the prince does fall in its trap in the Hero-Claudio tragedy. Thanks to this ordeal, he undergoes a learning process whereby

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repentance through acknowledgment supplants revenge through mimesis. Don Pedro’s mistake recalls that of his biblical namesake when he rebukes his Lord for resigning to suffering and death in Jerusalem. Such a vehement reaction of resistance and antagonism is one that Jesus relegates to “the things of men.” In acting like a skandalon or a stumbling block that stands in his Lord’s way, the Apostle Peter appears like Satan who diverted Jesus in the wilderness.18 From Don John’s intimate servant, Borachio, to the people of Messina, scandal sweeps through, as each one replicates Don John’s imitation of Satan. Its author is himself a skandalon, an insuperable obstacle that thrives on opposition, desperate for “any bar, any cross, any impediment,” or “whatsoever [that can] come[s] athwart” Claudio’s union with Hero (2.2.4–5). Unable to clearly articulate the reason of his hatred nor to designate the object of his desire, Don John relishes adversity for its own sake, as an essentialist asset. By pitting his “discontent” and “displeasure” against his brother’s “grace” and Claudio’s “glory,” he acts much like Satan in his competition with his Creator (1.3.28, 1.3.20, 2.3.5 emphasis added). He is both a seducer who incites others to surrender themselves to mimetic desire, and an adversary who prevents them from attaining their desired goal.19 He is a model that Borachio not only imitates but surpasses, becoming the mastermind of the scandal which Don Pedro hopes to see “grow . . . to what adverse issue it can” so that he “put[s] it in practice” (2.3.38). Don John seems unaware that his attitude, emotions, and actions against his brother and his protégé are but a continuation of the reciprocal violence literally exercised during the war fought between them and in which he is defeated. His Luciferian pride makes him harbor the illusion that he is independent and self-willed and that it in vain that one should “seek to alter [him]” (1.3.27). This solipsism, which St. Augustine exegetically links to the sin of pride, is, as Patrick Gray demonstrates, invariably linked to the Cavellian fear of shame and the necessity to change that it inevitably entails.20 Interestingly, what Stanley Cavell notices about King Lear may be verified in Don John. If in the traditional pattern of emotions pride comes first, and leads to anger, revenge, and shame, in King Lear “shame comes first.”21 Cutting a demure figure in the opening scene, Don John is bowed, as it seems, less by the stigma of his “overthrow” than by the public penitence imposed on him through fraternal and communal reconciliation (1.1.14; 1.3.48). His brother who “hath ta’en [him] newly into his grace” (1.3.16) would direct his gaze into himself and bring out selfknowledge, contrition, and atonement. Instead, Don John locks himself up in anger, the ungovernable and destructive passion Seneca warns against, and which Aristotle also defines as “a desire accompanied by pain.”22 The Hero-Claudio tragedy of revenge seems to take root in this satanic figure’s

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imperviousness to repentance. Its victims too are drawn at first to the seductive spiral of revenge. Don John’s emotions are indeed quickly catching: Scandalized by his report of Hero’s “wickedness” (3.2.80), Claudio is intent on “sham[ing]” her in public (3.2.92). Don Pedro echoes him immediately and makes an analogy between the means of triangular desire in both love and revenge: “And as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee, to disgrace her” (3.2.93– 94). In the Repudiation Scene, Leonato replicates the revengers’ scandalized stance, and even urges unanimous persecution: “Why doth not every earthly thing/ Cry shame upon her?” (4.1.13–14). The townsfolk too are soon brought in the fold, a fact that pushes the Friar to consider a monastic retreat for Hero, “out of all eyes, tongues, minds and injuries” so as to wipe out “her infamy” and “wounded reputation” (4.1.233–36). The “slanderous tongues” (5.3.1) testify to the mimetic and contagious nature of scandal, bred and intensified by the scandalized in their frenzied scapegoating of Hero.23 Only unanimous and public recognition of the latter’s martyr-like death can expunge it. Thus, in his epitaph, the penitent Claudio rewrites Leonato’s call for communal disgrace: “So the life that died with shame, / Lives in death with glorious fame” (5.3.7–8). If Leonato follows the bent of his rage, he would commit suicide, kill his daughter, or kill the one who wronged her (4.1.102, 108–16–20, 180–85). Antonio, Beatrice, and later Benedick partake in mimetic violence, but on the other side. In their confrontation with the two accusers, Antonio vies with Leonato in vindictive aggressiveness and comes nothing short of manslaughter (5.1.51–52, 80–107). As for Beatrice, she insists on seeing her cousin avenged and makes Benedick accept the challenge to “kill Claudio” (4.1.254, 279). If Borachio and Conrade’s arrest brings these revengeful plans to a halt, it is mainly thanks to the former’s confession, as well as to the Friar’s intervention that violence is successfully assuaged. The Friar’s advice to Leonato that he should “be patient and endure” (4.1.247) bears a streak of Antonio’s moral exhortation about patience, and Conrade’s lecture on “a patient sufferance” (1.3.7) when he reasons with Don John. Likewise, the old man’s vehement reaction against such counseling echoes the villain’s: As he defends his right to follow his own penchants and go freely about his habits, Don John would endorse Leonato’s stance: “I will be flesh and blood” (5.1.34). The idealistic but stern outlook on life that they both discredit corresponds to the stoic moral philosophy whose advocacy of “virtue” and “sufficiency/to be so moral” (5.1.29–30) proves inefficient in Leonato’s view when pain is as smarting as his. Stoic self-restraint against adversity is just as impossible to achieve as stoic autonomy and self-sufficiency in friendship. As Patrick Gray explains, the moral exigencies of the Stoics are as inflexible as the absolute and grandiloquent sense of

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selfhood of the Senecan revengers, whom here Don Pedro and Leonato range with.24 Antonio’s about-face from stoic teaching to endorsement of revenge perfectly illustrates the point: “Make those that do offend you suffer too,” he ends up by advising his brother just before he unleashes his own rage against Hero’s offenders (5.1.40). Conrade’s and the Friar’s respective sermonizing is not all about stoicism though: It also taps into the phenomenological philosophy of acknowledgment and the Christian notion of repentance, though embedded within a Machiavellian-driven discourse in the former. Inciting his friend to change, Conrade draws on the biblical parable of the Sower, familiar in Renaissance Christian humanism, about man’s freedom to choose which seeds to grow in his garden/soul.25 If he wishes to “take true root” therein and reap his “own harvest,” Don John will need to be responsive to his brother’s magnanimously forgiving gesture (3.1.17–19). Conrade’s theoretical outlook on the necessity of acknowledgment is later put into practice by Don John’s other assistant. If Don John remains obdurately impervious to change, Leonato accepts to be reoriented from the path of revenge toward “the strange course” initiated by the Friar, “the travail” with its play on “travel” looking to delivery of “greater birth” (4.1.205–6). The fictitious scenario of “fair Hero’s death” (5.4.69) and subsequent resurrection brings wronged and wrongdoers in confrontation with themselves and with each other and catapults them into the supernatural dimension of God’s grace. Leonato’s “over kindness” in offering to Claudio Antonio’s alleged daughter as wife is the outcome of that “travail”: “And so dies my revenge” (5.1.259–60). Similarly, Antonio’s generous acceptance to “be father to [his] brother’s daughter, / And give her to Claudio” (5.3.15–16) is the sign that he has walked away from resentment and vindictiveness. Still, the birth of the new Hero is not sufficient for this communal pardon to be effective. Turning to the offenders’ side, the second part of this study examines if, as Ewan Fernie argues, “it is really Claudio who has been reborn from within.”26 Much Ado About Nothing raises the question of recognition as a joint process of self-knowledge and acknowledgment. In this sense, it is both a personal endeavor, resting on the inner and private workings of conscience and emotions, and a shared process, with external help, stretching from the close friend to the larger public of anonymous witnesses. In the case of Claudio, the extent of recognition achieved through a self-reflexive gaze and Augustinian self-examination needs to be calibrated by considering a parallel, and potentially more forceful recognition through Don Pedro’s, his Girardian model’s, own confession, as well as through the people of Messina’s change of heart, of which the scene at the burial monument is a synecdochical representation. This dual process of recognition is anticipated by the Friar and exemplified by Borachio.

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Shakespeare’s divines act like physicians and vice versa, in line with the early modern combination of the medical and the religious discourses and the treatment of physiological and mental illnesses from a religious perspective.27 Hence, like the doctor in Macbeth, whose discourse fuses the natural and the supernatural to explain the queen’s somnambulistic bouts, the Friar in Much Ado About Nothing offers a typography of the human cognitive powers from his perspective as “a spiritual physician,” to quote Robert Burton’s self-definition.28 Such perspective conflates the material and rational faculty of mind, and the metaphysical and moral concept of the immaterial soul. Indeed, Friar Francis outlines the somatic, mental, and spiritual journey of the news about Hero’s death in her alleged murderer: “When he shall hear she died upon his words/Th’ idea of her life shall sweetly creep/Into his study of imagination” (4.1.216–18 emphasis added). The transformation of words from auricular knowledge into a mnemonic exercise will make, still in the Friar’s speculation, “every lovely organ of [Hero’s] life” invest Claudio’s imagination and appear “more . . . full of life, / Into the eye and prospect of his soul. . . . Than when she lived indeed” (4.1.221–23 emphasis added). Rational at its start, the cognitive process mapped by the Friar corresponds to the workings of the intellectual soul identified by the early modern physicians, from Thomas Wright to Robert Burton and Nicholas Coeffeteau. Once it is assessed and processed by Claudio’s organic soul’s triple internal faculties, common sense or reason, imagination, and memory, the lively image of the now-dead Hero will be thereupon apprehended by the sensitive part of his soul. The latter includes the passions and the affects felt with or without the presence of the object.29 Hence, Claudio’s reactions of sadness and remorse are projected as physiological, and, irradiating his whole body, they reach the lower and third part his soul: i.e., the vegetative one. As such, when Claudio is imbibed mind and soul with the image of his dead beloved, “then shall he mourn, / If ever love had interest in his liver, /And wish he had not so accusèd her” (4.1.223–25). Verification through the three faculties of thinking, feeling and sensation would make up for knowledge in the soul, the one Beatrice is endowed with, sparking adamantly her positive reply to Benedick’s enquiry: “Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?” (4.1.310–11). Though late, Leonato too heeds this intuitive voice in him, away from the reverberating sound of scandal he has lent his ear to: “My soul doth tell me, Hero is belied” (5.1.42).30 In early modern theology, this fourth faculty would correspond to conscience, enfolding the quondam synderesis and conscientia in the bipartite structure of medieval, namely Thomistic, theology. The former, labeled “mind” by William Perkins, is the innate receptacle of prelapsarian knowledge and is, unlike conscientia, unsusceptible to error.31 For his part, Montaigne insists on the “marvailous-working power” of

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“the sting of conscience,” which Benedick represents in the traditional and biblical image of “Don Worm” (5.2.63).32 The Friar’s speculation about the inner change in Claudio seems to concretize when Borachio eventually acknowledges his scheme against Hero. The culprit’s poisonous words distill the truth and wash down the delusion in whose grip Claudio has been so far, making inward sight clear: “Sweet Hero, now thy image doth appear/ In the rare semblance that I loved it first” (5.1.220–21).33 If Othello promptly apprehends his mistake over Desdemona’s body that he has just strangled, Claudio visualizes his in his mind but articulates first his rediscovery of the untarnished image of his beloved, as it dawns on him. His recognition corresponds in this way to anagnorisis, the process which Haines defines as “something like rediscovery” and, precisely, “the recovery of what was formerly known but has been concealed or forgotten.”34 But if the typical Aristotelian anagnorisis works through external proofs, tokens and eye witnessing,35 Claudio’s is achieved, as Friar Francis anticipates, through an intimate and mental revelation based on the recollection and retrieval of the former image of Hero, unsullied by the superimposed false one he was made to look at, that of the wanton woman talking with her lover outside her window. In acknowledging who Hero truly is in “the eye and prospect of his soul,” Claudio embraces his own truth and eventually lays bare his guilty conscience: “Impose me to what penance your invention/Can lay upon my sin, yet sinned I not, / but in mistaking” (5.1.240–42 emphasis added). The noetic process is transmuted into a spiritual one and the faculty of conscience functions according to the Christian view of the time, as “an instrument of divine providence.”36 Thus, although it fits the Aristotelian view of Hamartia as error committed in ignorance, Claudio’s murder of Hero through slander is decidedly couched in a language that propels it beyond the moral compass of classical ethics and frames it within its contemporary Christian and theological discourse. Consequently, Claudio’s recognition of his sin takes on accents of metanoia and repentance.37 However, if conscience is conceived of in the Protestant thought as unmediated, “experienced by oneself and in oneself,”38 Claudio’s is far from being solipsistic or given vent to in a penitential soliloquy. In fact, Claudio and Don Pedro go through a joint recognition in public. It is only when Borachio confesses the evil plot that he carried out under Don John’s command that both friends make sense of Hero’s death. Prior to this disclosure, the two friends do hear about the tragic event, but neither seems to realize it fully: Claudio does not evince any sorrow or compassion and treats Leonato and Antonio’s accusation of murder dismissively (5.1.77–78). As for Don Pedro, he hardly blurts out a conventional expression of condolences and insists on the validity of the charge against Hero (5.1.101–5). Hence, Borachio plays a significant role

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in activating the workings of conscience in both Claudio and Don Pedro not only by coming to terms with his villainous deeds, but by baring himself to the reflexive gaze Leonato casts on him. To the latter’s injunction “Let me see his eyes” (5.1.226), Borachio replies: “If you would know your wronger, look on me” (5.1.229).39 He who a moment ago speaks of his sense of “shame” that makes him prefer death over confession of his villainy (5.1.211), exposes himself to the sight of the other, hence to himself. Although it is not properly an instance of mutual discovery in the Cavellian sense, Borachio’s confession is inscribed in the dynamics central to this epistemologist concept whereby “each first recognize(s) himself and allow(s) himself to be recognized, revealed to another.”40 Borachio’s confrontation of the other’s sight places him at the opposite end of tragic heroes like King Lear, whose “avoidance . . . of eyes,” Cavell explains, is symptomatic of avoidance of disclosure to the other, hence to the self. Its cause is “shame . . . produced by the sense of being looked at.”41 This scene demonstrates the intersubjective quality of recognition and the role the other plays in self-knowledge or self-evaluation. Moreover, it testifies to the fact that conscience, as William Hamlin argues, needs at times external prompting.42 Indeed, it is improbable that Don Pedro has not harbored in his conscience an inkling of suspicion toward his brother while Benedick intuitively connects the dots between the latter’s “spirits [that] toil in frame of villainies” (4.1.182), a trait everyone has been aware of and from which Don Pedro himself incurred hostility, and his predictable, or at any rate likely, maneuver to wreck Claudio’s marriage. However, when Borachio relates his evil plot, the prince winces at the bladelike effect of his words in his blood, while the count chokes with their poisonous substance. Like a ricochet, Borachio’s confession prompts Don Pedro to admit to his brother’s true nature, and thereupon, Claudio discloses his own thoughts about Hero and pits her innocence against Don John’s now confirmed treachery. In this context, Claudio’s recognition takes on the other “twin” sense of discovery that Haines applies to the Latin word recognitio: That of acknowledgment which implies the externally oriented activity of “authenticating, validating.”43 It further shows in Claudio’s readiness to enact penance, the sacrament that is intimately linked to confession wherein the reciprocal process of acknowledging and making oneself known is a central feature.44 Likewise, Don Pedro’s contrite wish “to satisfy” Leonato (5.1.243) evokes the same sacrament since, by virtue of its etymological meaning “to do enough” (satisfacere), satisfaction entails action done for reparation of sin. Both put their lives in the old man’s hands, expecting “any heavy weight” as recompense for his daughter’s death, in the same fashion that Borachio expresses his willingness to be imputed “the reward of a villain” (5.1.244; 5.1.213).

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Leonato devises yet an alternative to punishment; one that comes close to the meaning of “satisfaction” in theology, that of doing enough to prevent God’s vengeance, since, whatever the compensation, it is still not enough to fully repay the debt of sin.45 He enjoins the two penitent men to consecrate the death of his daughter and proclaim her a martyr by “possess[ing] the people of Messina here, / How innocent she died” (5.1.248–49) and singing an epitaph “to her bones” (5.1.248–49, 252). The old man therefore complies with the Friar’s prescriptions which, while anticipating an inward change of heart in Claudio, keeps also in sight the effective intersubjective dimension of collective mourning that would “change slander to remorse” and further exhort the wrongdoer to contrition (4.1.20): “She dying, as it must be so maintained, / Upon the instant that she was accused, /Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused/ of every hearer” (4.1.207–10). Remorse within the self, combined with shame of the Other as its complementary affect, would thus function in the community in the same contagious way of Girardian mimetic desire and Cavellian dynamics of perceptual knowledge-through-the-other, but with a notable difference: It is now the Montaignian self-accusing conscience that harks back to the penitential tradition of the intuitive conscience, namely to the Augustinian sense of self-division and insightful gaze turned inward.46 This moment is “self-revenge” that supplants revenge, welding both the “self-chastisement” and “self-humiliation” that Protestant reformers urged in private and public confessions, and the sacrament of penance that was equally viewed in late medieval religious culture as “a sort of vengeance” undertaken by the penitent sinner against himself.47 Consequently, the publicly held obsequies commissioned by the Friar would unfailingly draw people’s eyes and trigger the dual emotional responsiveness of shame and guilt: “Maintain a mourning ostentation, / And on your family’s old monument/ Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites, /That appertain unto a burial. (4.1.198–201, emphasis added) It is first in the Recantation Scene, then in the Resurrection Scene that Claudio and Don Pedro experience a liminal transition from unwittingly evil perpetrators to humbled penitents. Indeed, the ritual of atonement at Leonato’s monument functions like a double rite of passage, in the very etymological sense of the word patio (to suffer): an epiphanic one, confirming the pair’s retrieval of knowledge after an interim of ignorance, and a symbolic one, from suffering to death to rebirth, paralleling Hero’s three transfigurations from sinner to martyr to bride.48 The epitaph in which Claudio states the shaming and unmerited slander and death incurred by Hero is his form of confession, the Catholic religious type of writing which was read aloud either by the penitent or by the confessor.49 Choosing the latter option, Claudio assigns it to an attendant lord who acts in lieu of a priest. He also commissions a threnody which is sung most probably by Balthasar, and “mak[es]

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allowance for the lord to repeat this visual, spoken, and musical spectacle every year.”50 The choice of the Catholic form of intercessory mode of confession may translate the post-Reformation anxiety over loss of mediation in religious practices and uncertainty about internal repentance in efficiently guaranteeing absolution from sin.51 This public penance unfolds under the aegis of syncretic divinities: The dirge that is sung over Hero’s tomb invokes the dead to take part in the ceremony and gestures toward the eschatological event of the resurrection with the return of Jesus Christ: “Graves yawn and yield your dead” (5.3.19). This “heavenly”52 outcome for the true believers owes to the prototokos who, upon his resurrection, delivers in an apparition to his Apostles a message about forgiveness of sins.53 Similarly, the prayer in atmospheric dimness to the “goddess of the night” (5.3.12) Diana/Artemis, who bears the epithet Limnatis as she guarantees transition, and the lit torches that are her chief attribute jointly summon up the mysteries of the Greco-Roman chthonian divinities and their initiatory rites that enact death, mourning, and soteriological rebirth and involve ritual violence and sacrifice.54 Lastly, those pagan rituals also involve meditations and confessions, as in the sacrament of penance and the Protestant mode of repentance. The Prince’s comment about “the wolves [that] have preyed” (5.3.26) seems to be less about the wolves in nature than about those who have sated their appetite in Hero’s blood, and who now have been tamed, or who have “prayed.” The prince thus acknowledges the transformative and chastening effect of this rite, with its load of “woe” and its bodily manifestations in “moan,” “sigh,” and “groan” (5.3.16–17). The tribulation of confession, which Thomas More views as “a marvellous good medicine,” offers “purgation and cleansing of [the] soul.”55 Its regenerative powers are rendered in this scene through the atmospheric slow progression from night to “gentle day,” when the penitents eventually welcome the epiphanic “Phoebus,” Apollo, the God of light, of clear-sight, and of healing (5.3.25–26). Finally, Hero’s resurrection is the most powerful moment in Claudio’s and even Don Pedro’s repentance in that it makes response and acknowledgment through the Other unavoidable. The returning dead forces on the offender the recollection of her death-through-shame and the prospect of his, as her sight exacerbates the feeling in him. As she actuates the past, Hero insistently mirrors to Claudio his prelapsarian self as well as his former acknowledgment of her, that was soon to be disrupted: “And when I lived I was your other wife, / And when you loved you were my other husband” (5.4.59–60). Inversely, when she emphatically asserts her liveliness in the present, Don Pedro recognizes in her “the former Hero, Hero that is dead” (5.4.63–64–65). In this context, Beckwith comments: “the drama of [the dead’s] return is always a theatre of memory and recognition.”56 Furthermore, the fact that Hero

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appears masked confers a symbolic dimension to her ontological existence both in the past and in the present and to Claudio’s and Don Pedro’s recognition and acknowledgment thereof: Both visible and invisible like a Catholic icon and a Protestant living temple,57 Hero seems to replicate externally the incarnational dimension of her “full of life” presence haunting Claudio’s imagination in his introspective and retrospective moments (4.1.221). In this regard, the Resurrection Scene functions as the second moment of recognition thanks to which Claudio retrieves the intuitive part of his conscience that first made him see and acknowledge virtue in Hero, and as the second moment of acknowledgment, in which he validates the reciprocal working of “wonder” (5.3.70) in Hero’s rebirth through the “amazement” of everyone around him (5.4.67). When dancing with the disguised Antonio in the Masked Ball Scene, Ursula insists on revealing his identity and comments, in a lighthearted mode: “can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he, graces will appear, and there’s an end” (2.1.90–91). Claudio who in “misprision” (4.1.178) sees Hero’s “outward graces” disjoined from the “thoughts and counsels of [thy] heart” (4.1.94–95), now sees that virtue cannot hide itself. By renewing her former self in her present self, Hero offers a living proof for the possibility of renewing faith in God’s grace, communicated in nature, as it is invested in her lively body, and in the mind/spirit, the hidden and private part symbolized by the veil hiding her face. Beyond the works of repentance facilitated by the Friar, faith in repentance is what the resurrected Hero incarnates and fosters. This play’s moment of heightened “theatrical phenomenology,”58 involving the joining of hands, first of Hero and Claudio, then of all the attendants who “have a dance” (5.4.111), places “wonder” in the human body as the nexus for the reception of humane forgiveness as well as God’s redemptive Grace. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle, The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. Edited by W. R. Roberts, Ingram Bywater, and Friedrich Solmsen. New York: Modern Library, 1954. Beckwith, Sarah. Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. Biss, Mavis. “Aristotle on Friendship and Self-Knowledge: The Friend Beyond the Mirror.” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 28, no. 2 (April 2011): 125–40. Bossy, John. “Practices of Satisfaction, 1215–1700.” In Retribution, Repentance, Reconciliation: Papers Read at the 2002 Summer Meeting and 2003 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, edited by Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory. Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2004, 106–18.

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Casadio, Giovanni, and Patricia A. Johnston, eds., Artemis and Diana in Ancient Greece and Italy: At the Crossroads between the Civic and the Wild. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021. Cavell, Stanley. Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Chadwick, Alexandra. “From Soul to Mind in Hobbes’s The Elements of Law,” History of European Ideas 46, no. 3 (2020): 257–75. Charalampous, Charis. Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy and Medicine: The Renaissance of the Body. New York: Routledge, 2016. Cornett, Michael E. “The Form of Confession. A Later Medieval Genre for Examining Conscience.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2011. Cox, John D. “Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship,” Religion & Literature 40, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 1–29. ———. “Shakespeare, Self-Deception and the Moral Play,” Ennaratio, 15 (2008): 65–99. Eden, Kathy. Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Fernie, Ewan. Shame in Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 2002. Garrels, Scott R. “Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Mimetic Desire: Convergence Between the Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Empirical Research on Imitation.” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 12/13 (2006): 47–86. Girard, René. The Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare. London: Inigo Enterprises, 2000. ———. Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987. ———. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Translated by James G. Williams. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001. Gray, Patrick. “Shakespeare versus Aristotle: Anagnorisis, Repentance, and Acknowledgment,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 49, no. 1 (2019): 85–111. ———. “Shakespeare vs. Seneca: Competing Visions of Human Dignity.” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Senecan Tragedy: Scholarly, Theatrical and Literary Receptions. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2016, 203–30. Haines, Simon. “Recognition in Shakespeare and Hegel.” In Shakespeare and Emotions: Inheritances, Enactments, Legacies. Edited by R. S. White, Mark Houlahan, and Katrina O’Loughlin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Hamlin, William M. “Conscience and the God-Surrogate in Montaigne and Measure for Measure.” In Patrick Gray and John D. Cox, eds. Shakespeare and the Ethics of the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Henze, Richard. “Deception in Much Ado About Nothing.” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 11, no. 2 (April 1971): 187–201. Hirschfeld, Heather. The End of Satisfaction: Drama and Repentance in the Age of Shakespeare. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

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Hunt, Maurice. “Much Ado About Nothing and Pain.” In Cahiers Elisabéthains. A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 98, no. 1 (2019): 65–86. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​ .1177​/0184767818813000. Hütwohl, Dannu. “Plato’s Orpheus: The Philosophical Appropriation of Orphic Formulae.” Thesis. University of New Mexico, 2016.  http:​//​digitalrepository​.unm​ .edu​/fll​_etds​/20 Jung, Carl Gustav. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Translated by W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes. London: Routledge, 2005. Lund, Mary Ann. Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading The Anatomy of Melancholy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. More, Thomas. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. London: Charles Dolman, 1847. Mueschke, Paul, and Miriam Mueschke. “Illusion and Metamorphosis in Much Ado about Nothing.” Shakespeare Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1967): 53–65. Nelson, Thomas, ed. The Holy Bible. The New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1986. Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Genesis of Desire. Translated by Eugene Webb. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010. Parvini, Neema. Shakespeare’s Moral Compass. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Pico Della Mirandola, Giovanni. Oration on the Dignity of Man: A New Translation and Commentary, edited by Francesco Borghesi, Michael Papio, and Massimo Riva. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Seneca, De Ira, in Moral and Political Essays, Translated and edited by John M. Cooper, and J. F. Procopé. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Edited by F. H. Mares. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Stoll, Abraham. Conscience in Early Modern English Literature. Vol 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Tiffany, Grace. “Calvinist Grace in Shakespeare’s Romances: Upending Tragedy.” Christianity and Literature 49, no. 4 (2000): 421–45. Trudell, Scott A. “Shakespeare’s Notation: Writing Sound in Much Ado About Nothing,” PMLA 135:2 (2020), 370–77. Waldron, Jennifer Elizabeth. Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

NOTES 1. See Jennifer Elizabeth Waldron, Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 47. See also 46–66. 2. Anne Hirschfeld, The End of Satisfaction: Drama and Repentance in the Age of Shakespeare (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 2.

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3. See Hirschfeld, The End of Satisfaction, 68. 4. Sarah Beckwith, Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 128. 5. See Mavis Biss, “Aristotle on Friendship and Self-Knowledge: The Friend Beyond the Mirror,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 28, no. 2 (April 2011): 125–34. 6. See Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Amicitia, Loeb Classical Library: Harvard University Press, 1923, 189. 7. See John D. Cox, “Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship,” Religion & Literature 40, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 12, 17. 8. “Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship,” 3. 9. “Shakespeare and the Ethics of Friendship,” 17. 10. See René Girard, The Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare (London, Gracewing and New Malden: Inigo Enterprises, 2000), 84–85. 11. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. F. H. Mares (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). All further references to the play are from this edition. 12. René Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 299. 13. René Girard, Things Hidden, 284. 14. See René Girard, Things Hidden, 283–89; Jean-Michel Oughourlian, The Genesis of Desire, trans. Eugene Webb (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 31–33. 15. René Girard, Things Hidden, 35. 16. See Jean-Michel Oughourlian, The Genesis of Desire, trans. Eugene Webb (Lansing: Michigan State University Press), 2010, 39; Scott R. Garrels, “Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Mimetic Desire: Convergence Between the Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Empirical Research on Imitation,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 12/13 (2006), 49, 56–61. 17. See René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001), 7–9. On the function of prohibitions, see Girard, Things Hidden, 11–14. 18. The Holy Bible, The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1986), Matthew, 16:23. 19. See Girard, I See Satan, 33. 20. “Shakespeare versus Aristotle: Anagnorisis, Repentance, and Acknowledgment,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 49, no. 1 (2019): 90–91. 21. Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59. 22. See Seneca, De Ira, in Moral and Political Essays, eds. John M. Cooper, and J. F. Procopé (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1.2.1; Aristotle, The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, eds. W. R. Roberts, Ingram Bywater, and Friedrich Solmsen (New York: Modern Library, 1954), 2.2.1378a. 23. See Girard, I See Satan, 24.

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24. See Patrick Gray, “Shakespeare vs. Seneca: Competing Visions of Human Dignity,” in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Senecan Tragedy: Scholarly, Theatrical and Literary Receptions (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 212–13. 25. See The Holy Bible, Matthew 13: 1–23, Mark 4: 1–20; Luke 8: 1–15; Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man. A New Translation and Commentary, eds. Francesco Borghesi, Michael Papio, and Massimo Riva (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 149–50. 26. Ewan Fernie, Shame in Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 2002), 88. 27. See Mary Ann Lund, Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading The Anatomy of Melancholy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 112–21. 28. Quoted in Mary Ann Lund, Melancholy, 12. Alexandra Chadwick attests that it is Hobbes who establishes a clear-cut distinction between the mind and the soul. See “From Soul to Mind in Hobbes’s The Elements of Law,” History of European Ideas 46, no. 3 (2020): 258–59. 29. See Charis Charalampous, Rethinking the Mind-Body Relationship in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy, and Medicine: The Renaissance of the Body (New York: Routledge, 2016), 7. On the common tripartite division of the soul in early modern medicine, see Alexandra Chadwick, “From Soul to Mind,” 261–63. 30. See Richard Henze, “Deception in Much Ado About Nothing,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 11, no. 2 (April 1971): 200. 31. See Abraham Stoll, Conscience in Early Modern English Literature. Vol 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 20–43. 32. Montaigne, “Of Conscience,” quoted in William M. Hamlin, “Conscience and the God-Surrogate in Montaigne and Measure for Measure,” in Shakespeare and the Ethics of the Renaissance, ed. John Cox and Patrick Gray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 238. 33. For a different reading of this scene, see Maurice Hunt, “Much Ado About Nothing and Pain,” in Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 98, no. 1(2019): 78. 34. Simon Haines, “Recognition in Shakespeare and Hegel,” in Shakespeare and Emotions: Inheritances, Enactments, Legacies, ed. R. S. White, Mark Houlahan, and Katrina O’Loughlin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 218. 35. On anagnorisis in Aristotle, see Kathy Eden, Poetic and Legal Fiction in the Aristotelian Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 9–20; Gray, “Shakespeare versus Aristotle,” 86. 36. Hamlin, “Conscience and the God-Surrogate,” 239. Hamlin notes that Florio translates the French word “âme” in Montaigne’s Essays not as “soul,” but as “conscience,” 238, note 4. 37. On the influence of the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition in Early Modern England, see Neema Parvini, Shakespeare’s Moral Compass (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 76–91. On Shakespeare’s Christian background versus the Classics, see Gray, “Shakespeare versus Aristotle,” 95–102. On anagnorisis and metanoia (repentance) in particular, see 89. 38. Stoll, Conscience, 20.

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39. On intersubjectivity through the symbol of the eye in Shakespeare, see Patrick Gray, “Shakespeare et la reconnaissance: l’Anerkennung comme interpellation intersubjective,” in Shakespeare au risque de la philosophie, ed. Pascale Drouet and Philippe Grosos (Paris: éditions Hermann, 2017), 164–72. 40. Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 45. See also 58. 41. Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 49. See also 46. 42. Hamlin, “Conscience,” 243–44. 43. Haines, “Recognition in Shakespeare and Hegel,” 218. 44. See Beckwith, Forgiveness, 2. 45. See John Bossy, “Practices of Satisfaction, 1215–1700,” in Retribution, Repentance, Reconciliation: Papers Read at the 2002 Summer Meeting and 2003 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, eds. Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2004),106–7. On “the problem of enough,” see Hirschfeld, The End of Satisfaction, 7. 46. See Hamlin, 238, 240. On the influence of the medieval penitential tradition and of Augustine’s The Confessions in particular in Shakespeare’s age, see John Cox, “Shakespeare, Self-Deception and the Moral Play,” Ennaratio, 15, 2008, 66–67, 81; On Montaigne, see Hamlin, 238, 240. 47. See Hirschfeld, The End of Satisfaction, 65–69. 48. Paul and Miriam Mueschke, “Illusion and Metamorphosis in Much Ado About Nothing,” Shakespeare Quarterly 18:1 (1967): 62. 49. Michael E. Cornett, “The Form of Confession. A Later Medieval Genre for Examining Conscience” (PhD diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011), 5. 50. Scott A. Trudell, “Shakespeare’s Notation: Writing Sound in Much Ado About Nothing,” PMLA 135:2 (2020): 374. 51. See Maurice Hunt, “Much Ado,” 79; Hirschfeld, The End of Satisfaction, 85– 87. Grace Tiffany explains that Calvin’s reformed theology was not against private and public confession, but against mediation. See “Calvinist Grace in Shakespeare’s Romances: Upending Tragedy,” Christianity and Literature, 49:4 (2000), 430. 52. The 1623 Folio text gives “Heavenly, heavenly” instead of “Heavily, heavily” of the 1600 Quarto. See Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 158, notes 19–21. 53. The Holy Bible, Colossians, 1:15; John, 20:22. 54. See Giovanni Casadio and Patricia A. Johnston (eds.), Artemis and Diana in Ancient Greece and Italy: At the Crossroads between the Civic and the Wild (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), viii–x, 32–35. See also Plutarch’s comment on the soul of the initiates going through deathlike conversion. Quoted in Dannu Hütwohl, D. “Plato’s Orpheus: The Philosophical Appropriation of Orphic Formulae.” Thesis. (University of New Mexico, 2016), 18. 55. Thomas More, A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation (London: Charles Dolman, 1847), 26. 56. Beckwith, Forgiveness, 128. 57. See Waldron, Reformations, 43–54. 58. Waldron, Reformations, 78.

Chapter 2

“Deceivers Ever” Much Ado About Nothing and Cultures of Deception Kathleen Kalpin Smith

This chapter contributes to this collection of new critical approaches to Much Ado About Nothing by foregrounding a twenty-first-century perspective on the many deceptions in the play.1 In the summer of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that ruled that people had a constitutional right to privacy and that this right included protections for medical—specifically, abortion—access in the United States. The ruling was a 6–3 vote, and one of the many questions being circulated in response to the decision is what role deception played in this outcome. For example, Senator Susan Collins commented, “I feel misled,” in relation to reassurances that then Supreme Court Justice nominee Kavanaugh gave her in a private conversation during the course of his confirmation.2 In anticipation of the decision, two Democratic party leaders referred to statements from the justices as “lies”: “Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate.”3 These explicit, public accusations of lying, about sitting Supreme Court Justices no less, follow a year and a half after a series of election lies (together termed the election “Big Lie”) led to an attempted overthrow of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.4 These examples are just two important ones among many; indeed, concerns have been growing for several years about the role of lies, deception, misinformation, and disinformation in contemporary U.S. society. Experts have argued that the current era is one of “endemic misinformation— and outright disinformation. Plenty of bad actors are helping the trend along. But the real drivers, some experts believe, are social and psychological forces 31

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that make people prone to sharing and believing misinformation in the first place. And those forces are on the rise.”5 In 2021, a poll of American people showed that “nearly all Americans agree that the spread of misinformation is a problem.”6 In a 2018 report from the Rand Corporation, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, the authors, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, ask, “is truth decay new?”7 Kavanagh and Rich argue that research into past episodes of truth decay, and explicitly, how the historical periods of truth decay ended, “could aid in identifying responses or policy levers that can be used to fight truth decay today.”8 Many parallels can be drawn between our contemporary American society and Shakespeare’s England, wherein we see a society grappling with a revolution in new media along with a growing political and cultural divide and a broad concern over truth and knowledge. In Renaissance Earwitnesses, Keith M. Botelho argues that “A crisis of truth took hold during the Renaissance, and rumor was at the forefront. This crisis, with the invention of new modes for circulating news and the resulting anxiety of authorizing this information as credible, became a pressing issue of myriad cultural productions, particularly those of the theater.”9 While the authors of Truth Decay suggest that looking to the past can help to find solutions for the present, this paper seeks to work in the opposite direction, by considering the ways in which our current era of misinformation can reorient our understanding of one of Shakespeare’s plays famously associated with deception and misinformation: Much Ado About Nothing. Discussing deception in Much Ado About Nothing, critics and editors have largely approached the topic in terms of categorizing “good” and “bad” deceit in the play. The idea has lasting durability: John C. McCloskey notes in the 1946 article “The Plot Device of False Report,” that “False report underlies the workings of the main plot and sub-plot of Much Ado About Nothing, and it is used in contrary ways. . . . Its end is evil in the main plot, but in the sub-plot it is good.”10 In the 1969 book Twentieth Century Interpretations of Much Ado About Nothing, Walter Davis writes,“almost every deed in the play is a deception, for either bad or good ends.”11 In 1971, Richard Henze, in “Deception in Much Ado About Nothing,” agrees with this assessment, stating, “deception in Much Ado is of two sorts.”12 He explains: “One deception leads to social peace, to marriage, to the end of deceit. The other deception breeds conflict and distrust and leads even Beatrice to desire the heart of Claudio in the marketplace.”13 Henze argues that what underlies the two events differs—Beatrice and Benedick really do care for each other while Hero in reality is not unfaithful—and that this difference is what makes one deception essentially good and the other bad. Certainly, the Beatrice and Benedick plot delights audiences and leads to a love match we desire to see, while Don

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John’s deception leads to destruction. However, rather than categorizing the deception in the play, this paper seeks to establish that the Messina we see in Much Ado is a society with a culture of deception. In so doing, I argue that the slander against Hero results from this culture that traffics in deception. Thus, while Much Ado has been read as a play with “good” and “bad” deceptions, a reconsideration of the deception in the play, the way lies and misrepresentations circulate throughout the main and subplots and between various characters, shows us that when people deceive freely, regardless of intent, the result can be to create a world in which deceptions can occur that harm the innocent and can upset society at large. Speaking in terms of eavesdropping specifically, Russ McDonald and Lena Cowen Orlin, the editors of the Bedford Shakespeare, write: “Some of these are fairly benign, such as the hoaxes designed to bring Beatrice and Benedick together, but some are unquestionably malevolent, such as the conspiracy that makes Claudio doubt whether Hero is as ‘sweet’ as he first thought.”14 Their argument continues the notion of good and bad deception in the play. Similarly, in the Riverside Shakespeare edition, Anne Barton notes, “In the Messina of the comedy, masked face, revels, and dances are the order of the day. . . . Some of the deceits, like the one that brings Beatrice and Benedick together, are harmless and even beneficent. Others are not. The general atmosphere, however, is conducive to eavesdropping, mistaken identity, game-playing, and conversations reported wrongly, even as it is to music, feasting, and marriage.”15 In this description of the setting of the play, not only are deceptions seen as good and bad, but elements of deception are tied to moments of festivity. Indeed, the comedies abound with humorous situations derived from deceptive circumstances. The ways that deceit permeates the main and subplots of Much Ado provide us with an opportunity to consider what can happen to individuals in a society that trades in deceptions of various kinds. The play includes a long list of moments of deceptions; this essay will focus on three primary moments: the false wooing at the revels, the gulling of Beatrice and Benedick, and the plot against Hero. Our first example considered here is the Prince, Don Pedro, wooing Hero in disguise on behalf of Claudio. Noting that “we shall have revelling tonight,” Don Pedro offers to “assume thy part in some disguise.”16 Harold Bloom refers to the plan for Don Pedro to woo Hero in disguise as Claudio as “a needlessly complicated process that portends future trouble.”17 Barbara Kreps calls the Prince’s plan at the evening’s masked revels “puzzling business.”18 Indeed, the plan is “puzzling,” as is the Prince’s description of it: “in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart, / And take her hearing prisoner with the force / And strong encounter of my amorous tale” (1.1.248–50). Nova Myhill remarks on Don Pedro’s plan: “Hero is to be won almost without her consent.”19 Nothing in the play

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indicates that Hero will be such a challenge to woo that the moment will require the Prince’s intervention, forceful rhetoric, or deceptions. One reading of the Don Pedro plan views the scheme in light of the role of evidence and the legal process in the play. Kreps argues that “The subterfuge does not advance the plot in any way.”20 She sees the purpose of the event as showing the audience “the display of contrasting attitudes towards the issues, fundamental to the play, of reliable evidence and what constitutes proof. On the most immediate level, the apparently pointless plan helps to distinguish appropriate and inappropriate reactions to hearsay evidence.”21 The Prince’s plan is overheard by two parties, one hearing essentially clearly and the other misinformed. When Leonato receives the incorrect information, he responds that he will “hold it as a dream till it appears itself” (1.2.16). Kreps sees this response as demonstrating appropriate restraint to hearsay evidence. Yet, she does note that “Hearsay and even what appears to be ocular proof—the central noting of the play—are shown (in both plots) to be not particularly reliable.”22 She concludes: “If one does not look too deeply and accepts as felicitous the solution that unites Hero to the undeserving Claudio, a happy ending of sorts ostensibly gets patched together. But the legal process that leads to it is far from reassuring.”23 Kreps’s analysis of the deception here is part of a productive reading of evidence in the play. However, I disagree that Leonato’s response to the hearsay is particularly effective, since he makes little attempt to track down the evidence himself. Leonato does initially inquire after the source of the information, asking Antonio, “Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?” (1.2.13). Yet when Antonio replies, “A good sharp fellow. I will send for him, and question him yourself,” Leonato declines to interrogate the matter further (1.2.14). Nor does he interrupt the transmission of the hearsay, vowing, “I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer if peradventure this be true” (1.2.16–18). Leonato indicates mild skepticism, but then relies on a fatalistic rather than evidence-based approach to receiving the hearsay. The Prince’s confusing plan, for which no explanation is given, signals to the audience in the theater the nature of the world of this play, wherein circuitous, duplicitous paths are chosen, without apparent reason or necessity. This duplicity, under the cover of the revels, is immediately seized upon by Don John, who hears of Don Pedro’s plan for Claudio from Borachio.24 The odd plan is immediately recognized by Don John as an opportunity for mischief: “This may prove food to my displeasure” (1.3.47). Don John, eager to manipulate others by participating in a game of feigned misidentity, approaches Claudio, pretending to believe that he thinks Claudio is Benedick. Under this ruse, Don John tells Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself; he claims that he is uncomfortable that Don Pedro should choose to wed beneath his station. Claudio immediately believes the lie, saying,

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“’Tis certain so” (2.1.134). Claudio’s unquestioning reception of this deception is further evidence of the problem of truth in the world of this play, for he does not evaluate, interrogate, or investigate his sources. The authors of Truth Decay, the twenty-first-century report on misinformation with which this chapter began, see a lack of attention to sources as a contributing factor to truth erosion. They explain that “a central component of Truth Decay is people’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish between and assign different values to different types of information (e.g., facts versus opinion, disinformation versus anecdote).”25 Claudio receives the intelligence with no attempt to analyze the information, and even though he later learns that the report was erroneous, he does not learn from this experience. The masquerading at the revels is followed by the staged eavesdropping scenes of Beatrice and Benedick. The gulling of Benedick and Beatrice provides the central example often considered as “good” deception by scholars. These two scenarios are elaborate overhearing traps for the protagonists. While hunting is a common Renaissance metaphor for finding and pursuing a love, the language in the Benedick and Beatrice overhearing scenes include references to fishing (“Bait the hook well”) and extended references to bird trapping (2.3.95). Claudio, in an aside to Don Pedro, indicates that Benedick is in position to overhear their staged conversation: “Stalk on, stalk on, the fowl sits” (2.3.82). Upon successful conclusion of their scheme regarding Benedick, Don Pedro refers to the plan for Beatrice: “Let there be the same net spread for her” (2.3.172). Ursula plots with Hero against Beatrice: “The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish . . . greedily devour the treacherous bait. / So angle we for Beatrice” (3.1.26, 28–29). At the completion of the ruse, Ursula exclaims, “She’s lim’d, I warrant you. We have caught her, madam” to which Hero replies, “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps” (3.1.104, 106). Though the language of hunting is often one of pursuit or chase, the language of fishing and bird trapping used here involves bait, deception, and traps.26 Thus, even the metaphors employed by the coconspirators in the overhearing plots engage with lying and deceptions. Early modern literary texts frequently use the language of bird trapping with birdlime and sticks or twigs. In Arden of Faversham, Greene directs the murderers-for-hire Shakebag and Black Will to “once more / Lime your twigs to catch this weary bird.”27 Often this trapping process is referred to with a shorthand, referencing at times only the lime or twigs. For example, a birdlime trap is specifically evoked in the gulling of Parolles in All’s Well That Ends Well. The Second Lord notes of the preparation to capture Parolles, “I must go look my twigs: he shall be caught.”28 Fishing is familiar enough to modern audiences, while bird trapping is notably less so, and the references in this play are generally only briefly glossed.29 The use of birdlime traps is outlawed today in the United States

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as well as the United Kingdom, but it was still in use and is described in the eighteenth-century work Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by Gilbert White.30 Richard Blome also describes the use of birdlime traps in the seventeenth-century text The Gentleman’s Recreation.31 Blome’s text is quite thorough and specific in its instructions; this source and others explain to readers how to prepare a birdlime trap.32 According to Blome, the trap is set for the birds by the hunter preparing ahead of time. Birdlime, an organic, sticky substance, is applied to sharpened sticks or twigs. When a bird lands on the sticky twig, it is stuck there until the hunter returns to harvest it. Good locations for lime-sticks are any locations where birds are likely to perch, like next to a food source.33 In addition, birds, including small songbirds, are lured into these traps, not by the birdlime itself, but by a “dummy” bird.34 This could be a dead bird attached to the trap or a live bird in a cage just outside of view (but able to make its call). If the dummy bird is dead, the trap could be enhanced by an experienced hunter with a birdcall or song to attract attention. The bird is drawn to the location by what it thinks it hears or sees and then is trapped. In Gilbert White’s explanation, the dummy bird is a key factor in the trap’s success: “The London bird catchers take great numbers of cock chaffinches by dummies. The dummy is a stuffed finch fastened on a peg which can be placed on the fence or on a tree. . . . Bird lime twigs are placed under and above the dummy. The birds are attracted by the song of a call bird in a cage which is placed or hidden in a ditch close by.”35 The birdlime trap uses a lure before it catches and holds its prey. The overhearing trick with Beatrice and Benedick is well received by audiences and is part of the lighthearted, romantic comedy part of the play that has been described as the “good” of the deceptions that runs throughout. The language of setting traps for one’s friends is not entirely benign, however, and the overhearing traps witnessed here participate in this society’s ready engagement with deceit and specifically anticipate the trap that Don John and Borachio prepare for Claudio and the Prince, at Hero’s great expense. Borachio’s scheme shares elements with the two deceptions just discussed: it involves intentionally misleading identities and sets a trap in advance that involves overhearing. Borachio shares his plan with Don John in Act 2, Scene 2. Immediately following upon the intentional, and unintentional, masquerading as others in the revels scene, Borachio plots to represent an amorous moment with Margaret as one with Hero. Borachio in advance tells us that his plan is to have Don John prepare the men to believe that they are seeing Hero and Borachio and then in view of Hero’s window call Margaret “Hero” and have her call Borachio “Claudio.”36 Though we do not see onstage the moment when Borachio suggests the name exchange to Margaret, in light of the action of the revels, the request from Borachio could have been viewed as less suspicious, an extension of the fanciful playacting

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from the masked event. Borachio’s request of Margaret, after an event when all were in masks, going by false names, as a pretext for fun and amorousness, apparently did not stand out as unduly odd. After the falsified encounter takes place offstage, Borachio offers a retelling, emphasizing for the audience in the theater the nature of the deception and offering a moment important to the plot, as Dogberry’s men overhear him. Borachio summarizes the elements that made the plan succeed: “partly by his oaths, which first possessed them, partly by the dark night, which did deceive them, but chiefly by my villainy, which did confirm any slander that Don John had made, away went Claudio enraged” (3.3.118–21). He boasts that the mixture of Don John’s false “oaths,” the confusion of night, and his own performance (“my villainy”) all contributed to the success of the plan. I argue that additionally, Don John and Borachio have the aid of a culture in Messina that circulates falsehoods freely.37 Claudio believes the allegations against Hero and interprets Borachio’s staged scene as evidence of her betrayal. After Don John’s initial attempt to create trouble, Claudio is not better prepared to suspect false stories and mistaken identities, but rather has simply been shown to the audience to be susceptible to being misled. Claudio relied on his eyes to assess Hero initially, saying, “In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on” (1.1.137). And though Benedick resists the statement, saying, “I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter,” (1.1.138), Claudio disregards Benedick and shares with the Prince, “That I love her, I feel” to which the Prince replies, “That she is worthy, I know” (1.1.168–69). This seeing, feeling, and knowing do not hold up against the false encounter Borachio stages for the men, however. As Myhill has noted, “All of the upper-class male characters in Messina are quite aware of the possibility of deception; they recognize that the world around them is not transparent and that other characters may wish to show them a false version of events.”38 When so many are deceiving, it could hardly be a surprise then that Don John would tell a lie, or that eyes could mislead you, but instead of Claudio learning from his earlier mistaken doubt in the Prince, Claudio once again is misled. Claudio’s response to Hero’s seeming betrayal is to publicly shame Hero on what should have been their wedding day. His treatment of her, along with the callous response of her own father, causes Hero to swoon. Up until that point, Hero’s words in her own defense did little to sway her accusers. After Don John, Don Pedro, and Claudio leave, the Friar uses the pause in the action to devise a plan. The Friar believes Hero, confident that he can read her countenance and assess her innocence: “I have only silent been so long . . . by noting of the lady” (4.1.151, 154). He has long known her, “I have marked / A thousand blushing apparitions / To start into her face.” (4.1.154–56). These blushes, he determines, indicate her innocence “And in her eye there

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hath appeared a fire / To burn the errors that these princes hold / Against her maiden truth” (4.1.158–60). The plan the Friar devises to save Hero depends again on deception. If the plan does not succeed, Hero’s fake death will turn into a more literal one, at least to the outside world; she will be removed from society and live cloistered. “If it sort not well, you may conceal her,” he explains, “In some reclusive and religious life, / Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.” (4.1.236, 238–39). Much is at stake for Hero. The Friar offers a detailed plan, one that explicitly asks for further deception. He explains that the plan will build upon the Prince’s and Claudio’s last impression: “Your daughter here the princes left for dead, / Let her awhile be secretly kept in, / And publish it that she is dead indeed” (4.1.198–200). The false report should be followed by actions to make it more believable: “On your family’s old monument / Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites / That appertain unto a burial” (4.1.202–4). The Friar’s plan assumes that the timing and circumstance of Hero’s “death” will force people to reconsider her innocence: “She—dying, as it must be so maintained, / Upon the instant that she was accused—/ Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused” (4.1.210–12). While he anticipates the ruse working on “every hearer,” his focus is on Claudio, in particular: “When he shall hear she died upon his words / Th’ idea of her life shall sweetly creep / Into his study of imagination” (4.1.219–21). In this “study of imagination,” Claudio will reflect on the dead Hero and remember her in even fonder terms than he did when she was alive: “More moving-delicate, and full of life / Into the eye and prospect of his soul / Than when she liv’d indeed” (4.1.224–26). The viewing, prompted by the false story, will lead to regret: “Then shall he mourn . . . And wish he had not so accused her, / No, though he thought his accusation true” (4.1.226, 228–29). Claudio will not be met with evidence to counter the lie and falsified scene he believes he observed, but rather, his own imagination will trick him, forcing him to value Hero even more than he originally had, overturning his doubt of her. The Friar’s plan to undo the false accusation against Hero put into action by a lie and deception is to rely on a double falsehood, that a lie (about her death) will lead to a trick of perception (within Claudio’s imagination). It does not involve relying on evidence or truth. McCloskey notes that even those who believe in Hero’s innocence and in her statement that she was not seen in her window that night, do not attempt to ascertain evidence or to determine who was in the window.39 The Friar’s plan does not work, though the audience is not offered time to contemplate its failure because the truth is uncovered shortly thereafter.40 Don Pedro speaks for both himself and Claudio when he replies to Leonato: “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” (5.1.103–5). Don Pedro and Claudio have not altered

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their position on Hero, and Hero’s reputation, and the relationships between these men, remains in doubt. However, later in the same scene, Dogberry enters and Borachio confesses, “The lady is dead upon mine and my master’s false accusation” (5.1.210–11). The first plan to save Hero through a fake death fails, and evidence is produced by the otherwise incompetent arm of the local law, all the while the play’s title reinforces the comedic genre of the play by telling us that all has simply been “much ado.” For whom is the action of the play merely “much ado”? Don John’s target is Claudio and Don Pedro, not Hero. Though the two are both shamed first by their apparent creation of/engagement in a wedding contract with an allegedly scandalous woman, and later by the exposure of their error, Hero, of course, is the victim, undergoing a seeming death that mirrors the death of her innocent reputation.41 The ably-tongued Beatrice reads her options in defending Hero as limited because of her own gender, and in her frustration potentially complicates the love plot with Benedick.42 Margaret, who was used in the plot without her knowledge, is nearly swept up in the punishments administered at the end. Critics have argued about Margaret’s culpability, though in general critics agree that regardless of what she could have reasonably known, Shakespeare limits the audience’s invitation to assess directly her role by holding the window scene offstage, and then by having Borachio, our narrating voice, attesting to the offstage action, vouching that she was unaware of the plot.43 Even though Margaret is not a coconspirator, she is nearly treated as one. When Leonato calls for her to be brought forth because he assumed she “was pack’d in all this wrong,” Borachio vouches for her, assuring Leonato, “No, by my soul, she was not” (5.1.267, 269). The audience can assume that Borachio vouching for her is enough to protect her, though we have no assurances. Later, the Friar prompts Leonato to attest to Hero’s innocence, saying, “Did I not tell you she was innocent?” (5.4.1). Leonato’s reply continues to cast doubt onto Margaret’s role: “So are the Prince and Claudio, who accused her / Upon the error that you heard debated. / But Margaret was some fault for this, / Although against her will, as it appears” (5.4.2–5). Cynthia Lewis sees Leonato’s statement as a “slick convenience”: “the play, at the last, has it both ways: Margaret, as Leonato earlier believed, was responsible, but also, as Borachio insisted, without meaning to be.”44 Of these same lines, Carol Cook writes, “The sequence of Leonato’s lines suggests, if somewhat vaguely, that Margaret is being made to bear Claudio’s and Don Pedro’s guilt, that she is guilty in their place, while at the same time denying her conscious, voluntary complicity.”45 She argues that unclear references to Margaret’s agency and culpability extend to Hero as well: “Margaret is, in a sense, Hero’s double . . . and the ambiguity of her innocence or guilt points to an ambiguity about Hero. . . . The play simultaneously represents Hero as innocent and punishes

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her as guilty. Margaret both represents and carries off Hero’s ambiguous taint.”46 Hero’s shaming will likely have lasting effects, and the play ends with a lack of clarity about who will really face consequences. Comedies often end with a promise of a wedding to occur offstage once certain requirements are met; Much Ado About Nothing ends with an additional promise: the promise of punishment to come. Referencing the messenger’s report of Don John’s “flight,” Benedick urges a postponement: “Think not on him till tomorrow. I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him” (5.4.118–19). It is unclear whether this punishment will be sufficient, or what the future holds for this society. In the song sung by Balthasar from which this essay takes its title, he sings that men are “deceivers ever” while women are encouraged to not fret over this fact (2.3.52–67). In Much Ado About Nothing, lies are not circulated only by men, though women receive the worst consequences from the lies that are told. A world that casually accepts and uses deceptions can create the right circumstance for more deceptions, including dangerous ones. Those most vulnerable in a society with a culture of lies are those for whom rights are least protected to begin with. Lying, deceit, false identities, and the relative quality of evidence are frequent topics in Shakespeare’s plays. In Much Ado About Nothing in particular, the false accusations are embedded in a society that routinely traffics in lies and deceptions. While scholars and editors typically view the deceptions in the main plot and subplots of the play in terms of good and bad deceit, our contemporary world’s challenges with misinformation prompt us to view the deceit in the play differently. Instead, we see that conditions are ripe for a plot such as Don John’s when the society already is overrun with deception and distrust.47 Speaking of a single act of corruption in a society, the authors of the article “Contagious Dishonesty” write: “its dominolike effect can impact many individuals over time, spreading quickly across a society and, if left unchecked, entrenching a culture of dishonesty.”48 Much Ado About Nothing presents a society wherein deceptions are “left unchecked.” While the play concludes with a happy ending, focusing on the deceptions in the play prompts us to consider the effects of the characters’ actions throughout. When people regularly share lies, misrepresent themselves, and mislead each other, how reliable is evidence? How susceptible to evil agents are the innocents in this world? Who gets to determine what is true, who gets to speak, who gets to be heard, and who gets to be believed? Can the cycle of deceptions be broken, and if so, does that require public punishment, retribution, or the correcting of the falsehoods? Returning to the Truth Decay report, the authors, Kavanagh and Rich, determine, after examining historical data, that while “truth decay” is not new, “this trend seems to be more pronounced now than in the past.”49 The

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authors consider for their historical perspective examples from American history, starting with the Gilded Age, but of course concerns about the nature of truth and the reliability of sources predate these examples. Reading Much Ado About Nothing within our current context of a society embattled by misinformation, I have argued that the play dramatizes the effects of a culture of deception. The agents of misinformation can hold power when many in society turn a blind eye (at best) or participate in deceptive activities. Misrepresenting oneself, failing to pursue and evaluate sources, or directly engaging in lies, regardless of intent, can lead to a society wherein lying is normalized, truth is hard to discern, and evidence and truth become simply subjective. In Much Ado About Nothing, the society itself is implicated in the confusions and misunderstandings that arise; throughout, the play demonstrates a culture of deception that destabilizes society and leaves innocents vulnerable to harm. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, Zara. “Controlling the Spread of Misinformation.” Monitor on Psychology 52, no. 2 (2021): 44. https:​//​www​.apa​.org​/monitor​/2021​/03​/controlling​-misinformation. Arden of Faversham, edited by Martin White. London: A&C Black, 2007. Ariely, Dan, and Ximena Garcia-Rada. “Contagious Dishonesty: Dishonesty Begets Dishonesty, Rapidly Spreading Unethical Behavior through a Society.” Scientific American Special Edition: Truth vs. Lies, Fall 2022: 94–97. Augustine, Saint. Saint Augustine’s confessions translated: and with some marginall notes illustrated. Translated by William Watts. London: John Norton, 1631; Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership, 2011. http:​//​name​.umdl​.umich​.edu​/A22627​.0001​ .001. Bates, Catherine. Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spenser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bird Ecology Study Group. “Trapping Birds with Birdlime.” November 3, 2007. http:// https:​//​besgroup​.org​/2007​/11​/03​/trapping​-birds​-with​-birdlime​/. Blome, Richard. The Gentleman’s Recreation. London: S. Roycroft, 1686; Ann Arbor: Text Creation Partnership, 2011. http:​//​name​.umdl​.umich​.edu​/A28396​.0001​ .001. Bloom, Harold. Bloom’s Shakespeare through the Ages: Much Ado About Nothing. New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2010. Botelho, Keith M. Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Broadwater, Luke and Alan Feuer. “Trump Rebuffed Aides over Loss, Denying Reality.” New York Times, June 13, 2022: A1. Cook, Carol. “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor’: Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado about Nothing.” PMLA 101, no. 2 (March 1986): 186–202.

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Davis, Walter. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Much Ado About Nothing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969. Dolan, Frances E. Digging the Past: How and Why to Imagine Seventeenth-Century Agriculture. Philadelphia: UPenn Press, 2020. Evans, G. Blakemore, et al., ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Fisher, Max. “‘Belonging Is Stronger Than Facts’: The Age of Misinformation.” New York Times, May 7, 2021. Franzen, Jonathan. “Emptying the Skies of Birds.” New Yorker, July 26, 2010. https:​ //​www​.newyorker​.com​/magazine​/2010​/07​/26​/emptying​-the​-skies ———. “Last Song for Migrating Birds.” National Geographic Magazine, July 2013. http:​//​ngm​.nationalgeographic​.com​/2013​/07​/songbird​-migration​/franzen​ -text. Gross, Kenneth, “Slander and Skepticism in Othello.” ELH 56, no. 4 (1989): 819–52. Harting, James Edmund. The Birds of Shakespeare, 1871. Chicago: Argonaut Inc., 1965. Henze, Richard. “Deception in Much Ado About Nothing.” Studies in English Literature 11, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 187–201. Howard, Jean. “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in Much Ado About Nothing.” In Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, edited by Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor, 163– 87. London: Routledge, 1987. Hulse, Carl. “For Collins, Decision Is a Betrayal by Kavanaugh.” New York Times, June 25, 2022: A1. Jardine, Lisa. Reading Shakespeare Historically. London: Routledge, 1996. Kaplan, Lyndsay M. The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kavanagh, Jennifer, and Michael D. Rich. Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2018. Kreps, Barbara. “Two-Sided Legal Narratives: Slander, Evidence, Proof, and Turnarounds in Much Ado about Nothing.” In Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern English Literature, edited by Donald Beecher, Travis DeCook, Andrew Wallace, and Grant Williams, 162– 78. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. Lewis, Cynthia. “‘You were an actor with your handkerchief’: Women, Windows, and Moral Agency.” Comparative Drama 43, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 473–96. McCloskey, John C. “The Plot Device of False Report.” The Shakespeare Association Bulletin 21, no. 4 (1946): 147–58 McDonald, Russ, and Lena Cowen Orlin, ed. The Bedford Shakespeare, New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2015. Myhill, Nova. “Spectatorship in/of Much Ado about Nothing.” SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 39, no. 2 (1999): 291–311. doi:10.2307/1556167. Neill, Kerby. “More Ado About Claudio: An Acquittal for the Slandered Groom.” SQ 3, no. 2 (1952): 91–107.

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Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The. “The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981: The Killing and Taking of Birds.” https:​//​www​.rspb​.org​.uk​/birds​-and​ -wildlife​/advice​/wildlife​-and​-the​-law​/wildlife​-and​-countryside​-act​/captivity​-sale​ -and​-killing​-of​-birds​/. Seitz, Amanda, and Hannah Fingerhut. “Americans Agree Misinformation Is a Problem.” AP News, October 8, 2021. https:​//​apnews​.com​/article​/coronavirus​ -pandemic​-technology​-business​-health​-misinformation​-fbe9d09024d7b92e1600e 411d5f931dd. Senate Democrats. “Pelosi, Schumer Joint Statement on Reported Draft Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade.” Senate Democrats Press Release, May 2, 2022. https:​//​www​.democrats​.senate​.gov​/dpcc​/press​-releases​/schumer​-pelosi​-joint​ -statement​-on​-reported​-draft​-supreme​-court​-decision​-to​-overturn​-roe​-v​-wade Sexton, Joyce H. The Slandered Woman in Shakespeare. Victoria: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 1978. Shakespeare, William. All’s Well That Ends Well, ed. Kathleen Kalpin Smith, Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2012. ———. The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Modern Critical Edition. Edited by Gary Taylor et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Sharpe, J. A. “The History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: A Review of the Field.” Social History 7 (1982): 187–203. Tufekci, Zeynip. “How Social Media Took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump.” MIT Technology Review, August 14, 2018. http:​//​www​.technologyreview​.com​ /2018​/08​/14​/240325​/. White, Gilbert. Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). London: J. Van Voorst, 1875.

NOTES 1. For their support of this scholarship, I am grateful to the editors of this volume as well as my team at home: Steen, Emmie, and Carson. 2. Carl Hulse, “For Collins, Decision Is a Betrayal by Kavanaugh,” New York Times, June 25, 2022: A1. 3. Senate Democrats, “Pelosi, Schumer Joint Statement on Reported Draft Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade,” Senate Democrats Press Release, May 2, 2022. https:​//​www​.democrats​.senate​.gov​/dpcc​/press​-releases​/schumer​-pelosi​-joint​ -statement​-on​-reported​-draft​-supreme​-court​-decision​-to​-overturn​-roe​-v​-wade. 4. Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer, “Trump Rebuffed Aides over Loss, Denying Reality,” New York Times, June 13, 2022: A1. 5. Max Fisher, “‘Belonging is Stronger Than Facts’: The Age of Misinformation,” New York Times, May 7, 2021. 6. Poll from The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Amanda Seitz and Hannah Fingerhut, “Americans Agree Misinformation is a Problem,” AP News, October 8, 2021, https:​//​apnews​.com​/article​

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/coronavirus​-pandemic​-technology​-business​-health​-misinformation​-fbe9d09024d7b9 2e1600e411d5f931dd. 7. Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2018), 41. 8. Kavanagh and Rich, Truth Decay, 226. 9. Keith M. Botelho, Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 11. 10. John C. McCloskey, “The Plot Device of False Report,” The Shakespeare Association Bulletin 21, no. 4 (1946): 147. 11. Walter Davis, Twentieth Century Interpretations of Much Ado About Nothing (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969), 14. 12. Richard Henze, “Deception in Much Ado About Nothing,” Studies in English Literature 11, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 188. See also Jean Howard, “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in Much Ado About Nothing,” in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, ed. Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor (Oxon, England: Taylor & Francis, 1987), 163–87. 13. Henze, “Deception in Much Ado,” 188. 14. Russ McDonald and Lena Cowen Orlin, ed., The Bedford Shakespeare (New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2015), 613. 15. G. Blakemore Evans et al., ed. Riverside Shakespeare (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 362. 16. (1.1.245,6). All quotations from Much Ado About Nothing are from William Shakespeare, The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Modern Critical Edition, ed. Gary Taylor et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Subsequent references will be made in the text by act, scene, line number(s). 17. Harold Bloom, Bloom’s Shakespeare through the Ages: Much Ado About Nothing (New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2010), 6. 18. Barbara Kreps, “Two-Sided Legal Narratives: Slander, Evidence, Proof, and Turnarounds in Much Ado about Nothing,” in Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern English Literature, ed. Donald Beecher, Travis DeCook, Andrew Wallace, and Grant Williams (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 163. 19. Nova Myhill, “Spectatorship in/of Much Ado about Nothing,” SEL Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 39, no. 2 (1999): 297. 20. Kreps, “Legal Narratives,” 163. 21. Kreps, “Legal Narratives,” 163. 22. Kreps, “Legal Narratives,” 174. 23. Kreps, “Legal Narratives,” 174. 24. Lisa Jardine notes that Borachio interprets the plan as Don Pedro winning Hero’s love and then giving this love to Claudio. She calls this interpretation “a fair version of the plan,” Lisa Jardine, Reading Shakespeare Historically (London: Routledge, 1996), 121. 25. Kavanagh and Rich, Truth Decay, 7. Summarizing work on misinformation, Zara Abrams writes, “people are more likely to fall for misinformation when they

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fail to carefully deliberate the material.” “Controlling the Spread of Misinformation,” Monitor on Psychology 52, no. 2 (2021): 44. 26. Speaking of these methods of capturing prey, Catherine Bates notes that “Compared to hunting with a pursuit, ‘trapping or netting’ are perceived in the early modern imagination as ‘lower’ forms of hunting that indicate, by comparison, the sheer ease of the dispatch.” Catherine Bates, Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spenser (Oxford University Press, 2013), 1. 27. Arden of Faversham, ed. Martin White (London: A & C Black, 2007), scene 9 lines 39–40. 28. All’s Well that Ends Well, ed. Kathleen Kalpin Smith (Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2012), 3.6.81. 29. Jonathan Franzen discusses birdlime twigs in his influential essay, “Emptying the Skies of Birds,” an article focusing on bird trapping in modern day Cyprus. Jonathan Franzen, “Emptying the Skies of Birds,” New Yorker, July 26, 2010. For an additional account that includes photos of modern-day bird lime traps, see also Jonathan Franzen, “Last Song for Migrating Birds,” National Geographic Magazine, July 2013. 30. Gilbert White, Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), revised, 6th edition (London: J. Van Voorst, 1875). According to The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds: “A number of methods of killing, injuring or taking birds are prohibited. These include . . . nets, bird lime. . . . The use of decoys of live birds tethered, blinded or maimed is illegal.” The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, “The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981: The Killing and Taking of Birds,” rspb.org/uk. 31. Richard Blome, The Gentleman’s Recreation (London: S. Roycroft, 1686), 122–23. 32. James Edmund Harting lists Shakespeare’s references to birdlime and describes a birdlime trap in James Edmund Harting, The Birds of Shakespeare, 1871 (Chicago: Argonaut Inc), 160–61. 33. On the role of the hedge in the overhearing plot, see Frances E. Dolan, Digging the Past: How and Why to Imagine Seventeenth-Century Agriculture (Philadelphia: UPenn Press, 2020), 155. 34. According to the Bird Ecology Study Group, the method of using a dummy bird is still employed: “The birdlime is smeared along a branch that is then placed in a suitable location with a decoy bird. The decoy is usually left tied nearby and its cries will attract nearby birds. Once a bird perches on the branch it gets stuck and as it struggles to get free, gets further entangled in the gummy substance. The trapper returns to claim his prize.” Bird Ecology Study Group, “Trapping Birds with Birdlime,” November 3, 2007. 35. White, Natural History, 351. 36. Nova Myhill discusses critical handling of the apparent slippage of “Borachio” and “Claudio,” Myhill, “Spectatorship,” 301. She concludes that while we cannot know if this is an error, it reinforces the idea that the theatrical audience does not know what was actually seen or heard at this offstage scene. For further discussion of this offstage scene, see also Cynthia Lewis, “‘You were an actor with your

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handkerchief’: Women, Windows, and Moral Agency,” Comparative Drama 43, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 473–96. 37. Iago also used a culture of lying—but in this case one he invented, when he told Othello that a cultural trait for Venetian women was to betray their husbands: “I know our country disposition well. / In Venice they do let God see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands” (3.3.197–99). 38. Myhill, “Spectatorship,” 295–96. 39. McCloskey, “False Report,” 149. 40. Carol Cook writes of this moment: “Not only is Claudio not grief-stricken when we see him next (5.1), he is rather giddy. He shows no shame when Leonato accuses him of killing Hero through his villainy . . . and he describes the incident flippantly when Benedick arrives. Carol Cook, “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor’: Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado about Nothing” PMLA 101, no. 2 (March 1986): 196. 41. Kenneth Gross discusses “The seriousness of the problem of slander,” arguing that it “should not surprise us in a period so obsessed with the protean status of public identify . . . in which the resources of insult, invective, curse, or ‘giving the lie’ were so cultivated, and when (in England at least) both church and state authorities felt such a powerful, almost paranoid threat of rumor, scandal, conspiracy, sedition, or heresy.” Kenneth Gross, “Slander and Skepticism in Othello,” ELH 56, no. 4 (1989): 821. For more on slander in the early modern era, see also Lyndsay M. Kaplan, The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). J. A. Sharpe refers to the rise of slander in church courts in “The History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: A Review of the Field,” Social History 7 (1982): 187–203. 42. In Othello and The Winter’s Tale as in Much Ado, the voice of the innocent woman and of her female companion and defender are not listened to or valued. 43. Joyce Sexton argues that leaving out the window scene emphasizes the way that slander operates in early modern England: “When he left out the ‘proof’ of Hero’s unchastity, Shakespeare pointed to the power of the unadorned lie” (43). Joyce H. Sexton, The Slandered Woman in Shakespeare (Victoria: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 1978). In a defense of Claudio, Kerby Neill writes, “Neither the characters themselves, nor Leonato, the aggrieved party who challenged the other two to a duel, admit that anyone has sinned except Don John, Borachio, and to some degree Margaret” (105). Kerby Neill, “More Ado About Claudio: An Acquittal for the Slandered Groom,” SQ 3, no. 2 (1952): 91–107. See also Lewis, “Moral Agency,” and Carol Cook, “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor’: Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado about Nothing,” PMLA 101, no. 2 (March 1986): 186–202. 44. Lewis, “Moral Agency,” 489. 45. Cook, “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor,’” 199. 46. Cook, “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor,’”199. 47. Researchers on the erosion of truth in contemporary society including Zeynip Tufekci describe these preconditions as including “social distrust, weak institutions, and detached elites.” He notes the ways that bad actors can take advantage of periods of rampant misinformation: “Those hoping to make positive social change have

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to convince people both that something in the world needs changing and there is a constructive, reasonable way to change it. Authoritarians and extremists, on the other hand, often merely have to muddy the waters and weaken trust in general so that everyone is too fractured and paralyzed to act.” Zeynip Tufekci, “How Social Media Took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump,” MIT Technology Review, August 14, 2018. 48. Dan Ariely and Ximena Garcia-Rada, “Contagious Dishonesty: Dishonesty begets dishonesty, rapidly spreading unethical behavior through a society,” Scientific American Special Edition: Truth vs. Lies, Fall 2022, 97. 49. Kavanagh and Rich, Truth Decay, xii.

PART II: PRESENT AND PAST IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Chapter 3

The Threat of the Stranger in Much Ado About Nothing Stephanie Chamberlain

In many respects, Much Ado About Nothing, though briefly troubled by the machinations of Don John, seems harmonious, where the promise of happy endings is mostly realized. Even the sniping sexual tension between Benedick and Beatrice fails to derail the studied harmony that prevails by play’s end, when the reluctant couple is made to realize their love for each other. All the pain and suffering within the text are, in the end, much ado about nothing. This is a standard reading of the play. Little scholarly attention, however, has been paid to the presence of the stranger in Much Ado About Nothing. Although welcomed by Leonato, governor of Messina, Don Pedro and his men are, in fact, strangers to the city, their arrival ushering in references to disease as well as tension and trauma for its citizens. The hospitality Leonato graciously extends to the prince of Aragon is cruelly repaid when the latter, in collaboration with Claudio, brutally assaults his daughter’s reputation, attacking in turn the governor’s own honor and integrity. Hospitality, rendered as a welcoming of strangers, becomes the threshold through which strangers threaten if not assault Messina. Strangers, a source of concern in Shakespeare’s England, and particularly in London, threatened local sensibilities concerning what it meant to be English. While merchants, immigrants, and refugees proved mostly beneficial to the economic livelihood of Londoners, these strangers likewise triggered xenophobia within this increasingly globalized city. Although welcomed as trade partners or artisans, merchants and immigrants in particular were, nonetheless, closely watched by a citizenry suspicious of strangers. My chapter studies the threat of the stranger in Much Ado About Nothing. Although Leonato arguably has much to gain through an alliance with 49

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strangers, their presence ushers in a host of dangers to the governor, his daughter, and locals alike. Not only does Leonato’s hospitality to the prince of Aragon promise a favorable union for Hero, but this father’s honor and prestige stand to benefit as well. When Don Pedro and his men arrive in Messina, however, they bring more than the malicious Don John with them. Even as Claudio trades in the commodified body of Hero, the strangers introduce deceit and treachery that undermine the hospitality Leonato affords, threatening in turn the overall well-being of Messina. A central tenet in Much Ado About Nothing concerns the time-honored rights and responsibilities of hospitality. As the play opens, we witness Leonato extend this gift to his guests upon their arrival within the city. To Don Pedro’s, “Good Signor Leonato, are you come to meet your / trouble? The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it” (1.1.77–79), the governor of Messina replies: Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace. For trouble being gone, comfort should remain, but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave. (1.1.80–83)1

Leonato generously and unconditionally welcomes not only Don Pedro, but members of his company as well. As the prince informs his companions, “Signor Claudio and / Signor Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. / I tell him we shall stay here at least a month, and he heartily / prays some occasion may detain us longer” (1.1.119–22). Certainly, the economic cost of housing and entertaining so many would be exorbitant, so costly in fact that as Don Pedro reminds, “The fashion of the world is to avoid cost”—to avoid, in other words, the expense and disruption attending acts of hospitality. That the prince and his men might be persuaded to remain a month or longer thus appears a most generous gesture on the part of Leonato. As Immanuel Kant has argued, however, hospitality “is not a question of philanthropy, but of right.”2 The prince could well declare that he and his men intend to stay indefinitely; he needs no invitation to do so. Despite Don Pedro’s open marvel at the governor’s generosity, Leonato really has no choice but to render wholly unconditional hospitality to the prince and his men despite the high economic and emotional costs that inevitably ensue. Don Pedro’s identity as foreign prince proves interesting in light of the hospitality mandate. One could well argue that his known and elevated status sweeten Leonato’s generous welcome.3 Who would not welcome one who may likely prove beneficial? A marriage between Hero and either the prince or, as it turns out, Claudio could only enhance Leonato’s importance within

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the world. Yet, Don Pedro is a stranger to the city, and the mandate requiring hospitality would apply regardless of rank or social status to any entering it. Don Pedro’s status raises important questions regarding the identity of strangers in Shakespeare’s early modern England. Scott Oldenburg observes that “in the sixteenth century the terms alien and stranger were used interchangeably to refer to not only immigrants but also merchants passing through England, tourists, diplomats, and anyone else from outside the realm.”4 Lloyd Kermode supports this assessment, suggesting that “while the usage is not perfectly consistent, Elizabethan documents widely employed the terms ‘alien’ and ‘stranger’ to refer to persons from a foreign country.”5 The term “foreigner,” on the other hand, referred to persons “from outside the city or region being discussed or those who were not ‘freemen’ of the city.”6 Under this definition, Shakespeare would have been considered a foreigner, having located to London from Stratford-upon-Avon to pursue his craft. Any person from outside the country would have fallen into the category of stranger, including Elizabeth I’s French suitors as well as Huguenot refugees flooding the realm. All, moreover, would have been deserving of hospitality rendered without reserve. As Jacques Derrida argues, absolute hospitality requires that I give not only to the foreigner (provided with a family name, with the social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come that I let them arrive and take place in the place that I offer them, without asking of them, either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names.7

The unconditional welcoming of the unknown, however, proves complicated in the case of early modern strangers, especially as their numbers increased. Shakespeare’s early modern England was, indeed, no stranger to strangers living within the realm. As Emma Smith notes, immigration was a “dangerously topical issue” in England, and especially in London.8 In addition to the presence of “blacmoores” in the land, an influx of Huguenot refugees as well as Low Country weavers and artisans swelled the alien population sufficiently to produce what Ole Peter Grell describes as “escalating xenophobia” among the locals.9 Laura Hunt Yungblut blames the fear of the other on “popular sentiment,” adding that the “unusually large number of aliens in London and other southeastern towns brought the legendary English xenophobia to the surface on many occasions.”10 There appears to have been a high enough level of anxiety about their presence that, as Oldenburg notes, “individuals petitioned the state to maintain a registry to keep track of strangers within the realm. The state responded with the Returns of Aliens in 1593.”11

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At the same time, xenophobia proved a complicated issue in early modern England. Although many scholars, including Jean Howard as well as Phyllis Rackin and Claire McEachern, argue an inherent English xenophobia, Oldenburg cautions against reading it as “foundational to English identity.”12 Certainly, tensions were attendant with the influx of immigrants and refugees landing upon English shores, but as Yungblut adds, “the twin traditions of asylum and xenophobia existed side by side, embraced to different degrees at one time or another by one social group or another, but both were always present, overlapping, and interacting.”13 While their presence was documented by local authorities, and while fears attendant to difference were (and indeed have always been) reflected in interactions between locals and strangers, these outsiders were likewise accepted, offered refuge in the case of those fleeing religious persecution, or the opportunity to pursue livelihoods that would benefit the local economy. They were, in other words, afforded not only the hospitality that all strangers deserved, regardless of name, class, or identity, but acceptance—at the same time their presence was monitored and documented by their host nation. The tension between local and stranger is readily apparent in Much Ado About Nothing. Although the play does not deal with immigrants, refugees, or exiles per se, it does confront the tensions, anxieties, and even hostilities attendant to contact with outsiders. One such stranger is Benedick, whose harmful contact in the past has resulted in clear emotional damage both to Beatrice and himself. Even before his arrival, Beatrice berates her approaching former suitor. As Leonato rather lightly observes, “There is a kind / of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her. They never / meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (1.1.49–51). While this and the exchange that follows are routinely read as evidence of lingering sexual tensions between former lovers, they also illustrate the anxiety and hostility directed toward the stranger. Compare Leonato’s warm welcome to Don Pedro and his men with Beatrice’s pronounced animosity. To Benedick’s, “My dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” (1.1.97), she replies: “Is it possible Disdain should die while she hath such / meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick? Courtesy itself must / convert to disdain if you come in her presence” (1.1.98–100). “Disdain” surely speaks to the scorn and hostility Beatrice in particular feels toward Benedick. Indeed, his “wit” seems more like defense; she is clearly on the attack. Benedick’s unwelcome crossing of Beatrice’s self-imposed border renders her both angry and anxious. Beatrice’s attack also alludes to disease and corruption, often associated with strangers in early modern England. When she learns of the company Claudio keeps, Beatrice exclaims: O Lord, he [Benedick] will hang upon him like a disease. He is

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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. (1.1.68–71)

While Beatrice metaphorically compares Benedick to pestilence, she likewise alludes to the danger strangers represent. Images of disease often found their way into the early drama of the sixteenth century. And as Kermode notes, “English-alien contact is represented as causing infection, deformation, or corruption by the presence of real alien bodies and influences.”14 Benedick, in essence, becomes “the Benedick,” a pestilence-like disease, whose unwelcome presence threatens Claudio and Beatrice—if not all of Messina. Beatrice may transfer the threat to the young Florentine Claudio, but she is the one who stands to suffer in the presence of this too well-known stranger. Beatrice’s anxiety illustrates the dilemma of affording hospitality. Her distrust of Benedick, while backed by their recent history, is readily transferrable to all strangers. Can those rendered hospitality even be trusted? The concept of hospitality seems incompatible with protecting borders. Several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Twelfth Night and Macbeth, emphasize the threat that strangers represent to the realm. Yet, other plays, including The Winter’s Tale and Macbeth, maintain the imperative of hospitality. Derrida observes that “pure and unconditional hospitality, hospitality itself, opens or is in advance open to someone who is neither expected nor invited, to whomever arrives as an absolutely foreign visitor, as a new arrival, non-identifiable and unforeseeable, in short, wholly other.”15 Given this definition, Leonato’s welcome conforms to the rules of hospitality. He, in fact, seems to relish the opportunity to welcome Don Pedro and his men, whether in hopes of advancement for himself and Hero, because the prince holds sway in Messina, or because he is simply a good host. It may be, however, as Thomas Anderson observes, that “to welcome one’s friend at the same time is to welcome an enemy.”16 Offering hospitality is always to open up one’s home to the outsider, be the outsider known or unknown, placing oneself in an unavoidable position of vulnerability. At the same time, however, hospitality comes not without rules, and while rarely if ever spoken, these rules are intended to govern the behavior of guests and hosts alike. At play here is the dynamic relationship between the two. Such a relationship assumes that each has a vested interest in performing with integrity, for hospitality necessarily constitutes a performance. Although, as Julia Reinhard Lupton observes, “the obligations owed to the guest—including the granting of recognition and respect as well as the provision of basic needs” might place a strain on the household, an honorable host willingly engages in the rite of hospitality.17 Leonato and Don Pedro both demonstrate

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this give and take between host and guest—at least initially. Leonato welcomes the prince, while Don Pedro offers thanks for the governor’s generosity. It proves curious, however, that Don Pedro pointedly refers to the strain that Leonato’s hospitality will invariably place upon the household before the latter has even offered it. This reversal speaks not only to the necessity of affording hospitality to a stranger, but also serves as a forewarning that to welcome a guest is to usher in the possibility of disruption. Tracy McNulty offers important insight into this dilemma. In her discussion of hospitality, she examines the etymological basis of the terms guest and host, which are derived from the Latin hostis, meaning guest, and potis, mastery. As she observes, The linking of hostis and potis suggests that hospitality implies not only the power of mastery, but power over the guest, by virtue of his debt or obligation to the host. For this very reason, the juxtaposition of the notions of reciprocity or exchange and mastery of power can also have a very different result. It can be a source of anxiety, rivalry, or hostility, in which the host’s power over the guest is conceived in a threatening manner or in which the guest threatens to overtake the host’s place as master by usurping his home, personal property, or social position.18

Derrida notes that hostis can signify either guest or enemy.19 This conflicting duality is a recurring theme in other Shakespeare plays, including The Winter’s Tale. Although Leontes repeatedly implores Polixenes to remain in Sicilia yet a while longer, once his childhood friend agrees, this guest is falsely vilified as Hermione’s lover and the father of her unborn child. From Leontes’s perspective, Polixenes has grossly violated the trust between guest and host. Polixenes, however, feels justifiably betrayed by one who offers hospitality only later to threaten his life. Violations of trust between host and guest also, of course, result in atrocities in King Lear and Macbeth. David Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton’s observation that hospitality “is the warmth and peril of acknowledging other people” perhaps says it all.20 From the moment of their arrival in Messina, Don Pedro and his men imperil the established order. While their approach is known, even anticipated, their appearance, nevertheless, introduces disorder and uncertainty within the city. Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 Much Ado about Nothing astutely captures the chaos that ensues when a group of strangers descend upon the city. In its frenzied opening, the film portrays Don Pedro and his men literally invading Messina as its citizens flee from the vineyards to Leonato’s house. However much strangers and Messinans laugh and giggle, even freshly bathing in anticipation of their imminent meeting, one is left with an uncomfortable feeling of conquest. While Branagh’s production emphasizes the sexual

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tensions among groups of lovers in this opening shot, left unaddressed is the virtual invasion. Messina is, in essence, overwhelmed by strangers on horseback, bearing arms.21 Leonato’s subsequent offer of hospitality, however welcoming, feels a bit like surrender here. Strangers have arrived at his door, and it is his obligation as governor to provide for them. Although Leonato’s generous offer extends beyond a few days respite for these conquering soldiers, it feels in some respects formulaic and even awkward. As Don Pedro announces, Signor Claudio and Signor Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartily prays some occasion may detain us longer. I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart. (1.1.119–23)

Again, it is Don Pedro as guest of Leonato who is making the announcement concerning the governor’s hospitality. While it is conceivable that the two discuss the terms of the prince’s stay, it proves, nevertheless, odd that guests declare the length of their sojourn and not the host. “At least a month” is a long time to host guests. One recalls Lear’s demand that he and his one hundred knights be given hospitality at Goneril and Regan’s expense for a month and their subsequent, calculated refusal to accommodate him. Don Pedro’s, “I dare swear he / is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart,” also signals potential problems. Why would the prince, however jokingly, suggest that his host has the potential to be a hypocrite? Surely, as he stated earlier, rendering hospitality strains the patience and resources of a host. At the same time, however, Leonato seems genuinely interested in fulfilling his obligation. And perhaps therein lies the problem. Hospitality, rendered to strangers, be they known or unknown, remains an obligation. Even under the best of circumstances, hosting outsiders proves challenging and tiresome. Arguably, the risks associated with such obligations increase over time, as the unknown becomes known, as idiosyncrasies emerge and submerged animosities surface. The testy greeting between Benedick and Beatrice proves only the beginning of hostilities that will arise as local and stranger become fully enmeshed in Leonato’s household. The entertainment Leonato stages on the night of his guests’ arrival proves interesting. The “revelling” (1.1.266), which is meant to provide lighthearted fun for those masked guests in attendance, becomes the means by which deceptions are enabled. As Don Pedro informs Claudio,

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I will assume thy part in some disguise, And tell fair Hero I am Claudio. And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart And take her hearing prisoner with the force And strong encounter of my amorous tale. Then after to her father will I break, And the conclusion is, she shall be thine. (1.1.267–74)

Note the forceful language Don Pedro uses to secure Hero’s affections. He plans to take “her hearing prisoner,” using “force” and “strong encounter.” Why must the prince even woo on Claudio’s behalf? Is Don Pedro interested in wooing Leonato’s daughter for himself? Certainly, this is the charge that Claudio will later make against the prince. Declaring that he has been abused by his friend, who “woos for himself,” Claudio angrily asserts: “This is an accident of hourly proof, / Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero” (2.1.152; 159–60). Claudio is undoubtedly insecure, having never wooed before. Moreover, Don John is already planting distrust in those around him. In many respects, however, it is the disguise itself that interferes with perception; the mask, which purposely obscures identity, renders Claudio unable to trust those around him. Jane Wells argues that “counterfeiting another person through disguise, invention, or dissembling creates a kind of trap.”22 Although Claudio is well aware of the prince’s disguise, his young protégé suddenly finds Don Pedro untrustworthy—an issue that carries over to the one he plans to marry. If he cannot trust Don Pedro, one he served in battle, how could he possibly trust one he has virtually just met? In essence, the mask represents strangeness in Much Ado about Nothing, rendering its wearer a stranger. This idea is reinforced in the hostile masked exchange between Benedick and Beatrice. After she labels him “the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool,” Benedick exclaims: “But that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me!” (2.1.118; 179). The ambiguity of the line is telling. Beatrice may recognize her adversary and use the opportunity to berate one who hurt her in the past. At the same time, Benedick speaks to the ultimate unknowability of another being. Karen Newman suggests that “mistaken identity, role playing, and alternative identities are therapeutic instruments which lead characters to self-knowledge.”23 Or do alternative identities merely amplify the confusion that has already been building? Beatrice may know Benedick’s antics, but she really knows nothing of the person within the “fool.” The masked ball underscores early the strained

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relationships between Messinans and outsiders in their midst—their lack of trust signifying the risks as well as unknowability of the stranger. Perhaps no figure better signifies this threat than does Don John. The bastard, though recently reconciled brother to Don Pedro, encompasses the unknowability and danger associated with the stranger. Bastards in Shakespeare’s early modern England were tolerated, yet unrecognized by the law. As Chris Given-Wilson and Alice Curteis have observed, “the bastard was filius nullius, the son of nobody (which for practical purposes really meant the heir of nobody.”24 While in practice early modern fathers sometimes provided for their bastard offspring, they did so without the express mandate of the Common Law. As Given-Wilson and Curteis further note, “English Common Law declared that a bastard could not inherit as of right. That did not mean that he could not inherit. The circumstances had to be favorable, however.”25 That Don Pedro even acknowledges his bastard brother is thus significant. Like Don Pedro and his men, Don John is afforded hospitality. As Leonato says, “Let me bid you welcome, my lord. Being reconciled / to the Prince your brother, I owe you all duty” (1.1.125–26). It is, however, an implicitly conditional welcome, contingent upon Don John’s reconciliation with his brother. The precise reason for their estrangement is never revealed. It could be the result of some heinous act performed by one who harbors a grudge, or simply because of his bastard birth. Conrad alludes to the fact that Don John “of late stood / out against [his] brother” (1.3.16–17). This bastard describes himself as “a plain-dealing villain” (1.3.25), a description in line with other Shakespeare bastards, including Lear’s Edmund. Despite an unidentified act of rebellion by Don John, his bastardy necessarily factors as an explanation for his threatening disposition. As he states, “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” (1.3.21–23). He seeks, in other words, separation from a world in which he lacks legitimacy. This dark and brooding figure, a victim of his unfortunate birth, embodies the very essence of the stranger—one perpetually on the outside whose exclusion threatens the well-being of those within it. Having infiltrated Messina, Don John immediately introduces rancor as he methodically begins the process of dismantling the city’s studied harmony. After learning of Claudio’s intention to woo Hero, Don John conjures up a plot of deception that will enmesh all, telling Borachio: “This may prove food to / my displeasure” (1.3.51–52). At the masked ball, he goes out of his way to kindle Claudio’s self-doubt, telling the young Florentine that the prince “is enamoured on Hero” (2.1.142). In so doing, he calls into question her motivations and integrity as well. Later, Don John will charge the lady with disloyalty, calling her “Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s / Hero”

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(3.2.88–89). The end result of Don John’s scheming is, of course, the staged scene at her chamber window, where Margaret as Hero purportedly enjoys a prenuptial encounter with another man. As Borachio braggingly recounts it, know that I have tonight wooed Margaret, the Lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero. She leans me out at her mistress’ chamber window, bid me a thousand times good night—I tell this tale vilely, I should first tell thee how the Prince, Claudio, and my master, planted and placed and possessed by my master, Don John, saw afar off in the orchard this amiable encounter. (3.3.126–32)

Don John’s deception reaches a pinnacle here. Having deceived the prince and Claudio, he flees Messina knowing that the damage he has done will ricochet throughout the city—Don Pedro, Claudio, Leonato as well as Hero harmed. What this scene also demonstrates is the faulty power of perception. There is really no way that these lurkers in the orchard could have seen what is taking place “afar off,” or with whom; those bearing witness to Hero’s “infidelity” are merely confirming what they already believe. From their perspective, Leonato violates the trust these guests have placed in their host by offering up, what Claudio will later refer to as a “rotten orange” (4.1.30), not fit for consumption. Deception, in fact, runs throughout Much Ado About Nothing. In addition to the machinations of Don John and his men, Don Pedro, Claudio, and even Leonato giddily engage in deceit meant to advance their agendas. Surprisingly, however, very little has been published on the function of deception in the text. Richard Henze declared that Much Ado About Nothing is about right deception that leads to marriage and the end of deceit and wrong deception that breeds conflict and distrust. Proper deception, that of Benedick and Beatrice by Don Pedro and his friends, succeeds because Benedick and Beatrice are self-deceptive in their pretense that each is the last person the other would marry. Wrong deception, that of Claudio by Don John and Borachio, succeeds because Claudio is deceptively suspicious and faithless.26

This would seem to suggest that intent is all, that deception used to serve comedic purposes somehow ends up in the all’s well that ends well category. Deception used for matchmaking is therefore fine, even desirable, because reluctant lovers sometimes need an extra push to pursue their

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desires. Deception used to tear lovers apart, however, proves unacceptable. And Claudio, well, he just needs a reminder to trust the one he chooses to wed. Deception, however, invariably violates the trust that must be present if these strangers are to coexist either as lovers or just responsible members of a shared space. In its violation of the rules of hospitality, deception exposes the fraught and tenuous relationship between host and guest, of the only too real possibility that either may be the enemy. Setting aside the malicious misfit Don John, it becomes readily apparent how flagrantly both host and guest, in fact, violate the rules of hospitality in Messina. As Felicity Heal reminds, In order to secure the effective functioning of relationships between strangers, guests must honor hosts, and vice versa, and conflict must be avoided in what is inevitably a situation of asymmetry. A guest must be protected while he is under his host’s roof, and the household must care for him to the best of its ability. In return, he must not usurp the role of the host by commanding the resources of the establishment but should willingly accept what is offered to him.27

Claudio feels betrayed by one whom he is shortly to wed. From his skewed perspective, Hero has been unfaithful on the eve of their nuptials. His solution to this perceived assault is to attack her at the altar, to declare before the world that because Hero has known “the heat of a luxurious bed” (4.1.39), she is unworthy of his love. As I have argued elsewhere, Claudio treats Hero as a commodity, which when it appears spoiled no longer appeals to him.28 What makes Claudio’s renunciation even more egregious is that he plans his response even before he witnesses her “infidelity.” As he declares, “If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her, / tomorrow, in the congregation where I should wed, there will / I shame her” (3.2.103–5). This reads more like revenge, not recompense, revenge Don Pedro rather too vigorously supports. As he tells a disbelieving Leonato, “I stand dishonoured, that have gone about / To link my dear friend to a common stale” (4.1.62–63): his assertion also constituting a highly public assault on Leonato. While it may be argued that Claudio and Don Pedro’s reputations are on the line—the prince arranges a marriage that Claudio abandons without cause—their vindictive assault at the altar likewise constitutes a full-fledged attack on their host, the gracious Leonato, who only too recently welcomed the two for a prolonged stay. At this point in the play, it proves difficult to determine who misbehaves the most. A victim himself, Leonato transfers his hurt and rage onto his daughter, declaring: Do not live, Hero, do not ope thine eyes, For did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,

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Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, Myself would on the rearward of reproaches Strike at thy life. (4.1.122–26)

While Leonato’s actions are very much in line with those of another Shakespeare father, Titus Andronicus, who when he learns of a daughter’s rape, takes her life, they are, nonetheless, a shock to those witnessing his attack. Beatrice registers outrage, not for Leonato’s shame, but for one she knows to be virtuous. Even Benedick, whose past, caustic attacks on Beatrice betray more than a bit of misogyny, recognizes that the figure slumped on the ground before him could not possibly be guilty of what she is charged. The friar’s solution to the travesty before him addresses, however, less the innocence and abuse of Hero than the “strange misprision in the princes” (4.1.184). These guests of noble birth and being, strangers to Messina, have simply misunderstood what they have seen. The friar’s solution to the dilemma—announce that Hero has died— proves less than satisfactory. As Leonato, newly returned to his senses, exclaims: “What will this do?” (4.1.208). The friar’s response, “Marry, this, well carried, shall on her behalf / Change slander to remorse” (4.1.209–10), focuses not on the stranger who defiles Hero, but on the one who must bear the burden of shame. Essentially, Claudio will feel bad that he killed Hero, leaving him to “wish he had not so accusèd her” (4.1.231). Although Leonato agrees to go along with the friar’s scheme—another deception among many within the play—it is more than apparent that this father has not finished with those who have shamed him and his daughter. Prince or not, Leonato suddenly refuses to suffer any more abuse from his guests. If, as Heal notes, a guest “must not usurp the role of the host,” the prince and Claudio grossly violate that mandate, reversing roles with Leonato. Their encounter with the governor near the beginning of act 5 is neither polite nor respectful; its brusque, dismissive nature suggests instead mastery. To Leonato’s, “Hear you, my lords?” (5.1.47), Don Pedro abruptly replies: “We have some haste, Leonato” (5.1.48). The prince’s brush-off feels much like the one Leonato gives Dogberry on the eve of Hero’s aborted wedding. Telling him to “drink some wine ere you go” (3.5.46), Leonato dismisses the constable with “I am / now in great haste” (3.5.43–44). Does Leonato deliberately provoke his visitors as they rush to move past him? Without a doubt. Don Pedro clearly insults the governor, telling him: “Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man” (5.1.50). Despite their less-than-friendly response to Leonato, the prince and Claudio exhibit awkwardness during this encounter, wishing to avoid a conversation with one whose daughter they have just slandered. Leonato, however, is not nearly finished with the two, charging that

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Hero “lies buried with her ancestors . . . [because of their] villainy” (5.1.69; 71). The exchange rapidly deteriorates when Antonio labels them “Boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops!” (5.1.91). Claudio’s response reaches a new low when he tells Benedick, “We had liked to have had our two noses snapped off / with two old men without teeth” (5.1.116–17). As Leonato tries unsuccessfully to issue a challenge, Claudio dismissively attacks his host’s age and physical well-being, rendering him somehow unworthy of a fight. One cannot forget Beatrice’s vitriol, her “Kill Claudio” (4.1.287) violating not only one of the most fundamental tenets of hospitality, that a guest be protected while within the host’s household, but holding Benedick hostage to her love. Both host and guests have strayed far from their mutual responsibilities to one another. Ironically, only the bungling Dogberry and gang, who instinctively view the stranger with suspicion, are able to uncover the truth that restores order and civility within Messina. When charged with ensuring the public peace, the constable and his men proudly embrace the role they have been entrusted to play. As “good men and true” (3.3.1), they are “chosen for the / Prince’s watch” (3.3.5–6). Their malapropism-laced plan, however, provides scant promise of their ability to ensure that the peace is not disturbed. When he inquires how his men will deal with “those that are drunk” (3.3.39), Dogberry rather ignorantly decides that the watch will “let them alone till they are sober” (3.3.42). If they encounter a thief, the watch should “let him show himself what he is, and / steal out of your company” (3.3.54–55). Crying babies are to be left to the care of their sleeping nurses, whom their cries will surely awaken. Despite Dogberry’s departing malapropism (or perhaps because of it), “Be vigitant, / I beseech you” (3.3.82–83), we are left with little confidence that this group of peacekeepers will be able to carry out their charge. Yet, when the moment arises, the watchmen spring into action, quickly subduing Borachio and Conrad, who have rather giddily recounted their abusive deception of the prince, Claudio, Leonato, and Hero. This group of would-be law keepers could well resemble locals within Shakespeare’s London. Deeply suspicious of aliens among them, they were the ones who clamored for surveillance of strangers, petitioning the government for an accounting of them and their purpose within the city. While Dogberry and gang’s initial and ignorant reluctance to do that which would ensure the peace makes for comic relief, their unexpected encounter of Borachio and Conrad’s villainy provides the impetus by which they are able to bring the two outsiders to justice. As the first watchman exclaims, “And one Deformed is one of them. I know / him—a wears a lock” (3.3.148–49). While it is unclear to whom the watchman refers, one may well ask why either character would bear this description. The only physical abnormality noted is a lock of hair,

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worn by courtiers as a sign of commitment, or perhaps conquest. The lock of hair renders this culprit strange, and thus worthy of the title imposed. Given the villainy of Don John’s men, one must, nevertheless, ask how their ignominious arrests factor into the issue of hospitality, which has proven so important in this play. When Lear’s Kent is placed in the stocks for insulting Regan’s man, it constitutes a personal affront to the king. And Don John, of course, has been given the same welcome in Messina that Don Pedro and Claudio receive. One curious directive from Dogberry prior to the arrest provides some insight. He declares that “if you meet the Prince in the / night you may stay him” (3.3.67–68), which is immediately rejected not because of his identity, but because “the watch ought to offend no man, and / it is an offence to stay a man against his will” (3.3.72–73). Staying the prince could constitute an offense both to guest and host, suggesting wrongdoing. Dogberry’s conclusion that the watch may not offend is important in terms of the hospitality mandate. As a guest of Leonato, Don Pedro must be protected and honored. And Don John should be, and indeed is, rendered the same respect that his brother receives from Leonato. What then happens when the guest proves a villain? Don John’s status as bastard ultimately becomes a means by which to expel the villain and restore harmony within Messina. Within the context of the play, the bastard’s status as stranger takes on heightened meaning—Don John constituting a stranger to the stranger. Because he is of brooding disposition, whose “sadness is without limit” (1.3.4), one who takes pride in being “a plain-dealing villain,” responsibility for any and all of the pain and suffering inflicted on Leonato and Hero as well as Don Pedro and Claudio may justifiably be transferred onto him. Don John’s flight from Messina, having “secretly stolen away” (4.2.55) after his villainy is accomplished, is thus apropos. Although he is brought back to face justice, Don John’s welcome within Messina is rescinded, the hospitality rendered to the bastard brother of the prince ever, it turns out, always contingent. While the scapegoat is important to the outcome of Much Ado about Nothing, Don John is not the only one held responsible for the calamity caused by strangers in Messina. Claudio is rightly punished for his slander, required to sing his “dead lady’s” praises at her tomb and to marry one he has never before seen. Although Claudio rather oddly and disparagingly avows, “I’ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope” (5.4.38), he agrees to marry an unknown, veiled lady to salvage the reputations of both Leonato and his daughter. In making her strange, Leonato forces the young Florentine to trust not only Hero, but the known and unknown alike. Importantly, Leonato also reclaims his role as host to strangers who have abused their welcome in Messina.

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Jessica Rosenberg has observed that hospitality “if well performed, can undermine the household.”29 Indeed, both host and guest are inevitably rendered vulnerable within Messina. Although known to Leonato and others within Messina, Don Pedro and his cohorts as strangers to the governor’s household unexpectedly turn on him and his daughter to salvage what they fear is an assault on their reputations. Although Don John is made to pay for the wrongs he has committed against his compatriots and host, others within the play are also culpable for the travesty that has ensued. Without a doubt, both host and guests behave badly in Much Ado About Nothing. If the rules of hospitality are intended to protect the rights of all— strangers and Messinans alike—they fail dismally. Certainly, Don Pedro is remiss, leaping to conclusions about Leonato and Hero less in support of his friend than protecting his own reputation. Although warm and welcoming in the beginning, Leonato’s hospitality collapses when those he welcomes abuse him. Then again, perhaps he is also remiss for treating hospitality as an opportunity to profit from the marriage of his daughter. Benedick and Beatrice battle each other until finally forced to declare a love that even at the end feels a bit contrived. Only Hero, the much-maligned daughter of the manipulating and manipulated governor of Messina, arguably does nothing wrong. Perhaps one could ask whether being too trustworthy in the company of strangers is possible. If the governor fails to understand his own daughter, how much can he possibly know about the prince of Aragon and his young protégé? If hostility is inevitably linked to hospitality as Derrida and others have argued, then it is satisfactorily curtailed when attached to the bastard, to the stranger whose trust is never, it would seem, warranted. If all ends well in Much Ado About Nothing, it is because peace, harmony, and above all, trust, trademarks of hospitality, are ultimately, if awkwardly restored. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Thomas P. “‘Here’s Strange Alteration’: Hospitality and Political Discord in Coriolanus.” In Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange, edited by David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton, 67– 86. London: Routledge, 2016. Branagh, Kenneth, dir. Much Ado about Nothing. 1993; Los Angeles: Samuel Goldwyn Company, 2003. DVD. Chamberlain, Stephanie. “Rotten Oranges and Other Spoiled Commodities: The Economics of Shame in Much Ado about Nothing.” Journal of the Wooden O (2009): 1–10. Cochrane, Eric. “Southern Italy in the Age of the Spanish Viceroys: Some Recent Titles,” The Journal of Modern History 58.1 (March 1986): 194–217.

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Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Translated by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. ———. In Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, interviewed by Giovanna Barradori. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Given-Wilson, Chris, and Alice Curteis. The Royal Bastards of Medieval England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Goldstein, David B., and Julia Reinhard Lupton, eds. Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Grell, Ole Peter. Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1996. Heal, Felicity. “Hospitality and Honor in Early Modern England.” Food and Foodways 1 (1987): 321–50. Henze, Richard. “Deception in Much Ado about Nothing.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 11.2 (Spring, 1971): 187–201. Howard, Jean, and Phyllis Rackin. Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s Histories. London: Routledge, 1997. Kant, Immanuel. “Toward Perpetual Peace.” In Practical Philosophy, translated and edited by Mary Gregor, 311–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1996. Kermode, Lloyd Edward. Aliens and Englishness in Elizabethan Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Lupton, Julia Reinhard. “The Affordances of Hospitality: Shakespearean Drama between Historicism and Phenomenology.” Poetics Today 35, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 615–33. McEachern, Claire. The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590– 1612. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. McNulty, Tracy. The Hostess: Hospitality, Femininity, and the Expropriation of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Newman, Karen. Shakespeare’s Rhetoric of Comic Character. New York: Methuen, 1985. Oldenburg, Scott. Alien Albion: Literature and Immigration in Early Modern England. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2014. Rosenberg, Jessica. “A Digression to Hospitality: Thrift and Chrismastime in Shakespeare and in the Literature of Husbandry.” In Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange, edited by David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton, 39–66. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2008. Smith, Emma. “Was Shylock Jewish?” Shakespeare Quarterly 64.2 (2013): 188–219. Wells, Jane. “The Counterfeit Trap in Shakespeare’s Comedies: Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado about Nothing.” Journal of the Wooden O (2018): 66–93. Yungblut, Laura Hunt. Strangers Settled Here Among Us: Policy, Perceptions and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England. London: Routledge, 1996.

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NOTES 1. All Shakespeare citations are from The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2016). 2. Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace,” Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 328. 3. See, for example, Eric Cochrane, “Southern Italy in the Age of the Spanish Viceroys: Some Recent Titles,” The Journal of Modern History 58, no. 1 (March 1986): 194–217. Sicily, like other Italian municipalities, had long been ruled by Spanish viceroys and governors. Although governor of Messina, Leonato would have been subject to the same foreign rule, calling into question not only his generosity but also his intentions to pursue a favorable match with either Don Pedro or Claudio. 4. Scott Oldenburg, Alien Albion: Literature and Immigration in Early Modern England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 3–4. 5. Lloyd Edward Kermode, Aliens and Englishness in Elizabethan Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2. 6. Kermode, Aliens and Englishness, 2. 7. Jacques Derrida. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, Rachel Bowlby, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 25. Derrida, of course, uses a more contemporary term for the stranger, the term foreigner, with its attendant implications for the twentieth century. 8. Emma Smith, “Was Shylock Jewish?” Shakespeare Quarterly 64, no. 2 (2013): 219. 9. Ole Peter Grell, Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 2–3. 10. Laura Hunt Yungblut, Strangers Settled Here Amongst Us: Policy, Perceptions and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England (London: Routledge, 1996), 9. 11. Oldenburg, Alien Albion, 71. The Returns of Aliens, which was begun during the reign of Henry VIII, continued through that of Elizabeth, becoming more detailed by the latter part of the sixteenth century. It included not only names and countries of origin but also the religious affiliations of aliens living within London. 12. Oldenburg, Alien Albion, 4. See also Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s Histories (London: Routledge, 1997); and Claire McEachern, The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590–1612 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 13. Yungblut, Strangers, 2–3. 14. Kermode, Aliens and Englishness, 4. 15. Jacques Derrida, in Giovanna Barradori, ed. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 128–29. 16. Thomas P. Anderson, “‘Here’s Strange Alteration’: Hospitality and Political Discord in Coriolanus,” Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange, David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 68.

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17. Julia Reinhard Lupton, “The Affordances of Hospitality: Shakespearean Drama between Historicism and Phenomenology,” Poetics Today 35, no. 4 (Winter, 2014): 617. 18. Tracy McNulty, The Hostess: Hospitality, Femininity, and the Expropriation of Identity (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), xi. 19. Derrida, Of Hospitality, 45. 20. David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton, eds., Shakespeare and Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Exchange (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 2. 21. Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Kenneth Branagh (1993; Los Angeles, CA: Samuel Goldwyn Company, 2003), DVD. 22. Jane Wells, “The Counterfeit Trap in Shakespeare’s Comedies: Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado About Nothing,” Journal of the Wooden O (2018): 66. 23. Karen Newman, Shakespeare’s Rhetoric of Comic Character (New York: Methuen, 1985), 118. 24. Chris Given-Wilson and Alice Curteis, The Royal Bastards of Medieval England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 43. 25. Given-Wilson and Curteis, Royal Bastards, 48. 26. Richard Henze, “Deception in Much Ado about Nothing,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 11, no. 2 (Spring 1971): 187. 27. Felicity Heal, “Hospitality and Honor in Early Modern England,” Food and Foodways 1 (1987): 323. 28. Stephanie Chamberlain, “Rotten Oranges and Other Spoiled Commodities: The Economics of Shame in Much Ado about Nothing,” Journal of the Wooden O (2009): 1–10. 29. Jessica Rosenberg, “A Digression to Hospitality: Thrift and Christmastime in Shakespeare and in the Literature of Husbandry,” Shakespeare and Hospitality, 42.

Chapter 4

“In Messina Here” Shakespeare’s Use of Setting in Much Ado About Nothing Philip Goldfarb Styrt

The first lines of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing announce the location of the play as Messina (1.1.1–2).1 And indeed, all of the action takes place there. But what are we to make of that? Why does it matter that Much Ado is placed in Messina, as opposed to Shakespeare’s own London— or anywhere else? To answer this, I propose that we should ask what the Messinese setting might have meant to Shakespeare and his audience, and how that meaning is reflected in the play itself. When examining this, we find that to the early modern English Messina was a symbol of Hapsburg, and especially Spanish, power in the Mediterranean. Although Much Ado’s comic plots might seem distant from great-power politics, therefore, I suggest that English concerns about the political realities of the Spanish Mediterranean play an important part in shaping the play’s events and the audience’s presumed reaction to them, particularly the dual marriage plots and the bumbling of the watch. Despite some critical claims, Messina was not “as remote as the moon to the majority of Shakespeare’s audience.”2 While it may not have been as familiar to an English audience as some of Shakespeare’s other Italian settings—Rome, for instance, or even Venice—Sicily, and particularly Messina, was well-enough known for Shakespeare to take advantage of audience familiarity with the setting to give context for the play. In particular, I suggest that Much Ado About Nothing makes use of Messina and its role in the Spanish imperial system to establish the stakes of the various plots, counterplots, and marriages in the play. 67

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Of course, the Messinese setting for Much Ado is not original to Shakespeare. It appears to have been adopted from his Italian source for the main Claudio-Hero plot, a novella by Matteo Bandello, possibly through its translation into French by François de Belleforest.3 But Messina is not a mere accidental holdover from the sources in Much Ado. The play itself is highly insistent on its Messinese setting—starting with the first lines and then repeatedly noting that the action takes place “here in Messina” (1.1.17, 36), or “in Messina here” (5.1.271)—and it connects in closely with early modern English assumptions about “Messina in Sicilia” as it was frequently called as a major Mediterranean port under contemporary Spanish control.4 This awareness of Messina came to early modern English audiences from several directions. Holinshed’s Chronicles, for example, noted Messina as an important stop on Richard I’s crusade, describing it as a key port both for the crusade’s progress to the Holy Land and in relation to the political quarrels on the Italian peninsula that accompanied the crusade.5 It was also understood that the king of Aragon later took over Messina after a rebellion that threw out the French in the thirteenth century.6 There was thus some knowledge circulating in the period of Messina’s long history as an important part of the Spanish imperial position in the Mediterranean. However, Messina’s most important, and best-known, role in these power struggles was more recent. It was singled out in a number of early modern English texts as a central strategic locale for Spain’s ability to exchange goods and project power across the Mediterranean in Shakespeare’s own day. The narratives that involve Messina consistently focus on its role as a transit hub, with overlapping reference to its significance for trade, for military maneuvers, or for personal travel.7 It was from Messina that Spanish fleets and their allies from all over southern Europe converged to sally forth against their enemies—most notably for the 1571 Battle of Lepanto8—and Messina was seen as the crossroads of the Mediterranean portion of the Spanish empire. This position within the wider Spanish Mediterranean was reinforced at a local level. Messina was known to be ruled by a “Viceroye” of Spain,9 the pilots serving the port were Spanish,10 and it was frequently full of Spanish nobles.11 In short, Messina-in-Sicilia was understood by the early modern English to be, and to have been, a key point of connection between Spain and its Mediterranean possessions, allies, and rivals: a nexus through which people, goods, and ideas passed on their way to and fro between Spain itself and the wider Mediterranean world. I suggest that this early modern English perspective on Messina lies at the heart of Much Ado. Like the historical port itself, Shakespeare’s Messina is a crucial point of connection between Spain and its Mediterranean possessions and ambitions, and the play hinges on the close, familiar associations

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between the Spanish army and the town’s inhabitants. At the same time, the near misprision of the comic plot threatens not only the romance of the marriages but also the political stability of the Spanish imperial alliance. Ultimately, the action of the play centers on the relationships established by the Messinese setting. By contrast, I would note that the play does not seem draw from the ideas circulating in the same period about the earlier period in Sicily that Shakespeare later treated in The Winter’s Tale. That Sicily was known in early modern England for having been independent, ruled by wrathful tyrants,12 and its people had a reputation as violent, treacherous hosts.13 These elements are not especially active in Much Ado: Leonato is no tyrant (much less an independent king), for all his name sounds like Leontes’s, and as we shall see, the Spanish in the play have enjoyed his hospitality many times before without a whiff of violence or treachery. At the same time, Shakespeare moved the story from its medieval setting in Bandello (which might have had more connection to that earlier reputation) to a more contemporary one. While the Bandello novella is set around the time of the inciting incident, the so-called “Sicilian vespers,” that gave the older Sicily a reputation for bad hospitality, Shakespeare’s play is not. As Thomas Moisan has observed, in Bandello the Don Pedro character, King Piedro, is an “imperialist interloper,” swooping in after the Sicilian vespers to attempt to make Messina Spanish.14 But in Much Ado, Don Pedro is not an interloper but an accustomed part of the Messinese social scene. This change, as well as the characterization of Leonato and the other Messinese, suggests that Shakespeare was not interested in just any Sicilian setting for Much Ado but particularly in a contemporary Messinese one, with its associations with Spain’s Renaissance imperial project. This should not be surprising to us. On the one hand, early modern English plays frequently engaged with topical political concerns, particularly those (as Andrew Hadfield reminds us) set in “liminal” spaces at Europe’s “uncertain boundaries,” as Much Ado About Nothing is.15 On the other, the early modern English were constantly confronted with the “Spanish specter,” the influence of Spain both directly on England and indirectly as a model through the presence of its New World and Mediterranean empire—the latter of which centered on Messina.16 As such, it is no wonder that Shakespeare’s Messinese play is more invested in the status of the contemporary Spanish empire than in its medieval beginnings or Sicily’s earlier history. The first scene of the play makes this connection to the contemporary Spanish empire clear. Don Pedro and his companions are established as frequent visitors to Messina. Claudio’s uncle lives in Messina, and the Messenger delivered letters to him even before visiting Leonato (1.1.17–19). Leonato himself, credited as “governor of Messina” in the opening stage directions

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(1.1.1 s.d.) appears to be the Spanish viceroy, and his exchanges with Don Pedro imply that this is but one of many visits (1.1.94–95, 1.1.141–42). Likewise the “merry war” between Benedick and Beatrice (1.1.58) strongly implies, where it does not directly state, the frequency of their encounters. It would mean very little that “they never meet, but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (1.1.59–60) if they rarely saw each other, and Beatrice’s complaint to Benedick that “I know you of old” (1.1.138–39) suggests that they have a long personal history, a suggestion reinforced later when she complains that he once cheated to win her heart (2.1.257). All of these signs point us to a Messina that has comfortably served as a Spanish base for a long time, a place to which the Spanish have frequent cause to return and which is glad to welcome them when they do. More specifically to the immediate moment of the play, this same scene reveals that Messina recently served as the gathering point for whatever battle the troops have just returned from. Leonato and Beatrice both refer to this process of leaving and returning (1.1.9, 28–29). Similarly, Claudio recalls seeing Hero before, when they were in Messina in advance of the war (1.1.278). All of these imply that Don Pedro’s force mustered in Sicily before heading out to battle, and has recently returned from that battle. In other words, Don Pedro and his force are exhibiting the same behavior that the Spanish fleets were known for: building up at Messina in order to sally forth into the Mediterranean, and then returning to the city to rest and recuperate—a reasonable use of Messina in the early modern context, but a notable contrast to the older stories about Sicilian (mis)treatment of guests. This may explain why, as some critics have questioned, the war at the start of the play is so unexceptional as to be easily forgotten.17 War does not directly touch this Messina, but it is a frequent fact of life for them that others go to war and then come back to them. Another element of Much Ado that builds on Sicily’s status as a crossroads of the Spanish empire is the decidedly mixed international character of the play’s cast. Don Pedro is Aragonese, or Spanish, and is referred to throughout as a prince, which marks him as Spanish royalty. We can see this not just in his full name, “Don Pedro of Aragon” (1.1.1) but also in the fact that, as Camille Wells Slights has noted, he and his illegitimate brother Don John are consistently referred to by the distinctively Spanish “Don” while the Italian characters are called “Signior.”18 It is worth noting at this point that Shakespeare takes King Piedro of Aragon in the Bandello novella that the play is based on and turns him into the slightly lesser prince Don Pedro, thus emphasizing that this play is not set in the thirteenth century, as Bandello’s was, but in something more like Shakespeare’s own present day, when there was no independent throne of Aragon (and either Charles V or Philip II, not a Don Pedro, would have been king of Spain). Don Pedro is royal, but unlike

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his equivalent in Bandello he does not rule. He has an independent command of some sort, but he is merely a contributor to the Spanish imperial project, not its head. As such, he can still be “of Aragon” even though Aragon had merged into Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella in the fifteenth century. His title, unlike that of Bandello’s King Piedro, is a regional one within a larger state, implying that he serves that larger empire even as he commands in Sicily. Don Pedro’s companions are also drawn from across Europe, and from a wide range of cities and regions. They are explicitly marked out as distinct from the rest of the city when Ursula reports to Hero, who has come to her wedding, singling out the two Spanish princes, Claudio, and Benedick as separate (3.4.87–89). Claudio is Florentine, with a Sicilian uncle, Benedick is Paduan, and it is important to the ladies that both of them are from mainland Italy (3.1.92, 97). Similarly, Claudio and Don Pedro later mock Benedick for appearing (momentarily) non-Italian in his lovesickness (3.2.31–34). By contrast, Leonato and his family are presumptively Sicilian, though it is not explicit. Balthasar, the singer, has no specific nationality given, but the name is one of Shakespeare’s generic Italian names, appearing also in Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Comedy of Errors for relatively minor characters. Don John the bastard may himself be an oblique reference to Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto and another bastard Hapsburg—certainly one of his companions, Conrade, bears a Germanic name, while the other, Borachio, has a Spanish one (and an apt one, since it means drunkard). As we have seen, Messina-in-Sicilia was known as a place where the multiple possessions of the greater Spanish empire came together; it is therefore fitting that in his contemporary Messinese play, Shakespeare gives us a social world that draws on elements from across Italy, Spain, and even Austria (or the other parts of Hapsburg Germany): all areas where the Spanish empire had clear interests and involvement. The multinational nature of the play gives added emphasis to the play’s two primary comic plots: the marriages of Claudio to Hero and Benedick to Beatrice, respectively. These are not simply love matches, but calculated political moves—an aspect that is emphasized by the fact that both betrothals are brought into being by the direct action of Don Pedro. Claudio is keenly aware of the political nature of his match. Although he find Hero very attractive (1.1.177–78), he also wants to know if she is sole heir to her father (1.1.275). Benedick is perhaps less conscious of the geopolitical import of his relationship, as he is after all tricked into having such a relationship at all, and in marrying Leonato’s niece rather than his heir he marries a little lower on the social scale. But he too is now tied by bonds of marriage into the same family—as he notes at the end, he and Claudio are now related (5.4.109). These marriages bind Claudio and Benedick together, but they also connect

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both of them more closely into the Spanish imperial political structure. At the start of the play they are marked as the only two characters who explicitly do not come from Hapsburg holdings: in the late sixteenth century, Florence was independent, while Padua was under Venetian control, not Spanish. Therefore, Claudio and Benedick stand out as the only characters in the main plots who are not natural-born subjects of the Hapsburg empire, and are therefore folded into that imperial project by the marriages at the end. Obviously, the two of them are from the first members of Don Pedro’s army, confidants of his, and bound to him by personal loyalty. Benedick makes a point of being constrained by “allegiance” (1.1.198) to tell Don Pedro about Claudio’s interest in Hero. He also begs Don Pedro to give him orders to do something rather than talk to Beatrice, a request that in its hyperbolic details—offering to go to the “world’s end” (242), the “Antipodes” (243), or “the furthest inch of Asia” (243–44), or to visit “Prester John” (245), “the Great Cham” (246), or “the Pygmies” (247)—recalls contemporary Sicily’s place as a crossroads for international trade and travel. Similarly, it is possible that Claudio’s rank as a “count” (1.1.196) indicates that Don Pedro has already appointed him to a position in which he would have become a formal vassal of the Spanish crown, but the title could also be Florentine in origin and reflect his standing in his native city. Regardless, despite their preexisting personal bonds, Don Pedro has certainly increased their ties to Messina by marrying these gentlemen into Leonato’s family, and thus (hopefully) tightened their connection to the Spanish crown. The marriage plots serve to strengthen the imperial power of Spain by bringing Don Pedro’s two closest advisers into the Sicilian—and thus Spanish imperial—fold not merely by personal allegiance or fealty but by marriage and family ties. But if the setting influences the significance of the comic arc of the main plots, ending in marriage, it is also a part of the tragic overtones those plots take in the middle of the play. Precisely because the Spaniards are so much a part of the native Sicilian business of Messina, Claudio’s repudiation of Hero, backed by Don Pedro, is utterly devastating. Not only is Hero disgraced and dismayed, not only is Leonato’s honor threatened, but the long-standing close relationship between the Sicilians and their Spanish rulers is thrown off balance. Leonato’s refusal to believe in Hero’s innocence begins not with his belief in Claudio’s love for her but with his disbelief that his Spanish allies would betray him (4.1.152). Only then does he ask about Claudio and his love for Hero. Likewise, the friar, in attempting to convince Leonato of Hero’s innocence, must first allay that worry about the “princes” (4.1.185). The Sicilian characters need to believe that their Spanish allies are merely mistaken, and not vicious. If they are lying to slander Hero and destroy Leonato’s position, the mutual trust on which their relationship is based would be destroyed.

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We can see the stakes of this potential betrayal in Leonato’s reaction to the slander. The thought that her accusers might have intentionally slandered Hero rouses a mighty anger in him that causes him to threaten vengeance on the princes (4.1.191–92). But this vengeance is not merely personal, although he is deeply wounded. Instead, as his anger builds, it comes to sound more and more like Leonato is threatening to lead a rebellion: Time has not yet so dried up this blood of mine Nor age so eat up my invention, Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends But they shall find awaked in such a kind Both strength of limb and policy of mind Ability in means and choice of friends To quit me of them throughly (4.1.193–200)

The first few lines of this sound like the personal challenge that he will later issue to Claudio, emphasizing his own “blood” and “age.” Here we see Leonato claiming the ability to personally revenge himself by dueling or otherwise engaging his daughter’s accusers man-to-man, relying on his own “strength of limb.” But the subsequent references to his “means,” to his “friends,” to “policy,” and particularly to “quit[ting] me of them throughly” suggest something greater is building inside Leonato. If we remember that Leonato is governor of Messina, we can see that Leonato’s “choice of friends” may be all the Sicilians, his “policy” is political in nature, and as a result his “ability in means” goes beyond a simple duel. The idea of him quitting himself of the Aragonese princes in such a definite manner at the very least constitutes the potential threat of an assassination plot with major political consequences, if he means to kill them with his allies’ help. If “quit[ting]” himself “throughly” means something more than just their deaths, it might also remind his listeners that the Sicilians had overthrown the French in the thirteenth century in order to invite in Aragon in the first place. Certainly declaring independence, or rejoining with the French or another powerful ally, would be a very thorough revenge upon his daughter’s slanderers. It is worth noting that this use of “friends” to represent a political alliance as well as a personal relationship is hardly unique to Much Ado About Nothing, or indeed to Shakespeare. The nature of friendship was a constant topic of debate in Renaissance England, and was frequently read through the lens of Roman history, due to the influence of Cicero’s De Amicitia (Of Friendship).

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In recent scholarship, as Jonathan Shelley has noted, these kinds of political and practical concerns have been “increasingly understood to be an integral part of friendship” in the period.19 Shakespeare himself makes extensive use of the political aspects of friendship in his plays throughout his career, always with an emphasis on the pressure that politics places on ordinary ideas of friendship.20 This is especially true in the Rome of Julius Caesar, written about the same time as Much Ado About Nothing.21 The Roman context for this sort of friendship, and Shakespeare’s own direct use of it, are significant because Rome served as an important lens for early modern English thinkers as they conceived of empire—both their own and, crucially, Spain’s as well.22 In this imperial context, friendship was understood as a relationship of political as well as personal affiliation. We can see this in Leonato’s invocation of his “friends” after the failed wedding, but a similar sense pervades other moments in the play as well. It should not be a surprise that in a romantic comedy we do not see the displacement of affective friendship into the term “love” and “lover” that we see in Julius Caesar.23 Instead some of that same energy is transferred to “company” and “companion,” while traditionally affective terms like friendship and even marriage lean heavily into the political aspects that have always also been part of their meaning. At the very start of the play, Beatrice calls Claudio Benedick’s “companion” (1.1.66, 76) as well as his “sworn brother” (1.1.68), with the two terms taking on a similar meaning. Later, Don Pedro has no “employment” for Benedick but to “desire your good company” (2.1.249, 250), and then comments that he will “be bold with Benedick for his company” (3.2.7–8). Later Benedick, when discontinuing his association with Don Pedro (and Claudio) at Beatrice’s request, echoes this by saying “I must discontinue your company” (5.1.184). In these cases we see “company” and “companion” serving to indicate a personal connection. Benedick is not the only soldier in Don Pedro’s force, but his company is especially valuable as they are close—a connection he asserts is broken by Don Pedro’s treatment of Hero. On the other hand, the language of friendship itself crops up frequently in the play, in both affective and political senses (sometimes metaphorically). The first messenger tells Beatrice “I will hold friends with you, lady,” to which she replies “do, good friend” (1.1.86–87). Given the rapid banter about her quarrel with Benedick that precedes this exchange, it seems likely that they both mean both senses of the word here, simultaneously expressing pleasure in the exchange of banter and a truce in the war of words. We can see a similar effect in her discussions of friendship with Benedick, which obviously advance their courtship while at the same time aligning Benedick as an ally with Beatrice and Hero against Claudio and Don Pedro. The clearest indication of this comes when Beatrice explicitly contrasts Benedick’s request for friendship with her and his potential for continued companionship with

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Claudio: “you dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy” (4.1.297–98). Don Pedro also links both political and affective senses of the word, calling each of Leonato and Claudio his “dear friend” (1.1.142, 4.1.64), while Claudio compares “friendship” to “faith” as he wonders whether Don Pedro has betrayed him and married Hero (2.1.160, 165), then throws the relationship in Leonato’s face at the failed wedding: “give not this rotten orange to your friend” (4.1.30). As all these examples suggest, friendship is most clearly linked to marriage: Don Pedro begins his suit of Hero by asking “Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?” (2.1.76–77), while Beatrice, when she declares her love for Benedick, claims it is “but in friendly recompense” (5.4.83). Yet these marriages, as we have seen, are always political themselves. Beatrice drives this home for us, sighing “Good Lord, for alliance” (2.1.292) at her cousin’s engagement, but Don John also takes advantage of that same aspect to paint Hero’s alleged infidelity in similar terms: “the lady is disloyal,” a term with both political and personal connotations (3.2.92–93). These remind us of the other words the play has for political or legal connections: the “duty” (1.1.149) Leonato bears to the reconciled Don John, and more pointedly “allegiance,” the term used by both Benedick and Don Pedro for their relation on the one hand (1.1.195, 198) and Dogberry about his watchmen’s service on the other (3.3.5). Interestingly, we only hear the purely political term “subjects” in Dogberry’s consideration of whom the watch may arrest (3.3.32, 34), and not in any description of any other relationship in the play. Instead, the majority of relationships in the play are, like the marriages, simultaneously political and personal. They represent mutual obligations bound by both legal and affective ties. Because of this latent political meaning to friendship, it is not quite accurate to simply ascribe Leonato’s threat of involving his “friends” to the possibility of selecting seconds for a duel, as the Arden 3rd edition note does (4.1.199n). After all, the threat of the duel is what Leonato resorts to after being calmed down by the friar, and agreeing to pretend Hero is dead (5.1.73–102). We should see here not a merely personal or private threat to Claudio or Don Pedro in a formal duel, but a public threat to the larger bonds that tie Leonato—and thus Messina and Sicily—to Don Pedro—and thus Aragon and Spain. It is true that the Friar calms Leonato down before he can commit to so extreme a course, and manages to turn his anger aside by suggesting the plot centered on the feigned death of Hero in order to shame the princes. But Leonato’s first instincts indicate how dangerous this failed marriage is to the political stability of the Messinese-Spanish alliance. The threat of this kind of reaction informs the urgency with which both the Friar and Benedick urge Leonato into the alternate, less violent course he ultimately adopts. We

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can also hear this threat in his later declaration, after Don Pedro refuses to hear his complaint against Claudio, that “I will be heard,” and his brother’s affirmation that he “shall [be heard], or some of us will smart for it” (5.1.107, 108). Notably, the “smart” here, the pain he will inflict, cannot be purely an individual injury from a duel, because Claudio has already refused to fight such a duel and thus will not be available to harm. Instead, it is a more generalized threat, tied to the political elements of their relationship as well as the personal. Because of Leonato’s position in Messina and the history of the town, the princes’ betrayal of his trust has these kinds of broader implications, which dramatically raise the potential stakes of the near-tragic elements of the comic plot. Despite this, Messina ultimately emerges from the threat of Don John as a stronger society because it is more cohesive. Benedick and Claudio have married in; Leonato trusts his daughter again; even the watch are tied in by virtue of their discovery of Don John’s plot. After all, they too are a part of the society. Dogberry insists he is “as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina” (4.2.83–84, emphasis mine), and he and his watchmen provide the ultimate communal backstop to prevent Don John’s plot and bring the various parties back into a state of harmony and trust. Don Pedro’s place in this reknitted community is, ironically, the most precarious, despite his position at the top of the social hierarchy. While bringing Benedick and Beatrice together is his idea, it nevertheless isolates him. The prince is left unpaired at the end, pondering what to do with Don John (5.4.123–24). While Benedick offers to “devise thee brave punishments for him” (5.4.125–26), even he can only put the issue of Don John off until “tomorrow” and no further (5.4.125). This final moment of solemnity in the play reminds us that Don Pedro will not be staying. He will stay “at least a month” (1.1.143), or perhaps “longer” (1.1.144), but unlike his friends he has not married into Sicilian society, and he will be moving on without leaving a wife behind to connect him into society. He will merely fulfill his earlier promise to “stay till your marriage be consummate, then go . . . toward Aragon” (3.2.1–2). This moment at the end is a reminder that while Messina belonged to Spain, its relationship to Spain was not constant: troops and ships rendezvoused there, and trade flowed through, but the Spanish presence was always on the move. Messina’s more permanent cultural connections were with its fellow Italian cities—represented here by Florentine Claudio and Paduan Benedick—and even as it welcomed the Spanish presence, that presence was in constant flux. As we see in Don Pedro, direct Spanish influence moved in and out of Sicily even as the island remained under Spanish rule. Don John is even more isolated than his brother, though for a more obvious reason. He is a bastard who has rebelled against his brother, apparently in the very war that the men have just returned from, and only recently become

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reconciled to him (1.3.19–21). He constantly undermines the other characters, particularly Claudio, and of course it is his plot that nearly turns the play into a tragedy. As such, it seems only natural that he should be isolated, both as a willing villain and as a social outcast within the society. But from another angle, Don John’s isolation seems strange. Leonato states at the beginning of the play that he honors Don John because of the combination of his birth and his place in his brother’s favor (1.1.148–49). In addition, Don John’s companions Conrade and Borachio—especially Borachio—seem to have connections to Sicily. After all, Borachio has a preexisting relationship with Margaret (2.2.11–13), attends suppers Don John avoids (1.3.39), and is personally known to Don Pedro (5.1.204). Conrade is a more limited character, but at least goes out drinking with Borachio (3.3.92ff)—a fact that leads to their mutual apprehension by the watch, but which also indicates a more comfortable attitude toward the town than their master’s. We must then conclude that it is not merely villainy or rebellion that separates Don John from Messina. There is something in his soul that differs from the rest of the characters’. If he is indeed meant to stand in for Don John of Austria, another bastard Hapsburg of the same name, his unsociability is odd, since that Don John was a leader of men and the victor of Lepanto. One possible explanation is that provided by Murray Levith, who argues that Shakespeare is drawing on a particularly English disdain for Don John.24 Another would be that Shakespeare has simply seized on the bastardy and name of Don John of Austria, and that this Don John is a rebel from Spanish society precisely to distinguish him in all other attributes from that Don John. After all, the stories Shakespeare adapted into Much Ado About Nothing have no rebellious, bastard brother. In the Bandello novella most frequently cited as a source, the plot against the Hero-Claudio-equivalent marriage is carried out by a disappointed lover named Sir Girondo Olerio Valenziano, no relation to anyone else in the play.25 All the backstory of Don John’s rebellion, defeat, and (brief) reconciliation is Shakespearean addition. By making his Don John explicitly a defeated and (by the end) captive foe of his Spanish brother, not a military hero, Shakespeare distances his creation from the historical Don John of Austria, even as he invokes the connection through the character’s name—and, of course, this Don John is not explicitly Austrian. This leaves him in an ambiguous position. In this play’s context, we might see Shakespeare’s Don John more as an avatar of internal Spanish (or Hapsburg) dissension than as a representative of the glory of Lepanto. As such, his isolation is a necessity: all parties must shun him, lest he undermine them. Every attempt to include him by valuing his opinion or listening to his words leads to disaster. This brings us back to the importance of community in Much Ado About Nothing. The Messinese society and the Spanish empire in which it is

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embedded rely on trust, and on habitual, traditional ways of doing things. As we have seen, the play begins with a return, with the victorious Spanish army (and Don John) coming back to the same Messina from which they departed. The action centers on this fact. Claudio’s love of Hero, Borachio’s betrayal of Margaret, and the spirited exchanges between Benedick and Beatrice all derive from those earlier connections, as we are constantly reminded by situating phrases: “when you went onward on this ended action” (1.1.278); “a year since” (2.2.11); “once before” (2.1.257). Don John cannot be trusted, and is by virtue of his rebellion a newcomer to this social sphere; the others trust each other, at least initially, and are familiar friends and allies. The habitual nature of this alliance derives directly from the setting, given Messina’s well-known status as a long-standing hub of Spanish imperial trade and might. In this way, Messina is a specific and valuable setting for the play, not merely a “vaguely Italian atmosphere” or a generic “aristocratic and metropolitan society.”26 The play is driven by the concerns of a particular place at a particular time, and that is Renaissance Messina. Rather than “almost masking its status as a client city-state,” Shakespeare’s Messina is continually aware of its position within the contemporary Spanish empire and the Mediterranean.27 From the international character of Don Pedro’s expedition and the marriages that take place, to the nature of the relationship between the local Sicilians and their guests, the setting of Messina is a vital part of Much Ado About Nothing (as, of course, Shakespeare’s settings usually are). The play’s happy ending resolves not only the miscommunications and mischances that have dogged the lovers, but also the latent threat those miscommunications have posed to the community and its political connections to the Spanish empire. Shakespeare’s Messina is intimately linked to English knowledge of Renaissance Messina, and the play makes ample use of the implications of the setting. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, George. An exposition vpon the prophet Ionah. London: Richard Field, 1600. Allen, William. A conference about the next succession to the crowne of Ingland diuided into tvvo partes. Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1594–1595. Ariosto, Lodovico. Orlando furioso in English heroical verse. Translated by John Harington. London: Richard Field, 1607. Aristotle, Aristotles politiques, or Discourses of gouernment. Translated by I. D. [John Dee]. London: Adam Islip, 1598. Averell, W. A meruailous combat of contrarieties. London: I. C., 1588.

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Batman, Stephen. A christall glasse of christian reformation wherein the godly maye beholde the coloured abuses vsed in this our present tyme. London: John Day, 1569. Bryskett, Lodowick. A discourse of ciuill life containing the ethike part of morall philosophie. London: [R. Field] for Edward Blount, 1606. Bullough, Geoffrey. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. 8 volumes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962–1975. Churchyard, Thomas. A generall rehearsall of warres, called Churchyardes choise wherein is fiue hundred seuerall seruices of land and sea as seiges, battailes, skirmiches, and encounters. A thousande gentle mennes names, of the beste sorte of warriours. A praise and true honour of soldiours. A proofe of perfite nobilitie. A triall and first erection of heraldes. A discourse of calamitie. And ioyned to the same some tragedies & epitaphes, as many as was necessarie for this firste booke. All which workes are dedicated to the hounourable sir Christopher Hatton knight. London: Edward White, 1579. Coryate, Thomas. Coryates crambe. London: William Stansby, 1611. Craig, Alexander. The amorose songes, sonets, and elegies. London: William White, 1606. Crick, John. “Messina.” In Twentieth Century Interpretations of Much Ado About Nothing. Edited by Walter R. Davis, 33–38. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969. Dandelet, Thomas James. The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Estienne, Henri. A world of wonders. London: [Richard Field] for John Norton, 1607. Filippe, Bartholomeu. The counseller. London: John Wolfe, 1589. Griffin, Eric J. English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empire. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Guiccardini, Francesco. The historie of Guicciardin conteining the vvarres of Italie and other partes, continued for many yeares vnder sundry kings and princes, together with the variations and accidents of the same, deuided into twenty bookes: and also the argumentes, vvith a table at large expressing the principall matters through the vvhole historie. Translated by Geffray Fenton. London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1579. Hadfield, Andrew. Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545–1625. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Hakluyt, Richard. The principal nauigations, voyages, traffiques and discoueries of the English nation made by sea or ouer-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600. yeres: deuided into three seuerall volumes, according to the positions of the regions, whereunto they were directed. London: George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1599. Holinshed, Raphael et al., The first and second volumes of Chronicles. London: Henry Denham, 1587. ———. The Third volume of Chronicles, beginning at duke William the Norman, commonlie called the Conqueror; and descending by degrees of yeeres to all the kings and queenes of England in their orderlie successions. London: Iohn Harison, George Bishop, Rafe Newberie, Henrie Denham, and Thomas VVoodcocke, 1586.

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Levith, Murray J. Shakespeare’s Italian Settings and Plays. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. MacFaul, Tom. Male Friendship in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Marcellinus, Ammianus. The Roman historie. Translated by Philemon Holland. London: Adam Islip, 1609. McEachern, Claire. Introduction to Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare, 3rd edition. Edited by Claire McEachern. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Merbury, Charles. A briefe discourse of royall monarchie, as of the best common weale: vvherin the subiect may beholde the sacred maiestie of the princes most royall estate. VVritten by Charles Merbury Gentleman in duetifull reuerence of her Maiesties most princely Highnesse. Whereunto is added by the same gen. a collection of Italian prouerbes, in benefite of such as are studious of that language. London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1581. Moisan, Thomas. “Deforming Sources: Literary Antecedents and Their Traits in Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Studies 31 (2003): 165–83. Northbrooke, John. Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. London: H. Bynneman, 1577?. Plutarch, The philosophie, commonlie called, the morals. Translated by Philemon Holland. London: Arnold Hatfield, 1603. Polemon, John. All the famous battels that haue bene fought in our age throughout the worlde, as well by sea as lande set foorth at large, liuely described, beautified, and enriched with sundry eloquent orations, and the declaratio[n]s of the causes, with the fruites of them. Collected out of sundry good authors, whose names are expressed in the next page. London: Henrye Bynneman and Francis Coldock, 1578. ———. The second part of the booke of battailes, fought in our age taken out of the best authors and writers in sundrie languages. Published for the profit of those that practise armes, and for the pleasure of such as loue to be harmlesse hearers of bloudie broiles. London: Thomas East for Gabriell Cavvood, 1587. de la Primaudaye, Pierre. The French academie. Translated by Thomas Bowes. London: Edmund Bollifant, 1586. de Serres, Jean. A general inuentorie of the history of France from the beginning of that monarchie, vnto the treatie of Veruins, in the year 1598. Written by Ihon de Serres. And continued vnto these times, out off the best authors which haue written of that subiect. Translated by Edward Grimeston. London: George Eld, 1607. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Edited by Claire McEachern. 3rd edition. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Shelley, Jonathan. “‘To seek new friends and stranger companies’: The Expansion of Friendship in Early Modern England.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2018. Slights, Camille Wells. “Spanish Rulers and Slaughtered Women: Sicily on the Early Modern Stage.” Mediterranean Studies 13 (2004): 107–20. Stubbes, Philip. The anatomie of abuses. London: Richard Iones, 1583. Styrt, Philip Goldfarb. “‘Continuall Factions’: Politics, Friendship, and History in Julius Caesar.” Shakespeare Quarterly 66, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 286–307.

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Teixeira, Jose. A continuation of the lamentable and admirable adventures of Dom Sebastian king of Portugale. With a declaration of all his time employed since the battell in Africke against the infidels 1578. vntill this present yeare 1603. London: R. Field for Iames Shaw, 1603. Whetstone, George. The English mirror. London: I. Windet for G. Seton, 1586.

NOTES 1. All citations are from William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, edited by Claire McEachern, 3rd edition (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006). 2. Claire McEachern, introduction to Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare, 3rd edition, edited by Claire McEachern (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 12. 3. McEachern, “Introduction,” 8. 4. John Polemon, The second part of the booke of battailes, fought in our age taken out of the best authors and writers in sundrie languages. Published for the profit of those that practise armes, and for the pleasure of such as loue to be harmlesse hearers of bloudie broiles (London: Thomas East for Gabriell Cavvood, 1587), K3v; Jose Teixeira, A continuation of the lamentable and admirable adventures of Dom Sebastian king of Portugale. With a declaration of all his time employed since the battell in Africke against the infidels 1578. vntill this present yeare 1603 (London: R. Field for Iames Shaw, 1603), 3; Richard Hakluyt, The principal nauigations, voyages, traffiques and discoueries of the English nation made by sea or ouer-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600. yeres: deuided into three seuerall volumes, according to the positions of the regions, whereunto they were directed (London: George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1599), 100. 5. Raphael Holinshed et al., The first and second volumes of Chronicles (London: Henry Denham, 1587), 487–90. 6. Jean de Serres, A general inuentorie of the history of France from the beginning of that monarchie, vnto the treatie of Veruins, in the year 1598. Written by Ihon de Serres. And continued vnto these times, out off the best authors which haue written of that subiect. Translated by Edward Grimeston (London: George Eld, 1607), 186; Francesco Guiccardini, The historie of Guicciardin conteining the vvarres of Italie and other partes, continued for many yeares vnder sundry kings and princes, together with the variations and accidents of the same, deuided into twenty bookes: and also the argumentes, vvith a table at large expressing the principall matters through the vvhole historie. Translated by Geffray Fenton (London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1579), 111; Camille Wells Slights, “Spanish Rulers and Slaughtered Women: Sicily on the Early Modern Stage,” Mediterranean Studies 13 (2004): 109. 7. Guiccardini, The historie, 287; Polemon, The second part, K4v; Teixera, A continuation, 8, 53; Thomas Churchyard, A generall rehearsall of warres, called Churchyardes choise wherein is fiue hundred seuerall seruices of land and sea as seiges, battailes, skirmiches, and encounters. A thousande gentle mennes names,

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of the beste sorte of warriours. A praise and true honour of soldiours. A proofe of perfite nobilitie. A triall and first erection of heraldes. A discourse of calamitie. And ioyned to the same some tragedies & epitaphes, as many as was necessarie for this firste booke. All which workes are dedicated to the hounourable sir Christopher Hatton knight (London: Edward White, 1579), D4r; Hakluyt, The principal navigations, 127; Charles Merbury, A briefe discourse of royall monarchie, as of the best common weale: vvherin the subiect may beholde the sacred maiestie of the princes most royall estate. VVritten by Charles Merbury Gentleman in duetifull reuerence of her Maiesties most princely Highnesse. Whereunto is added by the same gen. a collection of Italian prouerbes, in benefite of such as are studious of that language (London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1581), 3. 8. Churchyard, A generall rehearsall, D4r; John Polemon, All the famous battels that haue bene fought in our age throughout the worlde, as well by sea as lande set foorth at large, liuely described, beautified, and enriched with sundry eloquent orations, and the declaratio[n]s of the causes, with the fruites of them. Collected out of sundry good authors, whose names are expressed in the next page (London: Henrye Bynneman and Francis Coldock, 1578), 321. 9. Churchyard, A generall rehearsall, D4r. 10. Hakluyt, The principal navigations, 101. 11. Merbury, A briefe discourse, 3. 12. George Abbott, An exposition vpon the prophet Ionah (London: Richard Field, 1600), 22; Ammianus Marcellinus, The Roman historie, translated by Philemon Holland (London: Adam Islip, 1609), 28; Aristotle, Aristotles politiques, or Discourses of gouernment, translated by I. D. [John Dee] (London: Adam Islip, 1598), 278; W. Averell, A meruailous combat of contrarieties (London: I. C., 1588), 5; Stephen Batman, A christall glasse of christian reformation wherein the godly maye beholde the coloured abuses vsed in this our present tyme (London: John Day, 1569); Lodowick Bryskett, A discourse of ciuill life containing the ethike part of morall philosophie (London: [R. Field] for Edward Blount, 1606), 112–13; William Allen, A conference about the next succession to the crowne of Ingland diuided into tvvo partes (Antwerp: A. Conincx, 1594–1595), 199, 218; Alexander Craig, The amorose songes, sonets, and elegies (London: William White, 1606); Thomas Coryate, Coryates crambe (London: William Stansby, 1611); Bartholomeu Filippe, The counseller (London: John Wolfe, 1589), 58; John Northbrooke Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. (London: H. Bynneman, 1577?), 114; Plutarch, The philosophie, commonlie called, the morals, translated by Philemon Holland (London: Arnold Hatfield, 1603), 93; Philip Stubbes, The anatomie of abuses (London: Richard Iones, 1583); George Whetstone, The English mirror (London: I. Windet for G. Seton, 1586), 213. 13. Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso in English heroical verse, translated by John Harington (London: Richard Field, 1607), 278; Allen, A conference, 195, 203; Henri Estienne, A world of wonders (London: [Richard Field] for John Norton, 1607), 57; Raphael Holinshed, et al., The Third volume of Chronicles, beginning at duke William the Norman, commonlie called the Conqueror; and descending by degrees of yeeres to all the kings and queenes of England in their orderlie successions (London: Iohn Harison, George Bishop, Rafe Newberie, Henrie Denham, and Thomas

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VVoodcocke, 1586), 17; Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French academie, translated by Thomas Bowes (London: Edmund Bollifant, 1586), 770–71. 14. Thomas Moisan, “Deforming Sources: Literary Antecedents and Their Traits in Much Ado About Nothing,” Shakespeare Studies 31 (2003): 177. 15. Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 218. 16. Eric J. Griffin, English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 3. 17. John Crick, “Messina,” in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Much Ado About Nothing, edited by Walter R. Davis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969), 34. 18. Wells Slights, “Spanish Rulers,” 109. 19. Jonathan Shelley, “‘To seek new friends and stranger companies’: The Expansion of Friendship in Early Modern England.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2018, 39. 20. Tom MacFaul, Male Friendship in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 117, 140. 21. Philip Goldfarb Styrt, “‘Continuall Factions’: Politics, Friendship, and History in Julius Caesar.” Shakespeare Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2015): 293–94. 22. Thomas James Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 249–50, 257–59. 23. Goldfarb Styrt, “‘Continuall Factions,’” 295. 24. Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare’s Italian Settings and Plays (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 80–82. 25. Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 volumes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962–1975), 2:114. 26.  Levith, Shakespeare’s Italian Settings, 78; Crick, “Messina,” 33. 27. Moisan, “Deforming Sources,” 178.

Chapter 5

A Bird of My Tongue, a Beast of Yours Much Ado’s Anxious Transformations Christine Hoffmann

we will unfold To creatures stern, sad tunes to change their kinds; Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds. ‌‌‌—Shakespeare, from The Rape of Lucrece

“A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours” (1.1.139–40), says Beatrice to Benedick in Act I of Much Ado About Nothing.1 Granting its function as a comeback in a skirmish of wit, how does Beatrice’s declaration alert readers to the standards of civility in place in Messina? What distinguishes bird from beast from human; bird tongue from beast tongue; Don John’s dog’s mouth (1.3.35) from constable Dogberry (from an Ass)? When Beatrice later bids Benedick to “Kill Claudio” (4.1.289), are we to understand that her outrage has triggered some (more) bestial transformation in her, or does the “rare parrot-teacher” (1.1.138) maintain her bird’s-eye view of the play’s comic milieu? As for Benedick, does Beatrice make a beast out of him, a fool, or a man? I like to think these questions are prompted by more than my own ornithophobia; that even a bird-lover might wonder about the assumption in Beatrice’s quip that birds are both distinct from beasts and “better” creatures with which to claim comparison or kinship. Rebecca Ann Bach has written beautifully about the sense of a shared creaturely nature in the early modern world, and particularly the special status birds had as soaring animals that 85

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“could be categorized as closer to angels than were many kinds of beasts, including beast-like people.”2 Religious and literary histories portray birds as symbols of aspiration, transcendence, wisdom and prophecy; in their song and flight one might read divine will.3 Yet early moderns had classical and contemporary mythological narratives to remind them that birds/birdsong could be sinister—sirens lure; harpies seize; the Stymphalian birds kill. A swan might be a rapacious god; a fowl might prove a protean magician cycling through one of many disguises. Bestiaries warned of the thieving tendencies of certain species, deceptive by nature: magpies, jackdaws, cuckoos, kites.4 The images Beatrice conjures are striking in part for their uncomfortable suggestion of botched metamorphoses. She offers a perplexing revision of an Ovidian transformation—Philomela’s—that is more commonly linked to Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, but that also shadows Much Ado About Nothing. In Ovid’s account, Philomela’s metamorphosis occurs after she is raped by her sister’s husband, the bestial Tereus. Violated but not yet dismembered, Philomela threatens to “fill the trees / and wring great sobs of grief from senseless rocks” (VI. 788–89) as she spreads word of her brotherin-law’s outrage.5 Incensed by her threat, Tereus tears out Philomela’s tongue, the act and aftermath Ovid describes in excruciating detail: Its stump throbs in her mouth, while the tongue itself falls to the black earth trembling and murmuring, and twitching as it flings itself about, just as a serpent’s severed tail will do; and with what little life is left it, seeks its mistress’s feet. (803–8)

There is much more to this story of suffering, cannibalism, and revenge, and it is not until the end that all three major figures—Tereus, Philomela, and her sister Procne—are metamorphosed into birds. Beatrice’s tongues make for a strange abridgment of this story’s events, as if she’s condensed the characters’ fates into two images, analogous but for the vague sense that they are disproportionally offensive (in that a bird tongue gets the weasel word “better”).6 In The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare, Lynn Enterline makes much of the image of Philomela’s dismembered tongue, and I wish to do the same with Beatrice’s bird(ed) one, not because I’m certain that Shakespeare intended for Beatrice’s wordplay to call Ovid’s poem immediately to mind,7 but because Beatrice’s loose identification of herself—perhaps only a part of herself, her tongue—as a vocalizing bird suggests a preexisting

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tension between her voice and the expectations of Messina’s “verbal social order.”8 Carla Mazzio has argued that “the literal and figurative range of the tongue” in the early modern period “rendered it particularly suitable for the articulation of collapsing distinctions, be they linguistic, sociopolitical, geographic, or cosmic. Even discussions of sins of the tongue tended to generate anxieties about the inability of the very ‘topic’ to fit within a systematic and ordered textual cosmos.”9 “I cannot endure My Lady Tongue,” Benedick avers in Act 2 (1.274–75), as if Beatrice’s aggressive orality has further mutated, grossly and yet not ungently (if she is all tongue in Benedick’s current estimation, she retains her title, Lady). A dismembered or independent tongue is subversive the way “the whole idea of metamorphosis is subversive, for it undermines the traditional belief in a stable, fixed, and ordered self upon which much of Western thought . . . rests.”10 Enterline argues that Philomela’s tongue’s post-dismemberment murmuring tells a story “about the uneasy relationship between a body and what is usually taken to be its ‘own’ language.”11 She wonders what kind of speaking subjects emerge as a result of Ovid’s “relentless” representation of human subjectivity “as an evanescent, fragile thing best grasped at the moment of its fading” or its failure.12 I am curious what kind of collective movement emerges from performances such as Beatrice’s that indicate a speaker’s hybrid embodiment, and in so doing call attention to the “divide that always exists between suffering and efforts to give it words.”13 When animal bodies are cast to fill that divide, there is an opportunity to recognize the “shared endeavors” that may arise from “shared materiality.”14 I read in Beatrice’s trans-corporeal nature—that is, the image of her speaking self extended across multiple material sites (woman/bird/ tongue)—an endeavor to evaluate the cramped moral economy of which she is a part, and to share the notes of her critical evaluation. I see her as someone who, like Dogberry, “hath had losses” (4.2.84)—losses she has suffered as transformative even as she has noted the unchanging conditions that brought them on, and noted, too, how often the language of change is used in order to block its realization. Furthermore, identifying Beatrice as a (recovering) metamorph struggling with the lack of (social) change that accompanies (personal, traumatic) transformation sets up a larger critique of Much Ado as an anxious text, one formally invested in exploring anxiety as a site of trans-corporeal contestation. Interpreting Much Ado as an anxious text alters how we understand, and how prepared we are to reject, the play’s isolation of female suffering as a primary component of social order. In her thorough summary of theories of anxiety, Eugenie Brinkema describes the anxious text as “rhythmically organized” around the “step that misses;” it is full of “circlings back and hesitations of thought.”15 As in psychoanalysis of a person, anxiety can be recognized in formalist analysis of a text’s “constricted or awkward movement.”16 Because it “derives from the

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failure or inability to interrupt a system,” because it is linked to the existential dread provoked by the non-interruptibility of forward movement, anxiety manifests in the creation of intervals which “punctuate time itself,” and which enable a new form of carved-up, iterable movement. . . . What is desired is the possibility of interpolating an interval into which the nothing is placed to ward off further happenings. . . . Instead of the discontinuity of time, there is a saturation of time in the form of repetition through the additive gesture of [quoting Freud] “undoing what has been done.”17

Allow me to interrupt the forward movement of these theory-laden sentences to say, more simply, that Dogberry is not the only character in Much Ado who lacks the competence to make proper arrests. In the resolutions conceived for both the main plot and subplots of Much Ado, characters attempt to ward off further incivilities in a system of human relations that is constituted by them. Time is made for nothing in this play, because nothing adds something that gestures—however inadequately—toward criticism of a system organized around the non-interruptible authorization of other people’s suffering. Brinkema compares anxiety’s additive gesture to a “panicked gasping for air that will not arrive, that will not be sufficient or enough.” Imagine Beatrice’s most critical vocalizations in Much Ado in such terms. Each movement away from what is expected from her—as woman, as mate, as member of an elite class—is a “gesture of difficult movement, a choking movement, a movement that does not take place and that does not-enough arrive.”18 Early in the play, Beatrice shares a formally anxious response to civility’s “guiding principle . . . that people should behave in such a way as to make human relations as smooth and trouble free as possible.”19 Soon after the messenger arrives in Act I to uncomfortably comfort with the news that “but few of any [rank]” have been lost in a recent battle, “and none of name” (1.1.7), Beatrice interrupts to ask about returning soldier Benedick: “I pray you, how / many hath he kill’d and eaten in these wars? But / how many hath he kill’d? for indeed I promis’d to / eat all of his killing” (42–45). Here Beatrice carves up the undocumented/undocumentable time of the battlefield in order to insert her and Benedick’s “merry war” (1.1.62). But I call this an anxious insertion of an interval, an additive gesture of undoing, because while Beatrice’s claims to cannibalism are absurd enough to put the messenger out of his text, her blithe approach to the savagery of battle hardly cuts off but in fact extends the attitude already validated by Leonato and the messenger, as they casually dismiss the casualties of battle too unimportant to name. Beatrice’s performatively uncivil speech proves so easy to excuse because it defers the real

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talk that wasn’t going to happen anyway; moreover, it supplies an additional opportunity for her fellow Messinans to perform the civilized dismissiveness that is the “proper” response to so much human conflict. When Benedick himself arrives, Beatrice replaces cannibal with animal imagery, and the effect is to increase the anxious qualities of the dialogue. BEATRICE. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. BENEDICK. God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some gentleman or other shall ’scape a predestinate scratch’d face. BEATRICE. Scratching could not make it worse, and ’twere such a face as yours were. BENEDICK. Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. BEATRICE. A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours. BENEDICK. I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way a’ God’s name, I have done. BEATRICE You always end with a jade’s trick, I know you of old. (1.1.131–45)

According to what Bruce Clarke calls the “dream logic” of metamorphosis, Beatrice’s animal identifications should help her disrupt the expectations and impositions of decorous behavior and discover instead “opportunities for experiences disbarred from the proper body.”20 By this account, we would say that Beatrice’s birdtongue rewrites a well-known story—Philomela’s—about loss of tongue/voice by substituting a new metamorphic image; “a bird of my tongue” replaces a story of muting with one of mutation. Emboldened by a protean power that figures her as speaking bird, scratching cat, and racing horse, Beatrice declares she will not be cut off from conversation any more than she will end one “with a jade’s trick” (144). Further stretching each of Benedick’s comparisons, she embraces a “metamorphic sense of the body as a flexible attribute of identity” and argument.21 Trading animal insults may dehumanize herself and Benedick, but she will exit this skirmish the alpha animal. But Beatrice’s bird body/embo(l)diment presents a hitch, a “step that misses,” in the progress of her merry war against civil expectations. Any arrest of proper behavior enabled by her flight from polite discourse is constricted by what turns out to be the surprisingly limited range of metamorphosis as a self-expressive device. Skulsky sums up what several readers

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have noted regarding the relationship between change and stasis in Ovid’s verse when he describes Ovidian transformation as “the ordeal of a persisting awareness.”22 As others have observed of one of the first and most memorable transformations in Ovid’s poem, Daphne prays for metamorphosis, “but she did not get what she asked for, as the continuity in her figura was exactly what continued to be excessively pleasing to Apollo.”23 Rimell argues the “vast majority of Ovid’s literal metamorphoses” are “tortures which punish by suspending victims in a state of painful semi-death,”24 and William Carroll sees “beneath [any] multiplicity . . . a unity, for those who are changed are also unchanged.”25 In truth, metamorphosis operates in service not to amendment or escape, but to continuity above all.26 “Continuity is what Ovid prays for in his poem,”27 and the gods prove sympathetic to his ambition to accommodate every transformation in one “epic sweep / from the world’s beginning to the present day” (Proem 4–5). Such an epic scope means that, though “everything changes,” as Pythagoras assures in book XV, at the same time, “nothing can die” (XV 209). This summary of the human-and-everything-else condition is, frankly, a problem for women, because with few exceptions, the metamorphoses in Ovid occur as “instantiation[s] of abusive power, of which women are predominantly the victims.”28 Cora Fox has more optimistic things to say about Ovidian emotion as a form of political critique, but she as well notes that “the most repeated and exemplary structure for a tale in the poem . . . is the narrative of rape,” and she stresses that “it is politically dangerous to ignore or downplay rape as the central, and sometimes not-so-ironically eroticized content of so many Ovidian tales.”29 “Ovid lays bare a cruel universe,” Carole Newlands agrees, in which “violence takes place outside a heroic context and is troublingly directed against those who are particularly vulnerable, whether because of their gender, their profession, or their beauty.”30 That the conditions of and around metamorphosis are much different for, say, Io than they are for Jupiter, even though it is true that both change into bovines, is less evident when metamorphosis is universalized as the connecting thread linking all life forms. Beatrice’s “A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours” draws herself and Benedick into metamorphosis’s abusive orbit, and it invites the question—how much is bettering a beast worth boasting? Within the playground logic of her circular sneer is a broader complaint against the “compulsive cycle of competition and retaliation” to which metamorphosis anxiously reduces history; like Ovid’s poem, Much Ado will demonstrate that it is often “violent male desire” that “energizes” this cycle, “forcing the hand of female creativity and setting the stage for an illimitable opposition/ alliance of gendered artists/subjects.”31 All of which is to say—call Beatrice’s birdtongue a creative implement she imagines for the bettering, besting, or

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evasion of the confining social order that Benedick and his male companions represent. But call it also what it is: a choking hazard. Much Ado About Nothing is a play choked by gestures of additive undoing, which not only fail to arrest cycles of competition and retaliation but in fact create space for them to (re)occur. Actual negation could trigger a break in the paradigm of civility—a collapse of “the dichotomy between rich and poor, educated and illiterate, civilized gentility and brutish vulgarity” that “the refinements of civil behavior” existed to reinforce in this period.”32 Carroll notes a general “spiritual and psychological resistance to mutability” in the period, hand in hand with a shared concern “that man was more likely to sink than to rise, to become a brute rather than an angel,” should he gamble with his proper nature.33 It is a gamble internalized by these Messinan elites as too high to risk, despite the (unacknowledged) feats of emotional metamorphoses required for civility’s maintenance. As an example of one of these feats, we can consider the opening scene of Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film adaptation of the play, in which songster Balthasar’s lyrics from Act 2 are astutely moved up and into the mouth of Emma Thompson’s Beatrice; she quickly establishes conversion and continuity as mutually reinforcing processes: 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. (2.3.62–69)34

Thompson delivers an exaggerated, even hammy reading of these lyrics, her performance punctuated by laughs from her audience as overstressed as Thompson’s own crisp consonants. She throws her arms up and out at the last “hey nonny, nonny,” before stuffing a grape in her smiling mouth, her body miming a conversion as awkward as that urged in the song: from sober recitation to loose, unguarded pleasure. Thompson’s over-the-top performance warns us to be skeptical about accepting as natural the conversions some characters will soon undergo. This play will preach that the construction of civil union(s)—between sexes, classes, and families—requires accepting that “the fraud of men was ever so” (2.3.72), that men come by their changeable

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natures instinctively, honestly, and excusably. Rather than mourn an inconvenient fact of nature, ladies can employ their own Ovidian logic: Why arrest the momentum of woeful disappointment’s inevitable conversion to blithe composure? Everything changes; why should woes prove more constant than any other thing? Throughout Much Ado, conversion will have as its main effect a heightened recognition of, and sense of inescapability from, continuity. Perhaps the most significant example of this attitude toward change is demonstrated by the friar in Act 4. After the emotionally devastating scene of Hero’s shaming at the altar, he composes his plan to “change” Claudio’s “slander to remorse” (4.1.211), not by publishing Hero’s denials but, instead, rumors of her death: When he shall hear she died upon his words, Th’ idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination, And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparell’d in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she liv’d indeed. Then shall he mourn, If ever love had interest in his liver, And wish he had not so accused her; No, though he thought his accusation true. (223–33)

The friar’s plan is an Ovidian prayer for continuity. It is also a symptomatic performance of anxiety. Claudio’s change will not, after all, be motivated by Hero’s active presence but by the “idea of her life” once she’s dead. Here is the friar’s additive gesture of undoing, his doomed “attempt through a second act to cancel out a prior one.”35 His cancellation of Claudio’s accusation cannot be realized when the effect of Claudio’s accusation—Hero’s “death”—is the necessary catalyst for wishing it undone. “Anxiety is the difficult movement of form, a form that begins to choke, that . . . has nowhere to go, moves in motor iterations that do not displace or enact change but return in a flailing stupid repetition”36—a pretty good assessment of the friar’s plan. “Die to live,” he tells Hero (253). This is nothing. When he comforts Hero that “this wedding-day / Perhaps is but prolong’d” (253–54), he urges his listeners to understand the ensuing interval not as an interruption of continuity but a gap “put into place that ‘nothing further must happen.’”37 Hero’s task

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is to wait in this nothing until enough of something happens to Claudio that he returns to how he felt “before” the non-time of this nonevent. This really is the whole plan: wait for Claudio to be moved by the fake interruption of a continuous progress toward the happy resolution that continuity pretends to guarantee. What happiness there is in being “wrong’d . . . sland’red . . . undone” (4.1.312–13) by a man, and then marrying him, is not given space in this interval. Nor is anything planned for reshaping the conditions of thought that made Don John, known liar, more credible to Claudio than Hero, his betrothed. As for the dead/not dead Hero, the fate promised her seems inescapably Ovidian. Remarking on the “grammatical sleight of hand” by which individuals in Ovid’s Metamorphoses turn into other species, Skulsky points out how often “singular sentences are allowed to merge into general, proper nouns into common, personal history into natural history,” so that the “alchemy of grammar completes the transformation of the hero, not into a particular woodpecker [or nightingale, or swallow, or hoopoe], but into the woodpecker in general.”38 Andrew Feldherr agrees, in his reading of Procne and Philomel as protagonists relegated, by the workings of Ovid’s language, “from recognizable human characters to occupants of a distant world of myth.”39 Claudio’s language cues Hero’s own silent transformation into a generalized type: “O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been, / If half thy outward graces had been placed / About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!” (4.1.100–2). Claudio’s lame pun becomes gospel in the friar’s scheme, which grants Hero even less agency than Balthasar’s song-to-sighing-ladies; never mind converting woes; only “die to live.” It is Claudio’s change of heart and mind that is of primary concern, but Hero undergoes an unrecognized Ovidian transformation/ generalization in the process. As Gordon Teskey asserts, there is “violence” in transforming “the living to the significant.”40 Hero’s “outward graces” absorb and immobilize her, a reverse Galatea, in order that she be reformed in Claudio’s estimation as suitable wife material, more “idea of . . . life” than life itself. Where is Beatrice’s birdtongue during all this planning? Virtually silent. But she will shortly vocalize both her lack of confidence in the friar’s plan and her growing self-consciousness about the ideological motivations behind premature celebrations of affective transformation. Left alone with Benedick, she shifts conspicuously between emotional states (grief, confusion, love, happiness, anger, certainty), seeming to project an affective unknowability that the silent, passive Hero did not or could not. As in Act I, there is much talk of transformation, of strange turnings, throughout Beatrice and Benedick’s dialogue. Beatrice imagines herself as man, as eater of men, as woman of grief. Benedick appears to her as an alternating figure of happy

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passion, heroic revenge, melting manhood, and trim tongue. By the end of the scene, confessions of love have converted to the engagement to kill. All this variety is significant, especially on Beatrice’s part; Fox notes, it is often extreme affect that triggers Ovidian transformation into an inhuman and noncommunicative state,41 and Beatrice does seem to reach such an extreme: Princes and counties! Surely a princely testimony, a goodly count, Count Comfect, a sweet gallant, surely! O that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into cur’sies, valor into compliment, and men are only turn’d into tongue, and trim ones too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie, and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving. (4.1.315–23)

If she were a character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is at this point of extreme grief that Beatrice might “die to live” as statue (Niobe), dog (Hecuba), tree (Myrrha), or bird (Alcyone). Instead, she joins her apparent capitulation to extreme emotion with an affirmation not to transform further. Beatrice’s sounds of woe will stay as they are. Her request that Benedick “Kill Claudio” is less dramatic and significant, I think, than this insistence on non-converting and nonconvertible woe, especially coming as it does amid a dialogue that features all sorts of imagined conversions. If transformation cannot promise change, Beatrice asks, what is it good for? Why go through with it? To insist she will die with untransfigurable grief is to point to the insufficiency of the specific changes she has just wished for (“O that I were a man”) and the faultiness of the broader perception of change that the friar presumed earlier in the scene—where change is a natural, continuous process that will manage itself inside the intervals we create for it to work its socially corroborative magic. Beatrice’s intervention is thus manifold. Her embrace of negative affect as a feature of her womanhood is also a denial of the natural transformation expected of all sighing ladies. Her denial provokes Benedick to contemplate a possibility not considered for Hero: What happens when a woman refuses to transform? What is to be done with/for/about a woman who endlessly defers the conversion of her sighs to songs? What if she kept creating intervals, kept carving up the undocumented time of the anxiety common to female experience? Would the men in this play begin to understand the lie of conversion that disguises the cost of continuity? This lie might be summed up, borrowing again from Brinkema, as an attempt “to figure the nothing not as a place of loss, but as a recuperable site of plenitude,” when in fact “the task is to read for the form of the nothing without obliterating it, to read with loss instead of reading to fill loss.”42 That Hero is treated, before the church scene, as “essentially no more than a cipher, a sign without content, an abstract token subject to male manipulation,

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intrinsically nothing” is a common observation on her character.43 Her father and the friar make no attempt to correct this view; they in fact treat Hero’s lack of inner life as the key ingredient in their planned reconciliation of their own and Claudio’s stress. In other words, they figure her nothingness as a place not of loss but of plenitude (the latter signified earlier by Claudio’s anticipated gain in status and wealth through marriage to “such a jewel” [1/1/181]). Beatrice cries foul. In prolonging her mourning for Hero’s undoing, Beatrice first denies the church scene as a recuperable site; the Hero who walked down the aisle is not recoverable, she insists, whatever the friar has planned. Hero is wronged, slandered, undone not only by Claudio’s specific accusation but also by the patriarchal reinforcement of woman’s intrinsic nothingness that is managed by the friar and Leonato. But another problem of this problem play is that too many (male) characters fail to make enough ado about the nothing that occurs inside the uneventful intervals created for the conversion of anxiety into socially corroborative affect. It is inside this interval that Hero has been instructed to (die to) live. What is it like there, inside the nothing of not been seen as a subject, and inside the knowledge that your nonsubject status is preferred by the people who love you? Part of Beatrice’s grief stems from the fact that none of Hero’s friends and family attempt to read with, rather than immediately move past, Hero’s negative affect. Rather, they abandon her to a site of anxiety, “a place that is demarcated only to be deserted.”44 Beatrice’s embrace of her own woe plus her deferred corroboration of the friar’s plan also defers Hero’s departure from this place of anxiety. Standing in solidarity with her kinswoman, Beatrice leaves the door to this anxious site open. Her interruption is thus an invitation for her own and Hero’s non-corroborative affect to creep back into everyone else’s experience and present itself as a real obstacle to their peace. The creepingness of anxiety deserves an explanatory aside. While considering the question of where anxiety originates—inside the self or externally— Brinkema glosses the numerous instances in which philosophers position anxiety in relation to “things that squirm, shift, and stir.”45 She quotes Lacan’s spatiotemporal definition of anxiety as “when there appears in . . . frame something which is already there much closer to home.”46 Indiscernible and yet thing-y, anxiety seems to creep into situations and at the same time to already be there. Thus it is “tangled up with the confusion between interior and exterior states, between some ‘I’ that can or will (or will fail to) feel the creeps, and some exteriority for which cold primordial creatures stand in, that accost the self in bed at night, unexpected wriggling nothings performing their violence out of nowhere.”47 Brinkema’s creaturely imagery here recalls a fairy tale she summarizes earlier called The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear. The story tells of a

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second son, a perennial disappointment to his father, obsessed with learning the “skill” of “flesh-creeping.” People around him relate creepy encounters with haunted structures, hanged bodies, malicious animal spirits, etc., but even when the boy seeks out identical confrontations, he walks away unencumbered and unenlightened. Ultimately he brings into his marriage his unsatisfied aspiration to learn “the creeps”: dearly as he loved his wife, and happy as he was, [he] still kept on saying: “If only my flesh would creep! If only my flesh would creep!” At last his young wife was vexed at this. Her chambermaid said: “I’ll come to the rescue; he shall learn flesh-creeping all right.” She went out to the brook that flowed through the garden and fetched a whole bucketful of little fishes. At night, when the young king was asleep, his wife was to pull off the coverlet and pour the bucket of cold water with the gudgeons over him, so that the little fish all wriggled on top of him. Then he woke up and cried: “Oh, my flesh is creeping! My flesh is creeping, wife dear! Yes, now I do know what flesh-creeping is.”48

Brinkema notes that most of this story follows “the generic thrust of the education of a dunce,” but “it concludes remarkably with a schooling for skin in place of sense”; the little fish on the man’s flesh “produce the shudder in place of the capacity for ‘correct’ interpretation,” and “the ending appears to suggest that a wet, cold shudder is an adequate affective form of textual interpretation.”49 I offer this lengthy aside in order to posit that Claudio and Don Pedro require a material schooling “in place of the capacity for ‘correct’ interpretation” of negative, non-corroborative affect. Their lesson arrives (though not enough) in the form of Benedick’s challenge, because nothing more subtle will do for these two dunces. Claudio must undergo the anxiety of non-recuperability (i.e. a version of Hero’s experience of the choking space of anxiety) in the bluntest way—as an external threat on his life, a duel to the death. “Kill Claudio” is the grim fairy-tale ending that Much Ado flirts with, in which Benedick’s man-killing blows would operate like the little fishes in The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear, schooling Claudio’s skin. I agree with Jonathan Hall’s observation that, though the duel between Claudio and Benedick never commences—the comic plot will not allow it—the play’s transformation of violence into harmony is nevertheless “shot through with anxiety over the possible alternative resolution”—the one we see and cannot forget in the final Act of Othello, for example, where dead bodies crowd a marriage bed. “Love is precariously close to hostility,” warn both of these jealousy-driven dramas.50 The truth of this claustrophobic intimacy—the truth of intimacy’s claustrophobia—is the creeping notion already present in Beatrice and Hero’s lived experience: they are the sighing/singing

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ladies, taught to see their lovers as “deceivers ever.” To feel trapped with such a notion is the affective lesson their male companions have never been in the position “correctly” to interpret. Sensing that conventional pedagogy won’t do, Beatrice turns to fairy tale logic to lead Much Ado’s gentlemen toward the non-place where they have decreed negative affect be exiled until its dutiful, non-eventful conversion into civility. In such a space, a killed Claudio becomes imaginable as dramatic resolution, but the point is for Claudio (and Don Pedro and Leonato) to recognize the same potential for lethality in Hero’s own irrecuperable loss. So that even if it does not occur, Claudio’s thinkable death makes more cuttings up and cuttings off of civil corroborations thinkable in turn, including the cutting off of Hero’s planned conversion of woe to wedded bliss. Close readers may even have prepared themselves for the possibility of Claudio’s violent demise—as early as Act 1, when Benedick invites a comparison between a cagey Count Claudio and the murderous Mr. Fox, serial killer of women from “the old tale:” BENEDICK. You hear, Count Claudio, I can be secret as a dumb man; I would have you think so; but on my allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance, he is in love. With who? Now that is your Grace’s part. Mark how short his answer is: with Hero, Leonato’s short daughter. CLAUDIO. If this were so, so were it utt’red. BENEDICK. Like the old tale, my lord: ‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so, but indeed, God forbid it should be so.’ (1.1.209–18)

In The Tale of Mr. Fox, the title character utters these lines as his betrothed, Lady Mary, relates to their dinner guests a horrifying dream she’s supposedly had about a visit to Mr. Fox’s estate. In reality, she has in fact made this visit, and she relates everything she saw and did: moving past posted invitations/ warnings to “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold,” she discovered a bloody chamber full of dead and mutilated bodies; hid as Mr. Fox returned home dragging a maiden by the hair; caught in her lap the severed hand of the maiden after Mr. Fox chopped it off; and finally made her escape. After sharing all these details at the next night’s celebratory meal, Lady Mary finally silences Mr. Fox’s increasingly desperate denials by using the hand of the unnamed victim to literally point the finger at him—“At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr. Fox into a thousand pieces.”51 I feel compelled to point out the perfectly anxious construction of one of the story’s refrains, “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.” Like “die to live,” it is an imperative that punctuates time itself, for into the space between bold and not too bold an interval of time is created for nothing to happen—however

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much of nothing it takes to render a woman’s boldness not so bold that it might destabilize the current order of things.52 Lady Mary is too bold when she defies this interval and enters the story’s bloody chamber. Beatrice is too bold when she defies the friar’s interval for Claudio’s change of heart and demands attention for Hero’s affective state instead. Under her direction, the interval becomes a fairy tale site, not of plenitude but of anxiety—where movement is as choked and difficult as it is in Mr. Fox’s grammatically tortuous refrain, “it is not so, nor ’twas not so, but indeed, God forbid it should be so.” Géza Kállay suggests that this sentence could “be treated as a kind of motto” to Much Ado, in that it enacts the way “our certainty with respect to ‘reality’ is destabilized . . . in ordinary, everyday language.” It does so by offering the “not . . . totally implausible interpretation” of the nor in ‘nor ‘twas not so’ as and not, making possible the reading, “it is not so, and it was not not so, either.”53 Kállay concludes, “we might say that the ‘not’ is inhering in ‘is’ even when we say, in the most everyday sense: This is a chair.”54 So it matters that, of all things, The Tale of Mr. Fox enters Benedick’s mind during his conversation with Claudio and Don Pedro, and it matters that he quotes Mr. Fox’s refrain, because that sentence on its own stimulates “a greater amount of awareness of, and a greater amount of intimacy with, the not not.”55 Mr. Fox’s anxious denial creeps into the play as uncannily as Philomela’s tongue twitches around inside it.56 By the time we arrive in Act 4, we may look back at Benedick’s allusion as a formal identification of Claudio as the “enemy” (4.1.299) against whom he is now being officially recruited, by Beatrice, to draw his sword. Through their nods to the carnage and violence of myth and folktale, Beatrice and Benedick widen the paths for negative affect to creep into the romance of Much Ado’s courtship plot(s).57 Act 5, of course, drops us at the door to Much Ado’s happy ending, but if we find ourselves hesitating at that threshold, we might blame it on the burdensome suspicion of the whole logic of transformation as a civilizing device that the play has also dropped at our feet. Rereading Much Ado About Nothing in the still-developing aftermath of the viral moment of #MeToo, I see, with a new and searing clarity, that the play’s real scandal is not (only) that ladies are expected to convert woes to nonnies, but that the men they live among are not expected to notice that conversion as an event, because they are not expected to recognize the difference between a woman’s peace and her pain. Beatrice’s delay of the conversion of Hero’s pain is also her demand to note it, because it deserves recognition as pain before being translated into something else. To make no ado of Hero’s pre-converted affect is to risk condoning it, even celebrating it, as necessary for the maintenance of social harmony. As I fret over the logic of transformation that wants to read #MeToo’s expression of shared anxiety as evidence of the unified sociality, the collective goodwill,

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that must be already present to have inspired such solidarity in the first place, I look to the anxious maneuvering modeled by Beatrice in Much Ado. She comes close to diagnosing a condition-in-common, a social ill(ness) plaguing the elite of Messina: they busy themselves with affective transformations deemed socially desirable for the very reason that they do not result in social change. The world remains a “wedding day . . . but prolonged,” every intervening event, however slimy or sour, recuperable as a player or prop in service to some future festivity. This attachment to recuperability seems probable only for someone like the dunce in the flesh-creeping story, but the wedding-or-bust momentum of comedies like Much Ado assume their characters’ and their audience’s good, dopey faith in relationships constituted by hostility as much as love. This is why Beatrice’s delaying gestures are important. Because of her, and in spite of its conventional happy ending, Much Ado manages to teach a grim but reverberating lesson about whom and what we risk abandoning to civility’s ruinous procedures for correcting harm. I think of Beatrice every time I read another headline about the success or failure of MeToo as a movement, and I have learned to hear each tweet as an Ovidian echo, to read Twitter itself read as a site of unexpected metamorphoses, pained struggles to speak from selves in the midst or at risk of sought and unsought transformations. No doubt, the words Me Too were chosen for how unambiguously they indicate correspondence and resemblance. It is gratifying to translate each hashtag into a readable expression of assertion—watch how quickly shared woes convert to collective defiance of the status quo! Moreover, take seriously each tweet’s fusion with the animal, and #MeToo invokes a creaturely instinct for self-preservation—one poem imagines the voices behind the hashtag combining to form “a wild murmuration,” each tweet capable at once of fight and flight.58 Bach argues that “taking [a text’s] creaturely references seriously exposes the use of people and other creatures in perhaps uncomfortable ways.”59 Indeed, to recognize the trans-corporeal nature of Twitter is to look ahead to a more capacious recognition of and empathy for the variety of bodies that seek to thrive in our virtual and material spaces. At the same time, though, I hear in these birds of our tongues an Ovidian warning about the limits and the costs of conversion. The scope of this paper will not permit a full evaluation of the MeToo hashtag or its contribution to the wider MeToo social movement that began a decade earlier.60 I will merely propose the delay of the hashtag’s recuperation as socially corroborative affect. For #MeToo is also and always an animal cry, and it is wild enough to escape our utilitarian translations.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bach, Rebecca Ann. Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare, Descartes, and Animal Studies. New York: Routledge, 2020. Branagh, Kenneth, Stephen Evans, David Parfitt, Richard Briers, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, et al.  Much Ado About Nothing. MGM Home Entertainment, 2003. Brinkema, Eugenie. The Forms of the Affects. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. Burrow, Colin. “Re-embodying Ovid: Renaissance Afterlives.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, edited by Philip Hardie, 301–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Carroll, William. The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. Clarke, Bruce. Allegories of Writing: The Subject of Metamorphosis. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. Duckert, Lowell. “Earth’s Prospects.” In Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, edited by Lowell Duckert and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 237–68. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Enterline, Lynn. The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Feldherr, Andrew. Playing Gods: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Politics of Fiction. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010. Flannery, M. C. “Gower’s Blushing Bird, Philomela’s Transforming Face.” Postmedieval 8 (2017): 35–50. Fox, Cora. Ovid and the Politics of Emotion in Elizabethan England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Greenhill, Pauline. “‘Fitcher’s [Queer] Bird’: A Fairy-Tale Heroine and Her Avatars.” Marvels & Tales 22, no. 1 (April 2008): 143≠67. Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. “Fitcher’s Bird.” In Bluebeard Tales From Around the World, edited by Heidi Anne Heiner, 46–52. Nashville: SurLaLune Press, 2011. Hall, Jonathan. Anxious Pleasures: Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995. Jacobs, Joseph. “The Tale of Mr. Fox.” In Bluebeard Tales from Around the World, edited by Heidi Anne Heiner, 141–44. Nashville: SurLaLune Press, 2011. Kállay, Géza. “’It Is Not so, nor ’Twas Not so’: Funny Words and the Role-Playing of ‘Double-Tongues’ in Much Ado About Nothing.”  The AnaChronisT (January 2003): 29–46. “lapwing, n.” OED Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2022, www​ .oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/105785. Leon, Kenny. Much Ado About Nothing, dir. Kenny Leon. PBS Great Performances, 2021, https:​//​www​.pbs​.org​/wnet​/gperf​/shakespeare​-in​-the​-park​-much​-ado​-about​ -nothing​-about​/9822​/.

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Little, Pippa. “Spartaca.” #Metoo: Rallying against Sexual Assault and Harassment: A Woman’s Poetry Anthology, edited by Deborah Alma. United Kingdom: Fair Acre Press, 2018. Lucking, David. “Bringing Deformed Forth: Engendering Meaning in Much Ado about Nothing.” Costerus 193 (March 2012): 62–85. Mazzio, Carla. “Sins of the Tongue.” In The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, edited by David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, 53–80. New York: Routledge, 1997. Mendelson, Sara. “The Civility of Women in Seventeenth-Century England.” In Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, edited by Peter Burke, Brian Harrison, and Paul Slack, 111–25. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Micros, Marianne. “Robber Bridegrooms and Devoured Brides: The Influence of Folktales on Spenser’s Busirane and Isis Church Episodes.” In Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts, edited by Mary Ellen Lamb and Karen Bamford, 73–84. Ashgate, 2008. Miller, Gordon L. “The Fowls of Heaven and the Fate of the Earth: Assessing the Early Modern Revolution in Natural History.” Worldviews 9, no. 1 (2005): 57–81. Newlands, Carole. “Violence and Resistance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” In Texts and Violence in the Roman World, edited by Monica Gale and J. H. D Scourfield, 140–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Ovid and Charles Martin. Metamorphoses: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Richlin, Amy. Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. Rimell, Victoria. Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Differences and the Poetic Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd edition, edited by G. B. Evans, 1816–1838, 361–98. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. ———. The Rape of Lucrece. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd edition, edited by G. B. Evans, 1816–1838. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Sharrock, Alison, et al., editors. Metamorphic Readings: Transformation, Language, and Gender in the Interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Skulsky, Harold. Metamorphosis: The Mind in Exile. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Taylor, Brian. “Birds, Liminality, and Human Transformation: An Animist Perspective on New Animism.” Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 14, no.1 (2012): 108–127. Teskey, Gordon. Allegory and Violence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Thomas, Keith. In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England. Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2018. Wheeler, Stephen. Narrative Dynamics in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Tübingen; Narr, 2000.

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NOTES 1. All Shakespeare quotations from The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd edition, ed. G. B. Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 2. Rebecca Ann Bach, Birds and Other Creatures in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare, Descartes, and Animal Studies (New York: Routledge, 2020), 3. 3. See Brian Taylor’s “Birds, Liminality, and Human Transformation: An Animist Perspective on New Animism,” in Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 14, no. 1 (2012): 108–27. For more on birds’ unique status in premodern thought, see also Gordon L. Miller, “The Fowls of Heaven and the Fate of the Earth: Assessing the Early Modern Revolution in Natural History,” Worldviews 9, no. 1 (2005): 57–81. 4. Beatrice herself is compared, by Hero, to a lapwing, running “Close by the ground, to hear our conference” (3.1.24–25). Hero may be referring to the young lapwing’s supposed habit of “run[ning] about with its head in the shell,” or to the bird’s “wily method of drawing away a visitor from its nest” by trailing one of its wings as if broken. See “lapwing, n.,” OED Online (Oxford University Press, December 2022), www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/105785. 5. All quotations from Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Charles Martin (W.W. Norton, 2005). 6. There is precedent in Shakespeare for the alteration of Philomel’s story. In The Rape of Lucrece, Lucrece vows to imitate Philomel by “fix[ing] a sharp knife” (1138) against her heart, just as Philomel “against a thorn . . . bear’st thy part, / To keep thy sharp woes waking” (1135–36). But Philomel engages in no such self-torture in Ovid’s account. In Gower’s retelling in the Confessio Amantis, Philomela’s nightingale form is described, according to M.C. Flannery, “as both refuge from and reminder of her trauma,” in that it “reflects and extends her emotional experience as a human.” See “Gower’s Blushing Bird, Philomela’s Transforming Face,” Postmedieval, vol. 8, (2017): 40, 37. 7. The Metamorphoses is alluded to more directly, later in the play, first when Hero and Don Pedro playfully refer to the story of Baucis and Philemon in 2.1; and again in 5.4, when Claudio and Benedick testily tease each other by referring to the story of Europa. 8. Bruce Clarke, Allegories of Writing: The Subject of Metamorphosis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 55. 9. Carla Mazzio, “Sins of the Tongue,” in The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio (New York: Routledge, 1997), 57. 10. William Carroll, The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 25. 11. Lynn Enterline, The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 7. 12. Enterline, 18.

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13. Colin Burrow, “Re-embodying Ovid: Renaissance Afterlives,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, ed. Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 308. 14. Lowell Duckert, “Earth’s Prospects,” in Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, Eds. Lowell Duckert and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 255. 15. Eugenie Brinkema, The Forms of the Affects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 198. 16. Brinkema, 195. 17. Brinkema, 194, 196, 219. 18. Brinkema, 201. 19. Keith Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England (Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2018), 75–76. 20. Clarke, Allegories of Writing, 55, 57. 21. Cora Fox, Ovid and the Politics of Emotion in Elizabethan England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 55. 22. Harold Skulsky, Metamorphosis: The Mind in Exile (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 27. 23. Alison Sharrock, Metamorphic Readings: Transformation, Language, and Gender in the Interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 39–40. 24. Victoria Rimell, Ovid’s Lovers: Desire, Differences and the Poetic Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 21. 25. Carroll, Metamorphoses of Shakespearean, 35. 26. For a thorough discussion of continuity as the poem’s generative principle, see Stephen Wheeler’s Narrative Dynamics in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Tübingen; Narr, 2000). 27. “Introduction,” in Ovid, Metamorphoses, xix. 28. Sharrock, Metamorphic Readings, 48. 29. Fox, Ovid and the Politics, 13. See also Amy Richlin’s “Reading Ovid’s Rapes,” chapter five in Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014): 130–66. 30. Carole Newlands, “Violence and Resistance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” in Texts and Violence in the Roman World, ed. Monica Gale and J. H. D Scourfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 141. 31. Rimell, Ovid’s Lovers, 13. 32. Sara Mendelson, “The Civility of Women in Seventeenth-Century England,” in  Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, eds. Peter Burke, Brian Harrison, and Paul Slack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 113. 33. Carroll, Metamorphoses of Shakespearean, 17, 18. 34. Much Ado About Nothing. Directed by Kenneth Branagh (MGM Home Entertainment, 2003), https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=7vtBsKPokHs. 35. Brinkema, Forms of the Affects, 195. 36. Brinkema, 209. 37. Brinkema, 196.

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38. Skulsky, Mind in Exile, 34–35. 39. Andrew Feldherr, Playing Gods: Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Politics of Fiction (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2010), 211. 40. Gordon Teskey, Allegory and Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 24–25. 41. Fox, Ovid and the Politics, 89. 42. Brinkema, Forms of the Affects, 216. 43. David Lucking, “Bringing Deformed Forth: Engendering Meaning in Much Ado about Nothing,” Costerus 193 (March 2012): 73. 44. Brinkema, Forms of the Affects, 208. 45. Brinkema, 187. 46. Brinkema, 203. 47. Brinkema, 192. 48. qtd. in Brinkema, 186. 49. Brinkema, 186. 50. Jonathan Hall, Anxious Pleasures: Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995), 174. 51. Joseph Jacobs, “The Tale of Mr. Fox,” in Bluebeard Tales from Around the World, ed. Heidi Anne Heiner (Nashville: SurLaLune Press, 2011), 144. 52. Noting the refrain’s appearance in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Marianne Micros glosses the text as instructions for “a ritual that will prepare [a woman] for the loss of identity that comes with marriage. She must surrender her prized virginity and, along with it, much of her former value to society to become, suddenly, a fertile woman, one prized but no longer placed on a pedestal, one expected to conform to her husband’s wishes.” See “Robber Bridegrooms and Devoured Brides: The Influence of Folktales on Spenser’s Busirane and Isis Church Episodes,” in Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts, ed. Mary Ellen Lamb (Ashgate, 2008), 78. 53. Géza Kállay, “‘It Is Not so, nor ’Twas Not so’: Funny Words and the Role-Playing of ‘Double-Tongues’ in Much Ado About Nothing,” The AnaChronisT (Jan. 2003): 35, 44, 36. 54. Kállay, “Funny Words,” 44. 55. Kállay, “Funny Words,” 45. 56. If our discussion of birds seems to have strayed too far afield, a variant of the Mr. Fox tale type can lure the subject back to hand—or foot(note). See Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “Fitcher’s Bird,” in Bluebeard Tales from Around the World, 46–52. Fitcher/Mr. Fox is a sorcerer in this variant, systematically kidnapping women and testing their obedience by giving them an egg, a key, and an order not to open a locked door. Two sisters fail the test when they unlock the forbidden chamber and accidentally drop their eggs into a basin of blood; when their stained eggs reveal their trespass, the sorcerer chops them into pieces. The third sister manages to protect her egg but still enter the room; thus she fools Fitcher into a marriage proposal. She reanimates her dismembered sisters, tricks the sorcerer into carrying them home in a basket of gold, and while he is away puts the rest of her bizarre plan in motion; this includes dressing up a skull as a bride and placing it carefully in an attic window, then rolling herself in honey and feathers “until she looked like a wondrous bird, and no

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one could recognize her” (Grimm, 48). Boldy walking the roads in her new getup, she meets her sorcerer-fiancé, who asks, “O, Fitcher’s bird, how com’st thou here?” “I come from Fitcher’s house quite near.” “And what may the young bride be doing?” “From cellar to garret she’s swept all clean, And now from the window she’s peeping, I ween.” (Grimm, 48) As Pauline Greenhill argues, “The protagonist creates avatars, and they successfully stand for her, because she is unknown and unknowable,” and because Fitcher sees women as “no more than a cluster of parts.” See “‘Fitcher’s [Queer] Bird’: A Fairy-Tale Heroine and Her Avatars,” Marvels & Tales 22, no. 1 (April 2008); 162,157. Like Beatrice, Fitcher’s Bird “develops her own assemblage, with parts that are . . . both her own and not her own” (Greenhill, 162). And like Much Ado, Fitcher’s Bird warns that “women’s ultimate survival as autonomous beings depends on secrets being uncovered” (Greenhill, 151)—or, we might say instead, on intimacy with the not not being nurtured. 57. In response to this opening for negative affect, some modern productions insert an extratextual schooling for Claudio’s skin. The Hero of Kenny Leon’s 2019 production greets Claudio in Act 5 with a slap to the face. One feels relief at this physical indication of objection to and lingering distress over Claudio’s near-fatal “mistaking” (5.1.274). The slap also offers a restrained correspondence to Lady Mary’s final outburst in The Tale of Mr. Fox: “But it is so, and it was so. Here’s hand and ring I have to show!” (Jacobs, “The Tale of Mr. Fox,” 144, my emphasis). See Much Ado About Nothing, dir. Kenny Leon, Delacourt Theater, June 2019, streaming on PBS Great Performances, 2021, https:​//​www​.pbs​.org​/wnet​/gperf​/shakespeare​-in​-the​-park​-much​ -ado​-about​-nothing​-about​/9822​/. 58. Pippa Little, “Spartaca,” in #Metoo: Rallying against Sexual Assault and Harassment: A Woman’s Poetry Anthology, ed. Deborah Alma (United Kingdom: Fair Acre Press, 2018). 59. Bach, Birds, 4. 60. See Tarana Burke, “Get to Know Us.” metoomvmt.org.

PART III: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Chapter 6

Punishing Wrongdoers and Other Things I Didn’t Know I Needed from a Romantic Comedy Messina as a Post-Conflict Society Kelsey Ridge

Even though Much Ado About Nothing is ostensibly a classic Shakespeare romantic comedy ending with a wedding—in fact, a double wedding—the play also culminates with punishment. The penultimate sentences of the play are “Think not on him till tomorrow;/ I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him” (5.4.125–26).1 Why does Shakespeare end a comedy on a note darker than kissing couples? These punishments create necessary closure to the story of a postwar society. The play is about harm and reconciliation. Structurally, as Claudio’s public atonement and the subsequent marriage repair the harms he did to Hero, Don John’s punishment addresses the social harms caused by the war. This interpretation examines both the individual characters and Messina as a society to reveal the way war trauma has been noticed, responded to, and healed by the society of Shakespeare’s Messina—or rather the way that it has not. This reading relies on trauma theory and psychological research, particularly on the necessity of punishing wrongdoers in post-conflict societies as an essential component for social and individual recovery. Although modern society often treats the postwar responsibilities of return, reintegration, retribution, and restitution as individual ones, these responsibilities belong to the whole society.2 Messina, the location of much of the play, is a little bit of a disaster. It was not the site of the war.3 Instead, it is the site where the returning victorious 107

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army (and the portion of the enemy that has seemingly been reintroduced to society) sojourn on their way back to Aragon. No explanation is offered of what was officially (or even generally) done with the losing side, though some are still hanging around. That this society is post-conflict cannot be disputed. One can presume based on textual details that the war the men are returning from was a civil war or the putting down of an insurrection. Don Pedro and Don John were on opposite sides of the war; Don John lost. Leonato greets a returning Don John by pointing out that Don John is now “reconciled to the Prince,” meaning that previously they had been in disunity (1.1.147­–49). Conrade emphasizes that Don John “stood out against” his brother and needed to be taken into Don Pedro’s grace, which reveals that in the war Don John positioned himself as Don Pedro’s opponent, perhaps even as the aggressor or instigator, and needed postwar forgiveness (1.3.18–24). Claudio is described by Don John as having “all the glory of [his] overthrow” (1.3.61–62), suggesting Don John was leading the opposing side. Don John also says about attending a dinner, “their cheer is the greater that I am subdued” (1.3.66–67). While subdued could refer to Don John’s general melancholy (or perhaps just sulky) disposition, it could also refer to his having been beaten and put down in the war, that they are cheerful because Don John’s side lost. This Messina is a postwar world.4 The characters, though, even those who have only just returned from the war, do their best impressions of shrugging it off. There is no process of truth and reconciliation—no discussion of wrongdoings or formalized effort by the regime to address harms done. No one even mentions any injury, and the few dead are apparently unimportant, since they are “none of name” (1.1.7). Leonato actually says the army has brought “home full numbers” immediately after the messenger announces there were deaths (1.1.9).5 (This framing is in stark contrast to Bandello’s Timbreo and Fenecia, Shakespeare’s source, which opens with a detailing of the wholesale slaughter of the French in Sicily.6 Perhaps Shakespeare wanted to clear a non-bloody path to his comedy of nuptial shenanigans.) Shakespeare’s characters are done thinking about the war. Now they are just getting married and pranking their friends. The character who gives most discussion to the effects of the conflict on their society is Don John, who despite a great deal of seeming freedom and no apparent punishment, insists that he is mistrusted and unable to do his liking (1.1.25–34). His focus on the war, in this comedy, seems to be related to his status as the villain of the piece.7 He will not let the conflict go and elects to disrupt the imagined consequence-free joy. What does it say about a postwar culture that it will not admit it is in a post-conflict state, and how can such a society care for people harmed by the conflict, when they are determined not to acknowledge the war at all?



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One of the effects of this shrugging off of the war is that, from what audiences see and hear, nothing is done about the men who instigated the conflict and engaged in the violence. Research on post-conflict populations suggests that “the risk of onset and severity of PTSD may differ across cultural groups because of variation in the . . . ongoing sociocultural context,” such as “residing among unpunished perpetrators in postconflict settings.”8 A post-conflict setting populated by unpunished perpetrators absolutely recalls the Don John situation. The man participated in, or perhaps led, a violent assault on his country’s government, and, yet, somehow now that his rebellion has been put down, because Don Pedro has forgiven him, everyone is expected to forgive him, trust him, and invite him places. Everyone expects, for example, that he will be invited to Claudio’s wedding. In fact, Don John has been allowed to have minions, Conrade and Borachio, who serve him and enact his will (1.3, 2.2, and 3.3). While these minions do useful dramatic work for Shakespeare, allowing the villainous plan to be constructed before the audience in dialogue as opposed to monologue or the kind of narration prose novellas are allowed,9 it is still disturbing that a man who led a civil war is allowed personal supporters after his most recent misuse of support. Don John is so forgiven, “being reconciled to the Prince,” that not only is he welcomed to Leonato’s but Leonato says that as a subject he “owe[s Don John] all duty” (1.1.147–49). Don John and his ilk are the unpunished perpetrators among whom these characters live. Admittedly, Don John does not perceive himself as unpunished. He considers himself only enfranchised within limits and only trusted so far, of which he complains, as if that were not the appropriate response to someone who just waged war against the government (1.3.30–32). He states that “if [he] had [his] liberty, [he] would do [his] liking” (1.3.33–34), revealing he feels unfree, but he also affirms that “[if he] had [his] mouth, [he] would bite,” which reveals somewhat what he would do with more liberty—and rather what he does with the amount he has (1.3.32–33). He feels mocked. He believes that he is kept around so that others can enjoy his having lost and suffering (1.3.66–67). He feels himself constrained and humiliated, if not punished. He has not, though, been punished. Not truly. In practice, he is at great liberty. He has been permitted to keep his minions. The audience can understand, consequently, that Don John does not have or offer an accurate sense of how free he is. His freedom is on full display for those it may afront. At the start of the narrative, the damage caused by Don John’s actions has not been rectified or recompensed. Their whole society is so keen on pretending to be fine that they are behaving almost irrationally, without regard to the past. For individuals interested in averting further harm, to themselves, others, and their nation, the rational course of action would be to identify those

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responsible for the assault on the government and to ensure they cannot do it again. Wrongdoers, logically, would be constrained, even if they were not punished. Messinan society does none of this. Don John has, instead, been permitted to act with impunity. This impunity itself constitutes a further harm. Research in post-conflict societies has identified an association between impunity of perpetrators and postwar trauma in survivors. Some of this association depends on how one defines impunity: “if impunity is more broadly defined to include an element of continued threat posed by those held responsible for trauma,” research conducted on a post-conflict population supports an association between impunity from perpetrators and persistent trauma among survivors.10 However, the impunity, the lack of punishment, is not the only factor that contributes to the harm in the post-conflict setting. Power likely plays a role: “the mental health implications of impunity in countries where those responsible for human rights violations are no longer in power (e.g., South Africa) are likely to be different from those in other countries still ruled by an oppressive regime.”11 After all, even the unpunished, if they are no longer in power, will be constrained in their capacity to create further harm. Retaining power, though, means they retain the capacity to injure. For a sense of safety, people need to feel perpetrators have been brought to justice. The play shows Messina’s regime doing almost the opposite of logical mitigation, let alone justice. As Don John, at the beginning, is returned to all the status he was previously offered as the Prince’s bastard brother, while he may not be running an oppressive regime, he continues to occupy the position from which he was able to cause harm—which he then absolutely does. While on the level of plot, “the difficulty of the villains in getting traction [in their villainous schemes] lies also in [the audience’s] own desire to forget their existence,”12 the villains are only free to enact these villainous plots in the first place because the characters appear intent on forgetting Don John has already established himself as the villain. This society’s unwillingness to address the harms of the war create the harms we are shown over the course of the play. This chapter’s argument is not based on materialized metaphor.13 This reading does not approach Claudio as a metaphor for his society’s collapse. It instead argues that the Messina narrative is a story of a society in collapse. In turn, it does not consider Claudio a metaphor for the damage done to his society by the war but rather a wounded man in a society uninterested in acknowledging those wounds. The social problems that form the core of the plot—primarily Claudio’s betrayal of Hero—all stem from the war-related traumas before the start of the play, all of which are unpunished. The harms of this trauma also crop up in the language the characters use. The war and its unaddressed events and aftermath are influencing the worldviews of even



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the characters who do not acknowledge the conflict after they return, or those who did not see the violent conflict. It is the whole unacknowledging society. This society is, at least for some citizens, innately damaging to inhabit. Characters do not exist alone in their plays any more than people exist alone in their worlds. Characters live among casts, as people live among societies. Injury and healing happen in societies. Consequently, whether harm or healing has happened reflects on a society. Is it a place where harm is allowed, or even enabled? Is it a place where healing is possible? For all that productions sometimes approach Shakespeare’s Messina as a country idyll, it is not a place of healing. Not after this conflict. People experience their wounds in communities, and “healing from trauma depends upon communalization of the trauma—being able safely to tell the story to someone who is listening and who can be trusted to retell it truthfully to others in the community.”14 Messina does not offer that. Their society has peace, but that is not sufficient for proper recovery: “In many countries that have recently emerged from dictatorship or civil war, it has become apparent that putting an immediate stop to the violence and attending to basic survival needs of the affected populations are necessary but not sufficient conditions for social healing.”15 These characters may have peace and seeming prosperity, but they have, at most, the illusion of safety. Actual safety would have required preventing those who did the initial harming, like Don Pedro, from doing it again, which has not happened. For the survivors of this civil war, that society where healing can occur does not exist. The refusal to acknowledge the trauma of the war may not be the choice of singular characters. Devon E. Hinton and Roberto Lewis-Fernández argue that while “arousal and reexperiencing symptoms may be more driven by the biology of trauma,” the “avoidance and numbing may, to a greater extent, represent coping mechanisms that result from culturally indicated ways of dealing with distress.”16 As discussed, characters stop mentioning the preceding war after 1.1. (Claudio volunteers to follow Don Pedro back to Aragon, suggesting a possible intent to maintain his martial profession,17 and Benedick discusses whether the men continue to be soldierly [2.3], but the prior war escapes mention.) One could interpret this mass avoidance as Messina’s socially acceptable coping mechanism. If this avoidance is a cultural norm, it may mask “avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s)” or “avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders (people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s)” in individuals.18 Unfortunately, this avoidance may be less a coping mechanism and more a sign of unresolved cultural trauma. Judith Herman notes that, “in the aftermath of systematic political violence, entire communities can display

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symptoms of PTSD, trapped in alternating cycles of numbing and intrusion, silence and reenactment. Recovery requires remembrance and mourning.”19 Messina certainly seems engaged in the state of silencing and avoiding thinking about the trauma of the war. Despite these characters’ seeming amity and disinclination to admit that anything is wrong in their world, their dialogue throughout the comedy is heavy with language of illness and injury. For example, Beatrice compares Benedick’s friendship to an insanity-inducing disease that will cost a thousand pounds to cure (1.1.81–85). While Beatrice does not “run mad” after falling in love (1.1.83) or catching the Benedick, both of which characters suppose will drive one crazy, her love for him does manifest in physical illness (3.4.38–39, 47–48, 58–60, 68–69). When Benedick falls for their ruse and believes Beatrice loves him, Claudio says he has “ta’en th’ infection” (2.3.122), which “connotes the status of love as an illness.”20 The “infection” also may or may not actually give him a toothache.21 Even in its best-case scenario, in this world, love literally hurts. Their interpersonal relationships are diseased and diseasing. That this sort of language pervades even the play’s lighthearted B-plot should prime an audience that all is not as it seems with the characters’ insistence that everything is now peachy. This disordered society comes to its nadir when Claudio and Hero’s relationship ends in an explosive fashion as a result of both Don John’s machinations and the unresolved war-related trauma. Critics generally agree that the Hero/Claudio plot is a place where the war comes home. Elisabeth Bronfen, for example, notes that in the “war between brothers, a civil war brought home,” “Claudio’s slandered bride takes on the role of collateral.”22 While Claudio is often noted critically for his sexual jealousy,23 Claudio’s greater issue is mistrust. Claudio has come out of the war (caused by a man betraying his brother) with a profound distrust of those around him. This distrust extends from his fiancée to his former commanding officer. We see this behavior first in how he reacts to comments by the leader of his society, the man he fought for and with in the war. Claudio’s first reaction when Don Pedro approves of his match with Hero is not happiness but rather the assumption Don Pedro is tricking him (1.1.209–13). Indeed, his mistrust of his commanding officer is so severe that he believes Don John, a demonstrably untrustworthy individual, when Don John says that Don Pedro is betraying Claudio: ’Tis certain so; the Prince woos for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love. Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues:



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Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent; for Beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. This is an accident of hourly proof Which I mistrusted not. (2.1.159–67).

This pronouncement is not predicated on women being inherently promiscuous. It is predicated on friendship being inherently false, all agents being untrustworthy, and men being inherently prone to seducing other men’s female partners. His remark that this is of hourly proof suggests he actually believes he should have seen this betrayal coming,24 that his trusting this much was an aberration that he now considers a mistake.25 This distrust rears its head again in the discussion of Hero. Notably, during the first discussion of Hero’s supposed infidelity, it is not phrased as promiscuity or sluttishness but as disloyalty: DON JOHN I came hither to tell you; and, circumstances shortened—for she has been too long a-talking of—the lady is disloyal. CLAUDIO Who, Hero? DON JOHN Even she: Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero. CLAUDIO Disloyal? (3.2.91–97).

What captures Claudio’s attention is not the language of ownership but of loyalty. Indeed, Borachio plans for it to be considered “disloyalty” (2.2.44). As we are discussing a man with trust issues who may be primed to be exceptionally sensitive to matters of (dis)loyalty, it is significant that the issue is not raised as sexual purity but as interpersonal loyalty. Claudio’s post-conflict environment makes loyalty and betrayal salient issues. Don John betrayed his brother and his community. Then Don Pedro betrayed the community, especially those immediately involved in putting down the rebellion, by treating the act as of little consequence. People died stopping Don John’s rebellion—even if everyone onstage did not consider those men important, some people did, and some survivors watched them die. Despite the efforts to repress memory of the war, anyone with a decent memory would take away from it how untrustworthy people can be and how dangerous untrustworthy people can prove. Beyond the pervasive language of cuckoldry in the play, a man might concern himself with the loyalty of a wife, who in a community of companionate marriage should be the nearest and dearest—most loved but also most able to betray and most capable of harming him by doing so.

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In response to this perceived disloyalty, Claudio casts off Hero in a vicious public shaming. Even after he has been told that she died upon being accused, he does not show proper regret for the harm he has caused her (and in their society her family) through his destruction of her honor until he finds out that she was innocent of the accusations. Claudio’s behavior, though, does not exist in a vacuum. The presence of unpunished perpetrators does not only impact Claudio. While critics focus on Claudio’s insecurity and the rapidity with which he heeds the least trustworthy man in the room, Don Pedro is not much better. Perhaps the freshly betrayed Don Pedro is also influenced by the recently demonstrated capacity of kith and kin to betray. More critically, Don Pedro’s behavior may also explain Beatrice’s desire to “kill Claudio.” As critics and productions have found, “Kill Claudio” may be a hard line to pull off, particularly if one’s setting for the production has veered away from a society in which an avenging execution can establish innocence or (re)secure honor.26 However, in this twisted Aragonese society, “kill Claudio” has an immediate logic. While the Friar seems convinced that Claudio will feel the requisite guilt when he hears that she is dead (that being the root of the faked death), and Hero and her father seem to accept the Friar’s argument, Beatrice is evidently less sure. Whatever she says in front of her family, alone with her beloved, she demands a more immediate, assertive, and permanent course of justice: Claudio’s death. If the return of Don John after the war has proven anything, it is that these men can get away with anything. If he is to be punished, it will have to be by her or hers, preferably in a way he cannot weasel out of later. This behavior exists in, and as part of, its society’s failure to address the damage done in the civil war. Because these problems result from the unaddressed traumas of the war and those who caused them, a proper resolution must go beyond merely Claudio getting absolution from Hero. That ending addresses the problem of the lovers, but it does not address the problems of the society. The problem of the society is only healable if the trauma can be openly discussed and those who committed it are brought to justice. It is that process that allows the survivor to reenter society successfully: Sharing the traumatic experience with others is a precondition for the restitution of a sense of a meaningful world. . . . Restoration of the breach between the traumatized person and the community depends, first, upon public acknowledgment of the traumatic event and, second, upon some form of community action. Once it is publicly recognized that a person has been harmed, the community must take action to assign responsibility for the harm and to repair the injury.



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These two responses—recognition and restitution—are necessary to rebuild the survivor’s sense of order and justice.27

While this may be possible without punishment, in theory, it is not possible without talking about what was done and who did it. There needs to be a process by which the truth is made known and acknowledged. Mohammad Abo-Hilal, a Syrian refugee and clinician working with other Syrian refugees, in outlining his theory of justice psychotherapy, specifically highlights the relationship between social issues, punishment, and healing: Psychological problems derive from “disordered” environments that we must fix before taking care of problems on the individual level. No matter what we do to help restore the psychological wellbeing of displaced persons and refugees, we will fail as long as the perpetrators remain unpunished. We will fail as long as injustice and hostilities persist. We will fail as long as services are provided without consideration for the social and political context.28

In Messina, that context is the civil war. One cannot accurately look at what Claudio does or fix what he does while ignoring the context. In Messina, appropriate consideration of the context would take the form first of acknowledging that the conflict happened and had consequences. Furthermore, after the explosive fallout at the wedding, it would involve acknowledging that situation as well. Claudio, in the romance plotline, offers (eventually) both acknowledgment and restitution. That is the purpose of the poem and the monument and the singing and the public apology. (Added restitution is also theoretically offered in marrying a girl from Hero’s family, who turns out to be his former fiancée. Whether that counts as good restitution or a good idea in general will be left to the audience to decide. It at least, though, adds restitution to her clan, who in this culture, he has also wronged.) Then remains, though, how to get that kind of resolution for the other characters, especially Claudio, and the audience? As such, the play cannot just end with Claudio getting absolution from Hero. The traditional comic finale of a marriage would address the problem of the lovers, but it does not address the problems of the society.29 It is not enough that the audience knows that Don John is the nexus of the problem. It must be felt, spoken, and owned by those around him, especially those who brought him most into the company of others, like Don Pedro, or heeded his council, like Don Pedro and Claudio. Once this fact is known, it must be responded to in a way that addresses the harms done to others. The problem of the society is only healable when the problems caused by Don John are acknowledged (5.1.185, 221–40), he is captured30 (5.4.123–24), and he is brought to punishment (5.4.125–27).31 While the punishments may be

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vague—perhaps in a sop to the genre; discussions of torture unto death, the fate Iago meets in Othello, would be a touch too dark for a romantic comedy—they are very real. The war is an insuperable issue in the text. It inflects the contexts one can justifiably choose. After all, the play can only be staged around a war with few casualties where one can sort of understand how the guys from the other side are still around. For example, after the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2014 Much Ado, which they styled as Love’s Labour’s Won, set in the wake of World War I, Carol Chillington Rutter pointed out, “one had to wonder, given the scenario of the Great War, what treachery Don John (Sam Alexander) had committed against his brother (Don Pedro: John Hodgkinson)—collaborating with Germans? Surely he’d have been shot.”32 In contrast, other productions have opted for the American Civil War. That war, so often figured metaphorically as brother against brother, did end with civil war perpetrators returned to society postwar. The needfulness of these punishments for a pleasing resolution may most be seen in that productions have sometimes chosen to visualize this capture, if not the punishment itself. The Branagh adaptation shows us Don John in handcuffs, and the Whedon adaptation shows video footage of his arrest viewed by other characters on a cellphone. Considering the Branagh film opened with Keanu Reeves’s Don John riding in with the heroes in the triumphant postwar arrival sequence (before characters literally wash caring about the war away) and the Whedon film has Sean Maher’s Don John first appear with zip-tied hands until his brother has him cut loose with a face that suggests he finds his brother’s legitimate arrest too personally embarrassing to let others see, the visualization of the capture is a compelling contrast between the start and end of the character and the social response to his actions. Some productions, though, go harder. In one 1970 production, Don John was brought on stage and shot by Don Pedro before the very end.33 In those productions, the punishment needed to be emphasized to create a satisfying end to the conflict. One cannot understand the play fully by doing as the characters do and ignoring the fact that it comes on the heels of a violent assault on the Aragonese government. The presence of unpunished perpetrators in the play is no accident. In Bandello’s novella, the war is the War of the Sicilian Vespers, and Bandello is blunt about the wholesale slaughter of the enemy and any woman ever pregnant by an enemy national. As far as that narrative is concerned, the enemy side had no survivors. There are not even left those who may have given aid and comfort to the enemy, let alone an enemy himself. The Don John figure in Bandello is not a traitor but a trusted confidant, the Claudio figure’s sworn brother. Consequently, the presence of the unpunished who are being forgiven by the prince and being reintroduced into the



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society are the work of Shakespeare. He added civil war to his narrative and free-roaming traitors as well. The unpunished perpetrators and the post-conflict setting (even in its unacknowledged state) form a vital part of the play’s structure and the emotional arc of its characters. Psychosocial research indicates that the presence of unpunished perpetrators in post-conflict communities damages the mental health of inhabitants and the ability of communities to move forward. The importance of acknowledging and addressing harms is evident in how humans form truth commissions in the wake of violence and oppression, from South African apartheid to the murder of First Nations children at Canadian residential schools. There is psychological and social value in identifying the truth and evolving as a society to prevent future harm, both for the current victims and to averting future victimization. There is also value in punishing those who did the harm, or at least making sure they can never do that again. Much Ado, as a play about a post-conflict society failing to acknowledge its post-conflict state, needs to address this component of the narrative’s events, in addition to its romantic arcs, to form a satisfying conclusion. Much Ado is a dark comedy about a culture needing to come to terms with the fact that wrongs and injuries were done and that they must be acknowledged and punished for society to truly heal and move forward. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abo-Hilal, Mohammad. “Justice Psychotherapy: Approaching Mental Health in Humanitarian Contexts.” Middle East Institute, Updated 4 Jan. 2021, https:​ //​www​.mei​.edu​/publications​/justice​-psychotherapy​-approaching​-mental​-health​ -humanitarian​-contexts. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. 5th ed. Arlington, VA.: American Psychiatric Association, 2013. Bandello, Matteo. The Novels of Matteo Bandello Bishop of Agen Now First Done into English Prose and Verse by John Payne. London: Printed For the Villon Sociey By Private Subscription And For Private Circulation Only, 1890. Başoğlu, Metin, Maria Livanou, Cvetana Crnobarić, Tanja Frančišković, Enra Suljić, Dijana Đurić, and Melin Vranešić. “Psychiatric and Cognitive Effects of War in Former Yugoslavia: Association of Lack of Redress for Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Reactions.” JAMA 294, no. 5 (2005): 580–90. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1001​/jama​ .294​.5​.580. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1001​/jama​.294​.5​.580. Breitenberg, Mark. “Anxious Masculinity: Sexual Jealousy in Early Modern England.” Feminist Studies 19, no. 2 (1993): 377–98. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.2307​ /3178375. http:​//​www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/3178375. Bronfen, Elisabeth. “The Day after Battle: Much Ado About Nothing and the Continuation of War with Other Means.” Poetica 43, no. 1/2 (2011): 63–80.

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Everett, Barbara. “Much Ado About Nothing: The Unsociable Comedy.” In Much Ado About Nothing and the Taming of the Shrew: Contemporary Critical Essays, 51–68: Houndsmill: Palgrave, 2001. Friedman, Alan Warren. Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors—and Ours. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. Hawkins, Harriet. Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 2015. Hinton, Devon E., and Roberto Lewis-Fernández. “The Cross-Cultural Validity of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Implications for DSM-5.” Depression and Anxiety 28, no. 9 (2011): 783–801. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1002​/da​.20753. https:​//​onlinelibrary​ .wiley​.com​/doi​/abs​/10​.1002​/da​.20753. Iyengar, Sujata. “Colorblind Casting in Single-Sex Shakespeare.” In Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance, edited by Ayanna Thompson, 46–67: Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. McEachern, Claire, ed. Much Ado About Nothing. Revised Edition. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Mulryne, J. R., ed. Much Ado About Nothing: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 1965. Neely, Carol Thomas. Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Ridge, Kelsey. Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. Rutter, Carol Chillington. “Shakespeare Performances in England 2014.” In Shakespeare Survey: Volume 68: Shakespeare, Origins and Originality, edited by Peter Holland. Shakespeare Survey, 368–407. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. Third Series. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015. ———. Much Ado About Nothing. Revised Edition. Edited by Claire McEachern. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Scribner, 1994. Utzig, Nicholas. “Our Wars Are Done: Returning from War in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2022. ———. “Shakespearean Jus Post Bellum: Ethical Ends to War in Henry V.” Shakespeare Studies (Forthcoming). Walker, Doug. “Does Romeo and Juliet Suck?” In Nostalgia Critic, 2013. http:​//​ channelawesome​.com​/nostalgia​-critic​-editorial​-does​-romeo​-and​-juliet​-suck​/. Zitner, Sheldon P. “Introduction.” In Much Ado About Nothing, 1–87 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.



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NOTES 1. Line numbers are drawn from the Arden Third Series revised edition edited by Claire McEachern. For clarity, line numbers will be given in-text. 2. In the twenty-first century, there has been increased engagement by early modernists with the struggles of soldiers returning from war and reintegrating into their civilian communities. See Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare, Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors—and Ours, and Our Wars Are Done: Returning from War in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. The issue of postwar justice is particularly addressed in “Shakespearean Jus Post Bellum: Ethical Ends to War in Henry V.” 3. Shakespeare built his Hero and Claudio plot, including its postwar context, from Bandello’s novella Timbreo and Fenecia. Bandello’s narrative situates the events in the aftermath of the War of the Sicilian Vespers. As Shakespeare makes no mention of the wholesale slaughter of the French enemy (and any woman who may have ever been pregnant by a Frenchman), one can assume Shakespeare is opting not to use that war, which could not be described as having the meager number of casualties Shakespeare includes. Functionally, that shift permits any other year in the centuries between 1282 and the date of the play’s composition (during which time Aragon controlled Sicily) as the play’s temporal setting. In that light, Shakespeare is probably using a battle of his own invention. That artistic decision allows (or requires) the actors and audience to imagine the necessary details. 4. The thing these textual details leave less clear is what Don John hoped to gain by waging war on his brother. Did he want to usurp Don Pedro and become himself the new Prince of Aragon? He does not say. 5. Since Leonato specifically asks “How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?” (1.1.5–6, emphasis mine), his very manner of questioning may reveal he did not care about loss of life below a certain rank. 6. Matteo Bandello, The Novels of Matteo Bandello Bishop of Agen now first done into English prose and Verse by John Payne (London: Printed For the Villon Sociey by Private Subscription and for Private Circulation Only, 1890), 303–4. 7. A war-focused reading of the comedy also challenges the notion of Don John as a villain of “motiveless malignity.” While in a carefree comedy he seems oddly evil, bearing in mind that he is a man who just lost a war who feels he is kept around not as a free man but as a public sign that he has lost (the fate Macbeth fears more than death [Macbeth 5.8.23–34]), one sees that Don John nurses a bitter, spiteful anger not only at the brother who won the war but to the “young start-up” soldier he blames for his brother’s success (1.3.62–63). In that sense, Don John has nothing one way or the other against Hero, but he needs Claudio to pay. He is motivated. 8. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5, 5th ed. (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2013), 278. 9. McEachern, Much Ado About Nothing, 27. 10. Metin Başoğlu et al., “Psychiatric and Cognitive Effects of War in Former Yugoslavia: Association of Lack of Redress for Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress

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Reactions,” JAMA 294, no. 5 (2005): 588–89, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1001​/jama​.294​.5​ .580, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1001​/jama​.294​.5​.580. 11. Başoğlu et al., “Psychiatric and Cognitive Effects of War in Former Yugoslavia,” 589. 12. McEachern, Much Ado About Nothing, 58. 13. David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder identify two common depictions of disability in literature, narrative prosthesis and materiality of metaphor. In materiality of metaphor, disability “serves as a metaphorical signifier of social and individual collapse. Physical and cognitive anomalies promise to lend a ‘tangible’ body to textual abstractions” (47–48). David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 14. Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Scribner, 1994), 4. 15. Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence— From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 241. 16. Devon E. Hinton and Roberto Lewis-Fernández, “The cross-cultural validity of posttraumatic stress disorder: implications for DSM-5,” Depression and Anxiety 28, no. 9 (2011): 792, https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1002​/da​.20753, https:​//​onlinelibrary​.wiley​.com​/ doi​/abs​/10​.1002​/da​.20753. 17. Carol Thomas Neely, Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare’s Plays (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 44. 18. DSM-5, 271. 19. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 241. 20. McEachern, Much Ado About Nothing, 250 note 122. 21. Barbara Everett, “Much Ado About Nothing: The Unsociable Comedy,” in Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew: Contemporary Critical Essays (Houndsmill: Palgrave, 2001), 66. 22. Elisabeth Bronfen, “The Day after Battle: Much Ado about Nothing and the Continuation of War with other Means,” Poetica 43, no. 1/2 (2011): 64. 23. Sujata Iyengar (61) and Harriet Hawkins (135) both describe Claudio as jealous. Mark Breitenberg lists Much Ado among Shakespeare’s “jealousy plays” (383). Even Beatrice calls the count jealous: “civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion” (2.1.288–89). Sujata Iyengar, “Colorblind Casting in Single-Sex Shakespeare,” in Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance, ed. Ayanna Thompson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). Harriet Hawkins, Classics and Trash: Traditions and Taboos in High Literature and Popular Modern Genres (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990). Mark Breitenberg, “Anxious Masculinity: Sexual Jealousy in Early Modern England,” Feminist Studies 19, no. 2 (1993), https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.2307​/3178375. 24. McEachern, Much Ado About Nothing, 225 note 167. 25. As J. R. Mulryne notes, Claudio’s mistrust does extend to himself, in a different way: “Claudio is easy prey for Don John precisely because of a deeply ingrained mistrust of his own feelings; he cannot exclude the possibility of his being quite



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wrong about his most intimate beliefs” (40). That explains why he feels the need for his commanding officer to approve of his marriage choice (1.1.271–94). However, his belief that others are untrustworthy appears untrammeled by uncertainty and a lack of confidence in his convictions. J. R. Mulryne, ed., Much Ado About Nothing (Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 1965). 26. McEachern, Much Ado About Nothing, 153. 27. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 70. 28. Mohammad Abo-Hilal. “Justice Psychotherapy: Approaching Mental Health in Humanitarian Contexts,” Middle East Institute, updated 4 Jan. 2021, https:​//​www​.mei​ .edu​/publications​/justice​-psychotherapy​-approaching​-mental​-health​-humanitarian​ -contexts. 29. We see this in other plays. Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy about a society as much, if not more, than a tragedy about a couple (Walker), does not just end when the lovers die. It includes the parents publicly taking ownership of their role in their children’s deaths and the erection of monuments in the lovers’ memory as a form of restitution. That social ending, even as directors often cut it to focus on the romance plotline, creates the space for a society to note, admit to, and heal from its toxicity. Doug Walker, “Does Romeo and Juliet Suck?,” in Nostalgia Critic (2013). http:​//​ channelawesome​.com​/nostalgia​-critic​-editorial​-does​-romeo​-and​-juliet​-suck​/. 30. Don John flees before anyone finds out how much of the plot is his fault (5.1.185). Perhaps that is the inevitable course of action for a man who wishes he could get back to the villainy he had engaged in before the war. The characters never speculate, though, on why he would have run before there was reason to think he would get in any trouble (consider how little trouble he got in for war and deaths) or what he might have planned to get up to, which would presumably be more recreational villainy. Perhaps he just wants to be out from under what he sees as his brother’s thumb, to do his liking. 31. To take it back to the individual level from the social, the results remain less than optimistic. Unfortunately, Başoğlu et al. indicate that justice and punishing wrongdoers is not, itself, sufficient to treat the resultant psychological injury; instead, war survivors likely need a restored sense of control over their situation to ameliorate their symptoms and feelings of mistrust and injustice. Therefore, if Don John’s seeming postwar impunity contributed to Claudio’s poor mental health, Don John’s arrest at the end of the play may be too late to help him. While the trauma could have been prevented, now that it exists, it must be separately treated. 32. Carol Chillington Rutter, “Shakespeare performances in England 2014,” in Shakespeare Survey: Volume 68: Shakespeare, Origins and Originality, ed. Peter Holland, Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 387. 33. Sheldon P. Zitner, “Introduction,” in Much Ado About Nothing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 39.

Chapter 7

Slut Shaming, Revenge Porn, and the Making of Meaning by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing Anthony Guy Patricia

Slut shaming is the “practice or fact of condemning or stigmatizing a person (esp. a woman) for engaging in behavior deemed to be promiscuous or sexually provocative.”1 Revenge porn, on the other hand, involves “sexually explicit or revealing images of a person distributed (esp. on the internet), typically by a former partner without the consent of the subject and with the intention of causing distress.”2 Though not exactly synonymous per se, revenge porn is obviously a form of slut shaming. Reeking of misogyny, both are, not at all surprisingly, most often perpetrated by men against women. Both are, furthermore, part and parcel of our contemporary world experience. However, they are not new phenomena; as many works of literature from Homer’s epics onward show, they have been operative forces in human history for centuries. Shakespeareans, particularly those knowledgeable about plays like Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, and Cymbeline, have more familiarity with slut shaming and revenge porn than they might at first realize. Hero, Desdemona, Hermione, and Imogen are individually and collectively represented as chaste and loyal women who are falsely accused of sexual impropriety by unscrupulous men hell-bent on effecting revenge for perceived or actual wrongs done to them by other men, no matter who among the innocent gets hurt or destroyed in the process. They are, in other words, slut shamed through fabricated pornographic accounts of their alleged licentious activities with various male paramours. This chapter analyzes slut shaming 123

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and revenge porn in relation to the character of Hero in Much Ado, who is then compared to a female American politician who, though she is far less innocent than the fictional Hero, depending on your point of view regarding sexual morality, suffered similar travails in the recent past. The interpretive pressure of such a dialogue lays bare the cruel and destructive tactics that were deployed against women in Shakespeare’s England and that continue to be deployed against women in the early twenty-first century. We should also note that pornography, Lynn Hunt explains, “did not constitute a wholly separate and distinct category of written or visual representation before the early nineteenth century.”3 In fact, pornography was “almost always an adjunct to something else until the middle or end of the eighteenth century . . . [i.e.] a vehicle for using the shock of sex to criticize religious and political authorities.”4 Pornography became what it is recognized as today in part because of the rapid expansion of print culture following Gutenberg’s introduction of the printing press to Europe and, in due course, to the rest of the world. For Hunt, pornography “as a legal and artistic category seems to be an especially Western idea” with links to the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution—all the harbingers of modernity.5 It was “linked to free-thinking and heresy, to science and natural philosophy, and to attacks on absolutist political authority. It was [also] especially revealing about gender differentiations being” forged during the period, differentiations that persist well into the present day.6 In an important and informative book on what came before modern and contemporary pornography, Ian Frederick Moulton uses the phrase “erotic writing” to differentiate between early modern works that deal with sex and sexuality and late twentieth-/early twenty-first-century pornographic works that deal with sex and sexuality, all with varying degrees of explicitness and appeal (or lack thereof) to audiences. The main reason Moulton does this is because pornography is a notoriously slippery word. To that point he notes that the “fundamental problem with definitions of pornography is that the term is applied simultaneously to the content of a given product, to the manner in which that content is represented, and to the attitude of the observer toward the product,” all of which are infinitely subjective matters.7 Pornography is also a term that “carries a strong moral valence and that discussion about it may involve some degree of hypocrisy (one is not supposed to ‘like’ pornography—though many people obviously do), and the issue becomes more complicated still,” moving the matter way beyond semantics.8 With his terminological rationale spelled out, Moulton explains that “‘erotic writing’ refers to any text, regardless of genre or literary quality, that deals in a fundamental way with human physical sexual activity.”9 In Moulton’s view, erotic writing is not as confining or indeterminate as pornography. He goes



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on to add: “Sex and love often go together—and often they don’t; thus not all ‘love’ poetry is necessarily erotic, and not all ‘erotic’ writing deals with love.”10 A few of the texts he deals with in his study are “explicit in their language, some are elliptical or metaphoric, but all are concerned with physical sexual actions—from vaginal intercourse between men and women to genital play and anal eroticism, sex between members of the same sex, and masturbation.”11 Naming several examples, Moulton argues that erotic writing includes Ovidian narratives (of which Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis is cited as representative), obscene satire, Petrarchan sonnets, bawdy epigrams, and lewd ballads.12 It “circulated in manuscript as well as print, in foreign and ancient languages as well as in English. It was read by men, and—sometimes—by women. Rather than being limited to one genre, mode of circulation, or gender ideology, it circulated throughout literate culture.”13 As such, a “history of erotic representation must be far more than a history of pornography,” and it is the former instead of the latter that Moulton offers readers.14 Between Hunt and Moulton, a more or less neat teleological narrative of early modern erotic writing gradually morphing into modern pornography emerges. But, for this reader, it is difficult if not impossible to consider what happens to Hero in Much Ado and what happened to Representative Hill as a U.S. Congressperson as erotic in any sense of the word; they are, actually, inherently pornographic situations in tandem with Moulton’s claims that early modern erotic writing can be by turns “cruel, leering, and sly” in addition to being “funny and joyful.”15 There is nothing funny or joyful about Hill’s experience in life and Hero’s experience in the play, laser-focused as their interlocutors are on their alleged/actual sexual indiscretions punctuated by the explicitly brutal, shocking, and hurtful language used by Claudio and his supporters to berate Hero mercilessly, and the equally ugly and derogatory language used by journalists claiming the high road in Hill’s case so that they could drive her out of office. There is far more justification in arguing that the slut shaming of Hero in Much Ado is informed by what Lynda Boose, in a brilliant essay on Othello, has called the pornographic aesthetic. For Boose, Othello is a play that, particularly in the way Shakespeare wrote Iago, encourages the same kind of male-centered voyeurism that pornography encourages. On this she writes that the “audience implied by this play and structured into it from its opening scene is definitively masculine in gender . . . men are the lookers and women are the objects to be looked at, trapped within and constructed by the pornographic images transmitted inside of an increasingly lethal circuitry of male discourse.”16 Almost from the very beginning of Othello, its audiences are driven by what Boose describes as the “voyeuristic desire for dramatic satisfaction” as regards Othello and Desdemona.17 Spectators want to see Othello and Desdemona consummating their marriage because they have been led

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to believe that is what they are entitled to see. However, upon reaching the last act of Othello, “when the final door to the play’s last bedroom figurately swings open, we are allowed/compelled to be the only witnesses to the act of erotic violence that we have already been induced to see: Desdemona strangled on her wedding sheets, dying in suggestive paroxysms in the violent embrace of the alien black husband.”18 This is, perhaps, more than what audiences bargained for in their “voyeuristic desire for dramatic satisfaction.” But this is what Shakespeare wrote in the end for Othello, so audiences must deal with it no matter how uncomfortable such an ending makes them feel. It can be argued that audiences must make their peace with Much Ado in similar ways as will be shown below. I In Much Ado, Shakespeare uses a modified “love-at-first-sight” story arc among all the other business surrounding the return of Don Pedro and his company of fighting men to Messina that starts Act 1 of the play. Indeed, Claudio is so taken with Hero that he consults with Benedick about her: “Is she not a modest young lady?”19 the clearly besotted count asks his acerbic fellow-soldier. Benedick never gives a direct answer to Claudio’s question. At best, Benedick is totally indifferent to Hero. “I noted her not, but I looked on her,”20 he tells Claudio. But Claudio’s use of the word modest regarding Hero is neither accidental nor innocent. In a world in which men are the ones who get to decide what is and what is not modest as far as women are concerned, it is a word that is redolent with historically specific misogynistic value judgment. Modest has been defined as: “Of a woman: decorous in manner and conduct; not forward, impudent, or lewd; demure; (of a personal attribute, action, etc.) proper to or distinctive of such a woman. Hence: scrupulously avoiding impropriety or vulgarity in speech or behavior.”21 This is how Claudio views Hero. By extension then, a modest woman like Hero is exactly the kind of woman a respectable man like Claudio ought to seek for marriage and the begetting of legitimate children. Conversely, a woman who is not modest like Hero may well be fun to dally with sexually, but she would never make a suitable wife. Thus the idealization of Hero begins. For Claudio, Hero is a “jewel”22 and the “sweetest lady”23 he has ever had the privilege of gazing at. Benedick continues to scoff at this romantic nonsense until he realizes that Claudio is serious about Hero, and he demands to know if Claudio intends “to turn husband,”24 the prospect of which perplexes Benedick to no end. Claudio responds to Benedick with: “I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the contrary, if Hero would be my wife.”25 It is at that precise moment when



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Benedick finally understands that Claudio is now a lost cause as far as perpetual bachelorhood and the exclusively male-male intimacy it offers to those men who, like Benedick, choose to remain unmarried. After Benedick has left the scene, Claudio more fully explains the evolution of his feelings for Hero to Don Pedro: When you went onward on this ended action I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye, That liked, but had a rougher task in hand Than to drive liking to the name of love. But now I am returned, and that war-thoughts Have left their places vacant, in their rooms Come thronging soft and delicate desires, All prompting me how fair young Hero is, Saying I liked her ere I went to wars.26

When Claudio first saw Hero, he was too preoccupied with military matters and the impending battles he was going to have to fight in to allow himself to feel anything more than liking toward Leonato’s daughter. But with his service ended, Claudio can focus on other things, and he has set his sights on “fair young Hero” who has stirred his “soft and delicate desires” so much so that he is now convinced he was in love with her all along. Don Pedro is enthusiastic about Claudio’s love for Hero: “Amen, if you love her, for the lady is very well worthy.”27 Worthy means: “Of a person: distinguished by admirable or commendable qualities; entitled to honour or respect on this account; estimable,” or, “Of a person’s mind, character, principles, etc.: characterized by moral rectitude; admirable, commendable.”28 More specifically, Don Pedro’s use of the phrase “very well worthy” operates in three separate senses. It implies, firstly, that Hero is deserving of Claudio’s love; secondly, that she is a proper and upright choice for the count; and thirdly, that she is worth a great deal to Claudio economically, socially, and professionally, once he has married her. When Don Pedro pledges to help Claudio by impersonating him just long enough to secure Hero’s love on the prince’s behalf, the early modern marriage economy goes to work in earnest. Leonato, Hero’s father, tells Antonio, her uncle, that he “will acquaint my daughter withal [about Claudio’s interest in marrying her], that / she may be better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true.”29 That Hero’s only choice is to say yes to Claudio’s proposal of marriage indicated here is made explicit when Leonato counsels

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Hero with: “Daughter, remember what I told you. If the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.”30 To which her uncle adds, “Well, niece, I trust you [unlike her mischievous cousin Beatrice] will be ruled / by your father.”31 And Beatrice punctuates all this with: “Yes, faith, it is my cousin’s duty to make / curtsy, and say, ‘Father, as it please you.’”32 Despite the evident familial conviviality, and the fact that Hero seems as enamored with Claudio as Claudio is with her, the hint of coercion in the form of lack of free will in marriage choices for Hero, never quite fades away entirely from this part of Much Ado. Indeed, that Hero is little more than a commodity to be exchanged—to be bought and sold—by the men in her life, from her father to Don Pedro to Claudio, is made clear when, Leonato happily announces: “Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes. His grace hath made the match, and all grace say amen to it.”33 Thus, having been placed so very high on the pedestal of feminine and marital idealization, and becoming Claudio’s bride-to-be in the process, Hero’s fall becomes an inevitability. Audiences, privy as they are to what all the characters in the play are doing, already know how Hero’s fall will be attempted by Don John and his coconspirators, Conrade and Borachio. Don John puts his nefarious plan into action by going to see his brother and the count the eve before the wedding between Claudio and Hero is to take place. At first, Don John’s discourse is enigmatic. “Means your lordship to be married tomorrow?”34 he asks Claudio, but Don Pedro answers: “You know he does.”35 To which, Don John says: “I know not that when he knows what I know.”36 Not surprisingly, Don Pedro’s and Claudio’s interests are piqued as much by what Don John has not said as by what he has said here. Hooked on his words as they are, Don John wastes no more time and bluntly states: “I came hither to tell you [what the problem is]; and, circumstances shortened—for she has been too long a-talking of— the lady is disloyal.”37 “Who, Hero?” a stunned Claudio asks, and Don John replies: “Even she: Lenato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero.”38 This is all it takes for Don John to wreak havoc on those he despises and their loved ones. That a man like him with no scruples whatsoever has such power is an immensely terrifying prospect, especially in a Shakespearean romantic comedy. Between men, Don John’s accusation against Hero is a deadly serious one that simply cannot be ignored. As Don John uses it, disloyal means: “not loyal; false to one’s allegiance or obligations; unfaithful, faithless, perfidious, treacherous.” To this, “unfaithful to the obligations of friendship or honour, to the marriage tie, etc.” can be added.39 Today, of course, the word used to describe Hero’s alleged behavior would be unfaithful rather than disloyal. Regarding sex and marriage in the late fifteenth/early sixteenth and the early twenty-first centuries, unfaithful and disloyal can be seen as synonymous.



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With Don John’s statement, “Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero,” he wants Don Pedro and Claudio to think that Hero has been unfaithful to the count with not one or two, but with many other men. In fact, he claims that she has been so promiscuous everyone is talking about her and her wantonness. Don John even goes so far as to insist that he can provide Claudio with visual proof of Hero’s disloyalty. Hearing this, both Claudio and Don Pedro seem more or less completely convinced of Hero’s “guilt.” “If I see anything tonight why I should not marry her,” Claudio says, “tomorrow in the congregation where I should wed, there will I shame her,” and Don Pedro remarks, “as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her.”40 As these words on the part of her fiancé and his mentor indicate, in the court of male judgment, Hero’s fate is already determined. For these men, unsubstantiated suspicion is enough for a conviction. At the wedding the next morning, Hero’s punishment—meted out by the duped men who are aligned against her, from Claudio to her own father—is to suffer the most vicious kind of slut shaming. Shortly after the ceremony has begun, Claudio asks Leonato: “Father, by your leave: / Will you with free and unconstrained soul / Give me this maid, your daughter?”41 Upon responding in the affirmative, Claudio says: “And what have I to give you back whose worth / may counterpoise this rich and precious gift,”42 to which Don Pedro interjects with: “Nothing, unless you render her again.”43 Scholarship has long since shown that the word “nothing,” in itself a variation on “o-thing,” was early modern English slang for the vagina—as in women, unlike men, have “nothing” (i.e. a penis) between their legs. Beyond the not-so-subtle and tasteless pun then, Claudio and Don Pedro are characterizing Hero as being nothing and, as such, worth nothing. Since they have been convinced by Don John that Hero is no longer a true maiden, she is, in fact, now less than nothing to Claudio and Don Pedro. She is soiled property they no longer want. She belongs with her father who did a poor job of raising Hero to keep herself pure and virginal. She is a young woman whose angelic countenance hides the wanton, lustful devil she really is from everybody around her. Claudio makes this all brutally plain with his next speech: Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness. There, Leonato, take her back again. Give not this rotten orange to your friend; She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour. Behold how like a maid she blushes here! O, what authority and show of truth

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Can cunning sin cover itself withal! Come not that blood as modest evidence To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear, All you that see her, that she were a maid, By these exterior shows? But she is none; She knows the heat of a luxurious bed. Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.44

Thus Hero is for all intents destroyed by Don John’s smoke and mirrors. And to the absolute horror of Hero’s father and the rest of her family and friends, Claudio is determined “Not to be married . . . to an approved wanton.”45 But Claudio does not stop there; he rages on with: You seem to me as Dian in her orb, As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pampered animals That rage in savage sensuality.46

Finally, Don Pedro punctuates Claudio’s diatribe by self-righteously proclaiming that he is “dishonoured that have gone about / To link my dear friend to a common stale.”47 For the audience, the horror at the core of Claudio and Don Pedro’s misogynistic repudiation of Hero is that they know it is based on nothing but the lies of a bastard brother lashing out at the people he feels have rejected him. To summarize: given the way drama works, it seems that within moments Hero has suddenly gone from desirable, modest, jewel, sweetest lady, fair, worthy, and rich and precious gift—in short, the highest of the high for a young woman like her—to disloyal, unfaithful, nothing, rotten orange, dishonorable, sinner, guilty, immodest, approved wanton, and stale—in short, the lowest of the low for a young woman like her. We ought not fail to note that every single one of the hateful, negative words Don John, Claudio, and Don Pedro have hurled at Hero references her sexual activity, or at least what they presume to be her sexual activity. This litany of derogatory, misogynistic epithets epitomizes late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English-style slut shaming. The terrible, indeed almost tragic, irony here is, of course, that Hero, given her innocence, has been slut shamed for nothing other than Don John’s sick pleasure. Hero’s slut shaming is also an example



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of early modern English revenge porn acted out by men (and boys portraying the female characters) in the theatres of Shakespeare’s London for innumerable male spectators seeking voyeuristic pleasure in witnessing just such a performance. II After an unsuccessful bid only two years prior, Katie Hill was elected to Congress as the House Representative from California’s 25th District in the November 2018 general election. She had defeated the staunchly conservative Republican incumbent, Steve Knight, who had held the office since 2014. Hill was everything Knight was not: a married, openly bisexual millennial with an agenda centered on the “rights and dignity of workers, women, seniors, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and the disabled,” as well as creating a VA “worthy of our vets, criminal justice policies that work, healthcare that puts patients before profits and the 21st century infrastructure for a sustainable equal-opportunity economy.”48 In the current historical moment, this is about as progressive and inclusive as it gets in American politics. Unfortunately, Hill’s tenure in the House of Representatives would be cut short due in large part to Republican opposition reporting that revealed her participation in not one, but two extramarital sexual relationships. One of these romantic affairs specifically violated recently adopted House ethics rules, while the other raised both eyebrows and serious questions about Hill’s integrity. To that end, the “news” website RedState, which describes itself as a “Conservative Blog & Conservative News Source for Right of Center Activists,”49 published a highly inflammatory article about Hill on October 18, 2019, ten months into her freshman term. The piece, written by Jennifer Van Laar, was salaciously headlined: “CA Rep. Katie Hill Allegedly Involved Staffer in 2-Yr ‘Throuple’ Relationship.” Regardless of their political leanings, many readers might find it difficult to ignore the kind of titillation such a title promises. In the piece, Van Laar details that Hill was “involved in a long-term sexual relationship with a female staffer. The woman, whose name is not being released, was hired by Hill in late 2017 and quickly became involved in a ‘throuple’ relationship with Hill and her [now] estranged husband, Kenny Heslep.” It seems evident to Van Laar that all three parties, Hill, the unnamed female staffer, and Heslep, willingly consented to the polyamorous threeway relationship they formed soon after meeting, and she says as much in her article. The trio, furthermore, took several vacations together. Van Laar includes two pictures from a trip of theirs to Alaska in the article to establish the fact—the truth, as it were—of the lesbian aspect of the throuple. These

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images feature Hill and the unnamed female staffer, with the latter’s face blurred out, standing in what looks to be a brand-name chain hotel room dressed in winter clothing suitable for skiing or other similar activities. In the first, the women are in each other’s arms, smiling at the camera. In the second, they are in each other’s arms and kissing. Together, these shots make the amatory nature of the relationship between the two women unmistakable.50 By themselves, the two pictures described above are fairly innocuous. But Van Laar is quick to note that they (RedState) were also “provided with intimate photographs of the women, which we chose not to publish.”51 Thus readers are made aware that more explicit images of Hill and her female staffer do exist, but RedState and Van Laar decided to withhold those from the article they produced. However, England’s The Daily Mail tabloid, which is often characterized as sensationalistic in the extreme, showed no such reticence. In a piece that appeared under its imprimatur on October 24, 2019, only six days after the appearance of the RedState exposé on Hill, the explicit images of Hill and her female staffer referenced by Van Laar were indeed published for anyone who wished to look at them. While explicit in the sense that they do show bits of bare skin, the pictures of Hill and her staffer that The Daily Mail featured are not what most people would be likely to consider examples of hardcore nudity, or even hardcore sexuality for that matter; breasts, pubic areas, and genitals are not, as it happens, in view, nor are any sexual acts represented or implied. In fact, the pictures of Hill and her staffer seem spontaneous rather than posed; nevertheless, the women’s private parts somehow appear artfully, if not necessarily tastefully, hidden in The Daily Mail piece.52 The RedState and The Daily Mail articles state that Hill’s husband and the female staffer were under the impression that the throuple they had formed was a permanent situation; that all three of them were committed to one another for the duration of a lifelong relationship. Hence, it came as a shock to them when Hill broke things off with both not long after her election to Congress. A series of screenshots of text messages between Hill and the female staffer reveal that Hill’s reason for breaking up was that she needed to be on her own so that she could pursue her what Van Laar, paraphrasing Hill, called her “important work” in the House of Representatives. Hill claimed she was convinced that it would not be fair to any partner she was with because that work would take up so much of her time and energy—time and energy she would therefore not have to devote to a husband and/or a lover. But then it came out that Hill, apparently unbeknownst to either Heslep or the female staffer, had also been sexually involved with her then finance and, later, legislative director, a man by the name of Graham Kelly, for at least a year—while she was part of the throuple. This was the romantic/sexual relationship that went against the new Congressional rules governing such



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associations. That aside, this was also apparently the last straw for Heslep. He filed for divorce from Hill shortly upon learning about her affair with Kelly. Meanwhile, the female staffer was devastated by the breakup of the throuple and by, from her perspective, being treated so callously by two people she thought she loved and could trust. And, by November 3, 2019, Hill was forced to leave Washington in disgrace because of what many on both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, saw as her transgressions, a more or less polite way of saying her sexual immorality. However, beyond these revelations, there is an additional twist to the story about Hill that throws the whole matter into an even more disturbing but not entirely unexpected light. In a Mediaite.com story on Jennifer Van Laar, Caleb Ecarma writes that the origin of the Hill scandal is the former lawmaker’s estranged husband, Kenny Heslep, with whom she is going through divorce proceedings. Prior to his posting the scandalous details about Hill online, which were then picked up by RedState, Heslep was apparently shopping around the story about his politician wife to other [news] outlets.53

In her resignation from Congress, Hill characterized Van Laar’s exposés as part of what was nothing less than a “coordinated [assassination] campaign carried out by the right wing media and Republican opponents enabling and perpetuating my husband’s abuse by providing him a platform.”54 through which to air their personal dirty laundry. A spade ought to be called a spade in this case: Heslep’s abuse of Hill was nothing less than slut shaming complemented by revenge porn and, furthermore, he was aided and abetted in perpetrating this egregious misconduct against his [now] ex-wife by Van Laar, RedState, and The Daily Mail. III Circling back, it can be argued that the same sort of dramatic principles that inform the working of the pornographic aesthetic in Othello inform the working of the pornographic aesthetic in Much Ado as well as in Hill’s story. On the latter, audiences—particularly male readers—may well feel it is their right to obtain voyeuristic dramatic satisfaction by being presented with all the prurient details of the representative’s sex life with her then-husband and their mutual female lover. That tantalizing if not hardcore pictures of the women in the relationship are easily found through a basic web search only adds to the level of voyeuristic dramatic satisfaction such audiences think they can achieve by looking at them along with reading the highly

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sensationalistic conservative accounts of Hill’s sexual “transgressions.” The same kind of expectation of obtaining their rightful voyeuristic dramatic satisfaction occurs for male audiences with Hero the moment in Much Ado Don John implies that she is unfaithful to Claudio; that she is, in fact, every man’s Hero. The words Shakespeare uses here encourages these audience members to envision for themselves, in their individual and collective imaginations, Hero giving herself sexually to any man who wants her to satiate their lust. Unlike in Hill’s case, there are no pictures of Hero in flagrante delicto, hardcore or otherwise, so Much Ado’s audiences are left to their own devices on that matter. Not incidentally, this underscores perhaps the singular difference between early modern erotic writing and modern /contemporary pornography. Given the ubiquity of cameras of all kinds, today’s pornography is grounded in the visual realm, whereas early modern erotic writing was primarily a product of words rather than images. But male audiences of Much Ado are not denied their voyeuristic dramatic satisfaction because of this. In a scene that is as disturbing as that of Othello strangling Desdemona in their marital bed that audiences of Othello are witnesses to, Claudio and his fellows essentially gang-rape Hero when, at what was supposed to be their wedding, each one of them accuses her of the most wanton kinds of infidelity. This is Boose’s pornographic aesthetic writ large, and it leads Hero to swoon into a deathlike state she barely recovers from thanks to the help of her family (with the notable exception of her own father) and friends. But the damage of the gang rape is done and any voyeuristic dramatic satisfaction male audiences members derive from these circumstances is tainted. IV Because the main strategy of this chapter has been comparative (with a bit of philological) analysis—it considers Hero’s experiences with slut shaming and revenge porn as dramatized in Much Ado alongside the real-life experiences of U.S. Representative Katie Hill with slut shaming and revenge porn as detailed in RedState and The Daily Mail exposés—it may seem as if my purpose went beyond old-school formalism to make an explicitly presentist argument. While that is true to a certain extent, it is not the whole story. Nor was my purpose to provide yet another example in the ever-expanding pantheon of examples of Shakespeare’s celebrated, though rarely questioned, universality. To make an argument that in Much Ado Shakespeare was preternaturally prescient enough to envision that his representation of Hero’s slut shaming and her accusers’ use of revenge porn in pursuit of their cause against her would play itself out in remarkably similar ways in the actual lives of people like Katie Hill some 425 years later flirts with the ridiculous no matter how



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exceptional a poet-playwright Shakespeare was in his own time and is considered to be still in ours. As Terence Hawkes says: “In the case of Shakespeare, the suggestion that a play may speak ‘for an age’ begins to seem overweening. That it could speak ‘for all time’ appears suddenly absurd.”55 But there are resonances between Hero’s and Hill’s stories; resonances that are worth thinking and writing about in a piece of criticism such as that offered here. The resonances between what happens to Hero in Much Ado and what happened to Katie Hill in Congress are such that they demand we consider the plight of women, especially in their relationships with men, many of whom have no compunctions whatsoever about hurting women through any means available to them if they have reason to believe women have done them wrong. One obvious conclusion to draw from the similarities between the fictional and the real women is that these circumstances are simply untenable, yet they have persisted throughout human history, including in Shakespeare’s time and, as evidenced by the #MeToo Movement, to name just one example, in our current moment. Continuing with Hawkes, analyzing Much Ado from this perspective demonstrates one way—but not the only way—that we can make meaning by Shakespeare. On this, Hawkes writes: A text is surely better served if it is perceived not as the embodiment of some frozen, definitive significance, but as a kind of intersection or confluence which is continually traversed, a no-man’s land, an arena, in which different and opposed political positions, compete in history for ideological power: the power, that is, to determine cultural meaning—to say what the world is and should be like.56

He adds that “we try to make Hamlet [here, we can substitute Much Ado for Hamlet] mean for our purposes now: others will try to make it mean differently for their purposes then (or now). The ‘conversation’ . . . continues. But there is no final, essential, or ‘real’ meaning at the end of it. There is no end. There is only and always the business of ‘meaning by.’”57 It is hoped that the Shakespeare and the Much Ado that emerge from this exercise in criticism are relevant to what is going on in the world today in a way that adds much to—rather than taking anything away from—Shakespeare’s universality and/ or his particularity. BIBLIOGRAPHY Boose, Lynda E. “‘Let it be Hid’: The Pornographic Aesthetic of Shakespeare’s Othello.” In Othello, William Shakespeare, New Casebooks, edited by Lena Cowen Orlin, Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 22–48.

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Boswell, Josh, Martin Gould, and Jennifer Van Laar. “Shocking photos of Congresswoman Katie Hill are revealed showing off Nazi-era tattoo while smoking a bong, kissing her female staffer and posing nude on ‘wife sharing’ sites.” Daily Mail, 24 Oct. 2019, https:​//​www​.dailymail​.co​.uk​/news​/article​-7609835​/Katie​ -Hill​-seen​-showing​-Nazi​-era​-tattoo​-smoking​-BONG​-NAKED​.html. Accessed 4 January 2023. “Disloyal.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, June 2021, https:​//​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/54720​?redirectedFrom​=disloyal​#eid. Accessed 4 January 2023. Ecarma, Caleb. “Reporter Behind Story on Katie Hill Affair Worked for Republican Candidates Who Ran Against Hill.” Mediaite, 29 Oct. 2019, https:​//​www​.mediaite​ .com​/politics​/reporter​-behind​-story​-on​-katie​-hill​-affair​-worked​-for​-republican​ -candidates​-who​-ran​-against​-hill​/. Accessed 4 January 2023. Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 1992. “Homepage.” KatieHillForCongress, https:​//​www​.katiehillforcongress​.com​/. Accessed 4 January 2023. Hunt, Lynn. “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800.” In The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500– 1800, edited by Lynn Hunt, New York: Zone Books, 1993, 9–45. “Modest.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, December 2022, https:​//​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/120633​?redirectedFrom​=modest​#eid. Accessed 4 January 2023. Moulton, Ian Frederick. Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. RedState, https:​//​redstate​.com​/. Accessed 4 January 2023. “Revenge porn.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, March 2022, https:​//​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/164716​?redirectedFrom​=revenge+porn​ #eid1178749000. Accessed 4 January 2023. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Claire McEachern. Revised Edition. Third Series. London and New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. “Slut shaming.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, December 2022, https:​//​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/182346​?rskey​=SctziS​&result​=2​&isAdvanced​ =false​#eid1273878080. Accessed 4 January 2023. Van Laar, Jennifer. “CA Rep. Katie Hill Allegedly Involved Staffer in 2-Yr ‘Throuple’ Relationship.” RedState, 18 Oct. 2019, https:​//​redstate​.com​/jenvanlaar​/2019​/10​ /18​/ca​-rep​-katie​-hill​-allegedly​-involved​-female​-staffer​-2​-yr​-throuple​-relationship​ -n117886. Accessed 4 January 2023. “Worthy.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, December 2022, https:​//​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/230401​?rskey​=03Gdk8​&result​=1​&isAdvanced​ =false​#eid. Accessed 4 January 2023.



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NOTES 1. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Slut shaming,” accessed 4 January 2023, https:​ //​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/182346​?rskey​=9O0t7U​&result​=2​&isAdvanced​=false​ #eid1273878080. 2. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Revenge porn,” accessed 4 January 2023, https:​ //​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/164716​?redirectedFrom​=revenge+porn​#eid1178749000. 3. Lynn Hunt, “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800,” in The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500– 1800, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York: Zone Books, 1993), 9–10. 4. Hunt, “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, 10. 5. Hunt, “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, 10–11. 6. Hunt, “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, 11. 7. Moulton, Ian Frederick. Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford: OUP, 2000), 3–4. 8. Moulton, Before Pornography, 4. 9. Moulton, Before Pornography, 5. 10. Moulton, Before Pornography, 5. 11. Moulton, Before Pornography, 6. 12. Moulton, Before Pornography, 6. 13. Moulton, Before Pornography, 6. 14. Moulton, Before Pornography, 7. 15. Moulton, Before Pornography, 6. 16. Lynda E. Boose, “‘Let it be Hid’: The Pornographic Aesthetic of Shakespeare’s Othello,” In Othello, William Shakespeare, New Casebooks, ed. by Lena Cowen Orlin, (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 25. 17. Boose, “‘Let it be Hid’: The Pornographic Aesthetic of Shakespeare’s Othello,” 26. 18. Boose, “‘Let it be Hid’: The Pornographic Aesthetic of Shakespeare’s Othello,” 22. 19. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Arden3, revised edition, ed. Claire McEachern (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), 1.1.57. 20. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.156. 21. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., “Modest,” accessed 4 January 2023, https:​//​ www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/120633​?redirectedFrom​=modest​#eid. 22. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.171. 23. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.176. 24. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.183. 25. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.184–85. 26. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.278–86. 27. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.1.207–8. 28. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Worthy,” accessed 4 January 2023, https:​ //​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/230401​?rskey​=03Gdk8​&result​=1​&isAdvanced​=false​ #eid.

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29. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1.2.19–21. 30. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1.58–60. 31. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1.44–45. 32. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1.46–47. 33. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 2.1.277–79. 34. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3.2.79–80. 35. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3.2.81. 36. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3.2.82. 37. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3.2.91–93. 38. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3.2.94–96. 39. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Disloyal,” accessed 4 January 2023, https:​ //​www​.oed​.com​/view​/Entry​/54720​?redirectedFrom​=disloyal​#eid. Accessed 4 January 2023. 40. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 3.3.111–15. 41. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.21–23. 42. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.25–26. 43. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.27. 44. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.28–40. 45. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.42, 43. 46. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.56–60. 47. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.63–64. 48. “Homepage.” KatieHillForCongress, accessed 4 January 2023, https:​//​www​ .katiehillforcongress​.com​/. 49. “Homepage Browser Tab.” RedState, accessed 4 January 2023, https:​//​redstate​ .com​/. 50. Jennifer Van Laar, “CA Rep. Katie Hill Allegedly Involved Staffer in 2-Yr ‘Throuple’ Relationship.” RedState, 18 Oct. 2019, accessed 4 January 2023, https:​ //​redstate​.com​/jenvanlaar​/2019​/10​/18​/ca​-rep​-katie​-hill​-allegedly​-involved​-female​ -staffer​-2​-yr​-throuple​-relationship​-n117886. 51. Van Larr, “CA Rep. Katie Hill Allegedly Involved Staffer in 2-Yr ‘Throuple’ Relationship.” 52. Josh Boswell, Martin Gould, and Jennifer Van Laar, “Shocking photos of Congresswoman Katie Hill are revealed showing off Nazi-era tattoo while smoking a bong, kissing her female staffer and posing nude on ‘wife sharing’ sites,” The Daily Mail, 24 Oct. 2019, accessed 4 January 2023, https:​//​www​.dailymail​.co​.uk​/news​/ article​-7609835​/Katie​-Hill​-seen​-showing​-Nazi​-era​-tattoo​-smoking​-BONG​-NAKED​ .html. 53. Caleb Ecarma, “Reporter Behind Story on Katie Hill Affair Worked for Republican Candidates Who Ran Against Hill,” Mediaite, 29 Oct. 2019, accessed 4 January 2023, https:​//​www​.mediaite​.com​/politics​/reporter​-behind​-story​-on​-katie​-hill​-affair​ -worked​-for​-republican​-candidates​-who​-ran​-against​-hill​/. 54. Ecarma, “Reporter Behind Story on Katie Hill Affair.”



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55. Terence Hawkes, Meaning by Shakespeare, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, 5. 56. Hawkes, Meaning by Shakespeare, 8. 57. Hawkes, Meaning by Shakespeare, 8.

Chapter 8

Margaret’s Complicated Consent An Overlooked Victim in Much Ado About Nothing Jolene Mendel

One of the primary actions of Much Ado About Nothing is the shaming of Hero, which leads to her losing the love of both her father and fiancé, albeit temporarily. Borachio is seen on Hero’s balcony with a woman dressed like Hero, leading Leonato, Claudio, and the other men to believe that she is no longer a virgin. The sexual encounter arranged by Don John and carried out by Borachio is used to shame Hero and hurt the men she loved. Clearly, she is a victim of this plot. However, there is another victim, and that is Hero’s maid Margaret. Undoubtedly, she consented to the sexual act with Borachio, but it is unlikely that she also agreed to trick others into believing she was Hero. In light of the recent “Me Too” movement and discussions about Enthusiastic Consent, it is important to revisit Margaret’s role in this pivotal scene. While she might not characterize her experience as a sexual assault, she was a victim of rape by fraud or deception. As a minor character, Margaret is not given a chance to either defend herself or face her accusers near the end of the play, as she is notably absent from the wedding scene where the scheme is made public, and Hero is reunited with a contrite Claudio. She does appear in the final dance, giving credence to the theory that those around her, namely Hero and Claudio, view her as a fellow victim of Don John and not a coconspirator. Looking at Margaret’s experiences through the lens of Me Too and more nuanced conversations about consent that have been occurring in the past few years, it is clear that Margaret did not consent to the entire plot, therefore her consent to the sexual act with Borachio needs to be reexamined, as she 141

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is a victim of sexual assault, and that violation is completely overlooked in the original play. Before this analysis looks at concepts related to consent, it is helpful to reflect on what readers and audience members know about Margaret as a character. She is Hero’s lady-in-waiting and is held in fairly high regard by the other women, although Hero does call her a fool. She is quick witted, as seen by this brief banter with Benedick and Balthasar: MARGARET: So would not I, for your own sake; for I have many ill-qualities. BALTHASAR: Which is one? MARGARET: I say my prayers aloud. (Act 1, Scene 2, 99–102.)

She concerns herself with the latest fashions, including wedding trends. She shares with Hero that she has seen the Duchess of Milan’s wedding gown and found it stylish but not as nice as Hero’s attire. By my troth, ’s but a nightgown in respect of yours—cloth o’ gold, and cuts, and laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and skirts round underborne with a bluish tinsel. But for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent fashion, yours is worth ten on ’t. (Act 3, Scene 4, 18–22)

She is open with her desires, both physically and with her wants for the future. She desires to marry, so that she can leave service, as evidenced by this quote: “To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?” (Act 5, Scene 2, 9–10) As a member of the serving class, she is not held to the same standards of purity that Hero and Beatrice are; however, many scholars have noted that her behavior with Borachio would not normally be acceptable for someone in her role, as it would reflect poorly on her mistress. No one condemns her for her tryst with Borachio by itself, only that it resulted in problems for many others. She is openly flirtatious with several men during the play and does seem to have a desire to improve her station. These traits can be viewed as either a woman making her desires known, as men often do, or as inappropriate speech and actions, and many previous works looking at Margaret take contradictory stances on her behavior. She speaks very few lines in the play, and many of these lines are delivering information or responding to being sent on errands, so the audience does not have a whole or complex view of the character. We can only infer what her true feelings or desires are based on the few words she speaks as well as

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what we learn of her from others. Since her actions with Borachio are central to the plot of the entire play, it is disappointing that we know so little about Margaret’s feelings, motivations, and even her unintended role in the duping of Claudio. One of the difficulties of understanding Margaret and her role in the deception is that her actions prior to the window event are largely out of character for someone in her position. In the list of actors of the play, she is identified, along with Ursula, as a “gentlewomen attending Hero.” Hero is the daughter of Leonato, who is the governor of Messina, a high-ranking position. They are entertaining Don Pedro, who is a prince, and other high-profile guests, including his bastard brother Don John, young lords Claudio and Benedick, and their followers. Margaret should be acting as a traditional lady-in-waiting, which includes following a strict moral code, but she does not. Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter is a text written by Annibal Guasco as a primer for how his eleven-year-old daughter should act as she becomes a lady-in-waiting at the Court of Turin. The text, published by Lavinia in 1586, provides a fascinating and candid look into the behaviors and responsibilities of women in service to aristocratic families. While the advice covers all manner of topics ranging from entertainment and education, a common theme in the text is one of morality, specifically chastity. Guasco writes, The honor of which I have to speak to you in this section is of course that conferred by your chastity. Remember, daughter, that no adornment bestows greater honor on a woman than this; its worth is such that through possessing it the poorest and plainest woman can call herself rich and comely, while without it, as has been remarked, she is neither truly alive nor truly a woman, let alone comely and rich; and if the jewel with which I promised to adorn you were to contain nothing else but this, it would still be a treasure beyond price and a thing to be cherished more than your life’s blood.1

Margaret is not chaste, as her previous encounters with Borachio show. Borachio tells Don John that the two have been involved for at least a year and that he can summon her late at night. While the relationship is not clearly defined in the text, it is evident that their interactions would be deemed inappropriate for a single woman in Margaret’s position. Guasco encourages his daughter to “nurture chaste thoughts,” as impure ones can lead to actions. Margaret’s sometimes crass language demonstrates that she is not working to keep such thoughts out of her mind. When Hero is describing her weighted feelings about marriage, she cheekily responds, “’Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man” (Act 2, Scene 2, 775–76), an overtly sexual joke that Hero finds uncomfortable.

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Guasco warns his daughter that she should be vigilant in how she speaks in front of others, planning her words carefully and “take care never to do so randomly.” He offers specific advice for how to speak to men “both because far more caution and modesty are required when a gentlewoman is conversing with a man than with another woman.”2 As noted above, Margaret participates in flirtatious banter with both Benedick and Balthasar at the masque. When chided by Hero about her language, Margaret replies that there is nothing wrong with being honest, even if she oversteps propriety. “and bad/ thinking do not wrest true speaking, I’ll offend/nobody” (Act 3, Scene 4, 31–33). She does not believe that her words are problematic, even though she flouts the rules of decorum that a woman in her position would know. Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter is one of many texts from the early modern period which describes just how important morality and perception of chastity were to ladies-in-waiting at courts throughout Europe, and what little we see of Margaret demonstrates that she does not follow the rules proscribed in such texts. Margaret’s actions and words do reflect another theme found within the larger play, and that is courtly love. Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier is known to be one of several significant sources for Shakespeare’s play, specifically in the interactions between Beatrice and Benedick. However, Margaret’s previous encounters with Borachio as well as her flirtatious conversations may place her is a symbolic role of the married woman at court, who is balancing being an entertaining host with her own morality. Book Three of the text explores this contrast. Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici describes the ideal traits a woman should have: And to repeat in a few words part of what has been already said, I wish this Lady to have knowledge of letters, music, painting, and to know how to dance and make merry; accompanying the other precepts that have been taught the Courtier with discreet modesty and with the giving of a good impression of herself. And thus, in her talk, her laughter, her play, her jesting, in short, in everything, she will be very graceful, and will entertain appropriately, and with witticisms and pleasantries befitting her, everyone who shall come before her.3

Margaret undoubtedly has the skills to “dance and make merry” and seems to be well liked by all those she encounters, therefore successfully fulfilling her role as a hostess. The men in the Castiglione’s text, along with Lady Emilia, find themselves discussing the problems that arise when hostesses, assumed to be married women, fall into romantic situations with men. In the rituals of courtly love, flirtation, dancing, and sharing of poetry are all acceptable, but committing adultery is not. Cesare Gonzaga notes that many do fall into overstepping these boundaries, stating, “still, those also who withstand

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the assaults of love are all admirable; and those who are sometimes overcome deserve much pity: for certainly the urgence of lovers, the arts they use, the snares they spread, are so many and so continual that it is but too great a wonder that a tender girl can escape.”4 Margaret seems to fill this role of the married woman, as she flirts and dances with men, but there is no clear intent to move beyond these courtly rituals with Benedick and Balthasar. At the masque, she tells Balthasar that she has asked God to bring her a good dance partner, but adds, “And God keep him out of my sight when/ the dance is done!” (Act 2, Scene, 103–4). This final witty line shows that she understands the roles all must play in the public sphere, but that the interactions do not go further than the ballroom or great hall. While these public interactions are deemed acceptable in the rituals of courtly love, Margaret’s more physical relationship with Borachio is not. She seems to embody a warning that Magnifico offers within The Book of the Courtier: But to the end that this Lady of mine (of whom it behooves me to take special care, since she is my creation) may not fall into those errours wherein I have seen many others fall, I should tell her not to be quick to believe herself loved, nor act like some who not only do not feign not to understand when court is paid to them even covertly, but at the first word accept all the praise that is given them, or decline it with a certain air that is rather an invitation to love for those with whom they are speaking, than a refusal.5

Margaret has let her relationship with Borachio go too far, and while we do not know much about their previous encounters, it is possible that Borachio wooed Margaret with promises of love or marriage. A man who truly believed that Margaret was his future wife would not involve her in such a harmful plot as the one conceived by Borachio and Don John. A concern raised by all the characters in The Book of the Courtier is the man offering his declarations of courtly love falls sincerely for the woman, leading to heartbreak, jealousy, and impulsive actions. Borachio’s treatment of Margaret, both during the window scene and later in the play, does not indicate that he was in love with her. His allegiance stays firmly with his master Don John throughout the text. In looking at Margaret’s encounter with Borachio and the problematic nature of it, it is important to note that Shakespeare and his audience would be unfamiliar with recent terms such as Me Too, enthusiastic consent, or rape by deception. The Me Too movement was started by Tarana Burke in 2006 but did not become widely known until 2017 when actress Alyssa Milano asked followers to respond to a tweet about her own sexual assault with the hashtag MeToo if they were also victims. This created a larger movement of women coming forward with stories of abuse that had previously not been

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shared.6 This in turn led to more open conversations about consent in sexual situations. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), enthusiastic consent is a newer model for understanding consent that focuses on a positive expression of consent. Simply put, enthusiastic consent means looking for the presence of a “yes” rather than the absence of a “no.” Enthusiastic consent can be expressed verbally or through nonverbal cues, such as positive body language like smiling, maintaining eye contact, and nodding. These cues alone do not necessarily represent consent, but they are additional details that may reflect consent. It is necessary, however, to still seek verbal confirmation. The important part of consent, enthusiastic or otherwise, is checking in with your partner regularly to make sure that they are still on the same page.7

In addition, the organization looks at consent as a collection of individual acts that require communication of consent. When you’re engaging in sexual activity, consent is about communication. And it should happen every time for every type of activity. Consenting to one activity, one time, does not mean someone gives consent for other activities or for the same activity on other occasions. For example, agreeing to kiss someone doesn’t give that person permission to remove your clothes. Having sex with someone in the past doesn’t give that person permission to have sex with you again in the future. It’s important to discuss boundaries and expectations with your partner prior to engaging in any sexual behavior.8

Borachio is certain that Margaret will meet him on the balcony, as they have had been together romantically or sexually when the soldiers visited the estate the previous year. He tells Don John “how much I am in the favor of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.” He sets the plan in motion, saying. “I can, at any unseasonable instant of the/night, appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber window” (Act 2, Scene 2, 13–17). Borachio is certain that since Margaret consented to be in his company previously, she will undoubtedly do so again. According to the Consent Awareness Network, All fraud laws are based on the premise that a person’s consent must be unambiguous, freely given and not the by-product of deceit in order to be legally valid. Consent is not merely agreement. It’s freely given, knowledgeable and informed agreement. When a person robs someone of their assets by misleading them into agreement, they can be punished for “theft by fraud.” Likewise, when a person misleads someone into sexual contact or sexual intercourse, they are sexually assaulting their target. Irrespective that the victim did not know the offender’s conduct was sexual assault at the time, the offender knew full-well

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that the agreement they received was given as a result of their deliberate, intentional, pre-meditated duplicity.9

The first known case of rape by fraud in the United States was in 1865 with People v. Croswell. In the first major British case, R v. Linekar, from 1995, rape by deception was not accepted. British law uses the “very narrow” interpretation of rape by deception set out in the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, making cases using deception difficult to prove. The most prominent recent example of this type of case is Julian Assange v. Swedish Prosecution Authority, which alleged that since he removed a condom without his partner’s consent, that was tantamount to rape. The case was dismissed in 2019. In 2000, an Israeli man was convicted of rape by fraud for pretending to be a pilot in order to have sex with a woman. In 2009, a California man was convicted of rape by fraud for impersonating the victim’s boyfriend.10 In 2022, South Australia passed legislation to criminalize “stealthing,” which is the removal of a condom during intercourse. The penalties can include life imprisonment.11 These are just a few examples of cases that have gone to court for rape by fraud or deception, and they seem to be becoming more common as conversations around consent continue to evolve. While these are all decidedly recent events, they do create a picture of what rape by deception or fraud looks like in legal terms. Moreover, the fact that these cases are being brought to courts throughout the world demonstrates how this particular phenomenon is being treated more seriously now than in previous times. In looking at the act that occurs between Margaret and Borachio, it is clear that the act does not meet the definition of enthusiastic consent and does fall into the category of rape by deception. We see throughout the play that Margaret is loyal and loving to her mistress Hero and would most likely not consent to participate in such a ruse that would undoubtedly harm her. Borachio instructs Don John to bring Don Pedro and Claudio to Hero’s window, with the lie that Hero is actually in love with Borachio. “Offer them instances, which shall bear no less/ likelihood than to see me at her chamber window,/ hear me call Margaret ‘Hero,’ hear Margaret term/ me ‘Claudio’” (Act 2, Scene 2, 41–44). As far as the audience knows, Margaret has only agreed to this role-playing game with Borachio, where they call each other by the young lovers’ names, with Margaret wearing one of Hero’s gowns. It is unclear why Margaret agrees to call her lover by the young count’s name, but this is most likely a sexual game related to her wearing Hero’s dress. While her choice to carry out this act may be questionable, there is no indication that she agreed to either the smearing of Hero’s reputation or to be observed by others. Kathryn Prince writes, “From its inception, it is a vulnerable plan: Margaret need only reject Borachio’s advances to prevent it, or come clean about her dalliance in order to exonerate her mistress once the

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accusation of infidelity has been made.”12 While the plot is full of issues, it does work in the play, as Claudio and Don Pedro truly believe that they are seeing Hero and Borachio together. The play does not include this chamber-window scene, and this is a common critique of the play and the specific plot involving it. Mark Taylor writes in his article Presence and Absence in Much Ado About Nothing, “The problem is not an absence (though one inevitably uses words like ‘absent’ and ‘missing’ for the chamber-window scene) or incompleteness, e.g., because of authorial oversight or inability, but rather a presence—but of nothing, a void.”13 The scene’s absence fuels differing accounts from the characters as well as different interpretations from readers and audience members. In contrast, Cynthia Lewis believes that the scene is missing because it would cast Margaret in a questionable light: “if it were, audiences would form opinions about the degree of Margaret’s knowing involvement in the men’s duping.”14 Did she willingly consent to just wearing the dress? How does she feel about being called Hero? Regardless of one’s interpretation of the missing window scene, it is clear that this is a crucial moment in the play, and that its inclusion in the original text would add some clarity as to Margaret’s complicity or victimization. Margaret has few lines in the play and never speaks about the act. We are instead left with the testimony of the man who assaulted her, Borachio, who declares her innocence to both the constable and Leonato. Sweet prince, let me go no farther to mine answer: do you hear me, and let this count kill me. I have deceived even your very eyes: what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light: who in the night overheard me confessing to this man how Don John your brother incensed me to slander the Lady Hero, how you were brought into the orchard and saw me court Margaret in Hero’s garments, how you disgraced her, when you should marry her: my villany they have upon record; which I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my shame. (Act 5, Scene 1, 240–51)

Borachio seemed to not care about Margaret’s feelings or the consequences she would face earlier, but here he clearly takes responsibility and tries to

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minimize Margaret’s role. Rather than being concerned with her well-being, Leonato’s initial response is to view Margaret as part of the plan and declares that she should be punished. To-morrow then I will expect your coming; To-night I take my leave. This naughty man Shall face to face be brought to Margaret, Who I believe was pack’d in all this wrong, Hired to it by your brother. (Act 5, Scene 1, 310–14)

Hero is viewed as the victim, not Margaret. Leonato still considers her responsible to some extent, even though he begrudgingly admits she didn’t know of the plan. “But Margaret was in some fault for this,/ Although against her will, as it appears/ In the true course of all the question” (Act 5, Scene 4, 4–6). Even when it is revealed that she too was duped, she is blamed, like many women have been, for putting herself in this situation. In this moment of the play, Margaret is essentially “slut shamed” for having the tryst with Borachio instead of being viewed as a victim. Margaret is not able to defend herself and is noticeably absent from the wedding. She is included in the final dance scene and is still involved in the plot to unite Beatrice and Benedick, so it is assumed that she was forgiven by the others, although her own status as victim of the plot is never acknowledged. An important consideration in this discussion is that the events on the night in question are ambiguous, as the story changes several times throughout the play, depending on whom Borachio is sharing his recollection with. Borachio’s initial description of the event has Margaret participating in some sort of romantic act. His first mention of the deception occurs when bradding to Conrade about how he earned a thousand ducats from Do John. He tells Conrade: But know that I have tonight wooed Margaret, the Lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero. She leans me out at her mistress’ chamber window, bids me a thousand times goodnight. I tell this tale vilely. I should first tell thee how the Prince, Claudio, and my master, planted and placed and possessed by my master Don John, saw afar off in the orchard this

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amiable encounter. (Act 3, Scene 3, 144–52)

While meeting with a man at night is not something that would have been acceptable, Borachio’s account includes just talking. Margaret bids Borachio “a thousand times goodnight,” using similar language as that found in the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Don Pedro provides his own account of witnessing the scene when he supports Claudio’s cruel public rejection of Hero. Upon mine honor, Myself, my brother, and this grievèd count Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night Talk with a ruffian at her chamber window, Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain, Confessed the vile encounters they have had A thousand times in secret. (Act 4, Scene 1, 86–92)

Even though he assumes Margaret to be Hero, his account does add a different perspective, even though the act is still described as “talking.” It is important to note that two male characters have been given the chance to share their recollections of the window scene, but Margaret is never able to voice her own side. Most stage and film versions of the play assume that a sexual act has occurred, which fits with Claudio’s actions toward Hero when he thinks she is no longer a virgin. In both the 1993 film directed by Kenneth Branagh and the 2012 version directed by Joss Whedon, the sexual act is clearly shown. A 2011 stage production starring David Tennant moves the scene to a bachelorette party, and Borachio steals Hero’s veil and places it on Margaret’s head. The two are observed dancing suggestively and then are shown engaged in a sexual act outside of the nightclub. In 2020, the Texas Shakespeare Festival tackled the scene by only showing Don Pedro, Don Juan, and Claudio’s reaction to the scene. The three men stand center-stage looking over the audience to where the window should be. The audience sees their facial expressions and body language convey shock, disgust, and, for Claudio, extreme hurt. However, the text is less clear as to the actual actions. In looking at the passages quoted previously, Borachio describes him wooing Margaret, and that she leaned out the window to wish him goodnight. Don Pedro saw only two people talking about their previous romantic encounters. These two accounts are quite different, but in neither does an explicit sexual act occur. The content of these accounts is salacious enough to lead most to assume that the tryst had gone much farther, but with the window scene missing from the play, it

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is impossible to know what really happened between Margaret and Borachio. Regardless of what occurred, it is clear that Margaret did not consent to the deception behind their interaction. Shakespeare’s source for the deception plot merged two earlier publications: Matteo Bandello’s Novelle and the epic poem Orlando Furioso written by Ludovico Ariosto. The former text involves a jealous lover observing a rival suitor entering his intended’s room, and this is the basis of Claudio’s reaction to seeing Hero/Margaret plus Hero’s faked death. Ariosto’s work is merged with Bandello’s story to include Margaret’s participation. Canto Five contains a story told by Dalinda, a lady-in-waiting to the Scottish princess Genevra. Duke Polinesso tries to woo the princess but is rejected in favor of Ariodante. Polinesso sets his sights on the maid, and convinces her to dress as her mistress and invite him into the bedchamber: And so, I lowered the ladder, reconciled To all he wished, and thus was dressed to bait His snare, dressed as Ginevra, not seeing The harm that I might do, in so agreeing.15

When the plot was uncovered, Dalinda fled to be with Polinesso but was greeted with contempt, not love. For so ungrateful, cruel, and treacherous Was he, and doubtful of my loyalty, He thought my knowledge of him dangerous, And that I might reveal all openly.16

Polinesso goes so far as to try to have Dalinda killed, but she narrowly escapes. Looking at the original text can provide a glimpse into Shakespeare’s intentions. While the window scene in Much Ado About Nothing is missing, it is clear from the original story that the couple did indeed have sexual relations. Also, Polinesso’s indifference and eventual cruelty to Dalinda may help us to understand Borachio’s feelings for Margaret. He is softened in Shakespeare’s version of the tale, as he does not try to kill her and moves to deflect all blame from Margaret when he is caught. In his confession, he seems contrite but does not provide any proof that his feelings for Margaret are more than lust or admiration, certainly not love. As the previous sections have noted, we do not know how Shakespeare viewed Margaret, but there are many clues about his feeling about the theme of deception, which is common in the play. Perhaps the most famous lines of

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the play come from the song sung by Balthasar, which opens with “Sigh no more, ladies, Sigh no more,/ Men were deceivers ever,/One foot in sea and one on shore,/To one thing constant never” (Act 2, Scene 3, 64–67). Several plots involving deception are found within the play. At the masque, the Prince disguises himself and woos Hero in Claudio’s name. Don John discovers this seemingly innocent act and tells Claudio that the Prince has actually claimed Hero for himself. While the plot here is quickly uncovered, it is a stark reminder that deceptions can go wrong very quickly. Many of the characters participate in the Prince’s plot to unite Beatrice and Benedick. Margaret even participates in this plan, as she is sent by Hero to bring Beatrice to the orchard to overhear the conversation between Hero and Ursula. Margaret enthusiastically agrees, stating, “I’ll make her come, I warrant you, presently” (Act 3, Scene 1, 15). Finally, the Friar concocts the plan to fake Hero’s death, with the hopes that news of her passing will lower tensions between the Prince’s men and Leonato’s household. While all of these scenarios are eventually resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, there are hurt feelings, strained friendships, and the possibility of long-term damage to relationships and reputations in all. We can safely assume that Shakespeare sees deception as potentially harmful to those who are deceived. Another important aspect of the text is the way many of the men are negatively portrayed. Don John is the primary villain, and he is given little motivation for his actions other than he is a proverbial bad apple. He says to Conrade and Borachio, “it must not be denied/ but I am a plain-dealing villain” (Act 1, Scene 3, 357–58). He seeks to harm Claudio because the young man is held in high esteem by John’s brother Don Pedro, and John feels he is falling out of favor. Borachio offers the trickery plot to Don John without any hesitation, and his relationship with Margaret seemed to be secret until this point. In exchange, he will receive 1,000 ducats. He is willing to risk the reputations and happiness of those around him for money. Even the “heroes” of the play come across poorly at times. Claudio and Don Pedro reveal the plot at the altar, tarnishing Hero’s reputation and not giving her a chance to defend herself before she swoons and is assumed to be dead. Claudio calls her a “rotten orange” and states, “She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;/ Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty” (Act 4, Scene 1, 1680–82). When Hero denies the accusations against her, Don Pedro yells, “Why, then are you no maiden” (Act 4, Scene 1, 1732). The men’s reactions can be explained by what they thought they saw the night before, but the public humiliation and refusal to hear Hero’s explanation are problematic. When the truth is eventually revealed, Claudio is challenged to duels by both Leonato and Benedick, and he refuses to participate in either. While choosing not to fight is understandable, it would have been considered shameful for a gentleman to refuse to

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participate. Claudio later redeems himself somewhat when Hero is revealed to be alive, but this final action does not erase the cruelty he displayed earlier. As the play comes to a close, the focus is on the restoration of Hero’s public standing, and the romances between Hero and Claudio and Beatrice and Benedick. In Act 5, Scene 2, Ursula informs Beatrice that Don John and his men have fled, so there is no public apology or clearing of Margaret’s name. If she had deep romantic feelings for him, his quick exit would have been heartbreaking. Likewise, no characters confront her about her role in the plot or allow her to explain. As a victim of Don John and Borachio’s treachery, she is never given the chance to confront those that have harmed her or acknowledge that she too has been hurt. In conclusion, Margaret’s role as victim of the fraud perpetrated by Don John and Borachio is one that has long been overlooked in discussions of Much Ado About Nothing. As a lady’s maid, she is not held to the same standards of purity that upper class women like Hero are, but her own trauma is ignored as the cast focuses on Hero’s reputational damage instead. It is clear from the text, specially Borachio’s own words, that Margaret did not agree to participate fully in the scheme to separate Hero and Claudio, and she certainly would not have willingly done anything to hurt her mistress, with whom she has a good relationship. Recent conversations in the media surrounding enthusiastic consent and the Me Too movement provide a new framework for exploring Margaret’s role in the pivotal plot device of the play. Since Margaret did not consent to all aspects of the encounter with Borachio, she should be considered a victim of rape by deception. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Guasco, Annibal. Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter. University of Chicago Press, 2003. “History and Inception.” Me Too. Accessed December 9, 2022. https:​//​metoomvmt​ .org​/get​-to​-know​-us​/history​-inception​/. Keane, Daniel. “Life Imprisonment for ‘stealthing’ and SA outlaws non-consensual removal or condom during sex.” November 2, 2022. https:​//​www​.abc​.net​.au​ /news​/2022​-11​-03​/stealthing​-non​-consensual​-removal​-of​-condom​-outlawed​-in​-sa​ /101607588. Lewis, Cynthia. “‘You Were An Actor with Your Handkerchief’: Women, Windows, and Moral Agency.” Comparative Drama 43, no. 4 (n.d.): 488–. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​ .1353​/cdr​.0​.0086. Prince, Kathryn. “Landmarks, Tendencies, Outliers, Recursions and Riffs in the Performance History of Much Ado About Nothing.” Essay. In Much Ado About

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Nothing: A Critical Reader, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Peter J. Smith, 57. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2019. “Rape by Deception.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, September 24, 2022. https:​ //​en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Rape​_by​_deception. Short, Joyce. “State by State Information on Rape by Fraud.” Consentawareness.net. Accessed September 30, 2022. https:​//​consentawareness​.net​/state​-by​-state​ -information​-on​-rape​-by​-fraud​/. Taylor, Mark. “Presence and Absences in Much Ado About Nothing.” The Centennial Review 33, no. 1 (1989): 6. “What Consent Looks Like.” RAINN. Accessed September 30, 2022. https:​//​www​ .rainn​.org​/articles​/what​-is​-consent. William Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing. The Necessary Shakespeare, 3rd Edition, ed. David Bevington. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009.

NOTES 1. Guasco, Annibal. Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter. University of Chicago Press, 2003. 62. 2. Guasco, Annibal. Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter. University of Chicago Press, 2003. 87. 3. Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. 3.9. 4. Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. 3.50. 5. Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. 3.54. 6. “History and Inception.” Me Too. Accessed December 9, 2022. https:​ //​ metoomvmt​.org​/get​-to​-know​-us​/history​-inception​/. 7. “What Consent Looks Like.” RAINN. Accessed September 30, 2022. https:​//​ www​.rainn​.org​/articles​/what​-is​-consent. 8. Ibid. 9. Short, Joyce. “State by State Information on Rape by Fraud.” Consentawareness.net. Accessed September 30, 2022. https:​//​consentawareness​.net​/state​-by​-state​ -information​-on​-rape​-by​-fraud​/. 10. “Rape by Deception.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, September 24, 2022. https:​//​en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Rape​_by​_deception. 11. Keane, Daniel. “Life Imprisonment for ‘stealthing’ and SA outlaws non-consensual removal or condom during sex.” November 2, 2022. https:​//​www​.abc​ .net​.au​/news​/2022​-11​-03​/stealthing​-non​-consensual​-removal​-of​-condom​-outlawed​-in​ -sa​/101607588. 12. Prince, Kathryn. “Landmarks, Tendencies, Outliers, Recursions and Riffs in the Performance History of Much Ado About Nothing.” Essay. In Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Peter J. Smith, 57. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2019. 13. Taylor, Mark. “Presence and Absences in Much Ado About Nothing.” The Centennial Review 33, no. 1 (1989): 6.

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14. Lewis, Cynthia. “‘You Were An Actor with Your Handkerchief’: Women, Windows, and Moral Agency.” Comparative Drama 43, no. 4 (n.d.): 488–. https:​//​doi​.org​ /10​.1353​/cdr​.0​.0086. 15. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Canto 5. 30. 16. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Canto 5. 74.

PART IV: SHAKESPEAREAN ADAPTATION AND PERFORMANCE

Chapter 9

“till all graces be in one woman” Archetypes of Womanhood in YA Adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing Anna Graham

In act two of Much Ado About Nothing, Benedict declares that “till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.”1 The humor in this statement is the irony that the woman he ends up with, does not have all of these graces. While the play dismantles Benedict’s unachievable expectation for women, young adult adaptions of Much Ado About Nothing uphold unrealistic standards for girls in the character of Hero. As Julie Ann Cusak has argued, “in order to gain the interest of teens, characters have to be both relatable, smart, attractive, inspiring, moral, rebellious, and intriguing, creating a new gender ideal for young people to aspire to.”2 Cusak argues that despite young people being more accepting of queer identities than ever, young adult narratives still prescribe to idealized gender roles. This aspect of young adult literature is unusual in terms of adaptation studies, as “most of these models foreground language as a site for potential resistance.”3 Iyengar and Gajowski identify how adaptations intervene in traditional power structures through the lens of post-structuralism, as “master-narratives and superstructures can push marginalized persons and perspectives even further out of view; poststructuralists therefore suggest that we ‘deconstruct,’ in Derrida’s terms, the seeming binary opposition between base and superstructure, by acknowledging the implicit hierarchy that structuralism sets up.”4 While young adult adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing acknowledge the power inequalities in the master-narrative, I will show through an interrogation of the reimagined 157

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characters of Hero and Beatrice, that they do not satisfactorily deconstruct these narratives of traditional gender roles. As Erica Hateley highlights, young adult adaptations of Shakespeare, while numerous, are problematic, particularly when aimed toward a young female readership. She emphasizes how: When genre conventions are combined with gender conventions in Shakespearean YA literature, it often means dead women, silent/silenced women, or women finding closure in romance/sexual pairing—a fact that should give us pause as these are troubling frameworks of expectations of and for readers.5

The female characters in Much Ado About Nothing represent archetypes of expectation for femininity during the early modern period where Hero is an idealized maid and Beatrice is a shrew. Despite YA being intended to aid young people in developing their identity, YA adaptations for Much Ado fail to provide diverse representations of femininity for young women. In these contemporary renditions of Much Ado, the archetype of idealized maid and shrew remain, albeit in a modern form. In the majority of YA adaptions of Much Ado, Hero is framed as the nice girl who is perfect in almost every way. These portrayals of Hero demonstrate the behavior associated with the nice girl. By setting Hero up as an ideal example of femininity, these books create a problematic association between being “nice” and being manipulated. In all of the books I discuss throughout this chapter, Claudio participates in a public shaming of Hero as in the source material, and similarly in the end Hero forgives his behavior. By having the idealized “nice” girl forgive unacceptable behavior, and have the aggressor be redeemed at the end of the play, these books draw a connection between being nice and forgiving male aggression. Beatrice’s character similarly goes through a process of modernization, so that her characterization as the shrew is translated into the character of the “quirky girl” or the “cool girl.” In these contemporary characterizations of Beatrice, she is consistently portrayed in opposition to other girls, often highlighting a subconscious internalized misogyny that manifests in feeling superior to female characters who are interested in their appearance and in dating. In being juxtaposed against Hero’s idealized character, Beatrice’s character highlights that the alternative to being a perfect girl, is to be a girl that has either above-average intellect or traditionally male interests. The dichotomy set up by these books gives two choices of representation for young women, either they excel in academics or they accept inappropriate male behavior for the sake of maintaining their reputation of being “nice.” This chapter explores the representation of female characters in Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood, Nothing Happened by Molly Booth, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You by Lily Anderson, and I Think I Love You by

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Auriane Desombre.6 These books have all been published in the last six years, situating them in a post-#MeToo discourse. Some of these novels do provide greater nuance in female expression, but all of them ultimately reinforce archetypes for female behavior. Under a Dancing Star is unique among young adult adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing, as it provides a prequel to the action of the play. In this book set in 1930s Italy, Beatrice is sent to stay with her uncle and cousin for the summer to learn how to behave like a lady. In Under a Dancing Star Hero is characterized through ideal girlhood. She is pale, blonde, and fresh-faced. She studies and is innocent and virginal. In her characterization, she is set in opposition to Beatrice. Where Beatrice describes her unruly dark hair, Hero has blonde curls. Like her blonde hair, all aspects of Hero’s appearance are associated with lightness. She is described throughout the book as “beaming” and “glowing with pleasure.”7 The brightness she is associated with is tied to a sense of innocence in the book. Wood conveys Hero’s character in the book as being physically incompatible with negative emotions. The lightness of her character is juxtaposed in Beatrice’s memory of Hero’s mother’s funeral, as she describes Hero as being “pale and pinches under all the black clothing that hung heavy on her slender frame.”8 Her description frames Hero’s character as being out of place with grief as the physical markers of grieving drown her small frame. Hero’s clothing is framed as being more suitable to her personality when she is described “in shell-pink, her heart-shaped face glowing.”9 The imagery of shells, pink, and hearts are tied to a simplistic femininity that Beatrice and Ursula have developed past, and instead are framed through primarily reds and deep greens. Like the source material, in this book Hero is consistently represented as ideal in terms of feminine behavior. From Hero’s first mention in the book she is introduced as a solution to Beatrice’s unfeminine behavior, with her mother suggesting “perhaps spending time with a sweet girl like Hero will help mend your manner.”10 Under a Dancing Star sets in opposition different ways to be a girl, but ties traditional associations with being a “good girl” with childishness. In the book, Hero is fourteen while the others are seventeen. Despite the fact that readers of this book may well be fourteen and younger, Hero is presented as being particularly juvenile, being described by her father as a “little sprite.”11 She still refers to her father as Daddy, “dances from foot to foot” when excited, and tugs on Beatrice’s arm to ask “do you remember the puppies in the barn?”12 Even in the epilogue when Hero is eighteen, she is still made to appear younger than she is. Beatrice even draws attention to her seeming inability to grow up, commenting that “in moments like this she still seems so young, and despite her eighteen years I see my little cousin, the one who asked over and over for the tale of the toad.”13 It is significant that Beatrice mentions Hero’s habit of asking for a story to be retold, as this habit

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characterizes her throughout the story. Like most younger siblings, Hero is framed through loquaciousness, with the older characters around her placating her. This occurs most clearly when Beatrice asks Hero how her lessons were and “immediately realize this was a mistake as my cousin unleashes a rather disjointed rant . . . From the pained look in Filomena’s eyes, I suspect that she has heard this already.”14 In the look Filomena and Beatrice exchange, they are communicating in a dialogue that Hero cannot participate in. Part of her youth is her ignorance about how the adult world works. Not only is she excluded from adult dialogues, but she is excluded from all action in the play that would compromise her innocence. It is consciously acknowledged by both Hero and Bea that she is excluded from all dynamics in the story. Hero complains that the group all have a lovely time “while I’m stuck inside with Signora Giuliani, conjugating verbs” while Beatrice recognizes “it’s difficult for her, I think—the three-year age gap between us can feel so big, and I know she sometimes feels excluded from our group.”15 Despite the acknowledgment that Hero is excluded from the group, there are no attempts to remedy this; it is accepted as fact that Hero should be excluded from the group because she does not fit into their activities, in the way that grief hung too heavy on her innocence, so too would the illicit behavior of the older group. When Hero is situated in relation to the action of the story, she is set in comparison to the transgressive actions of the older teenagers. When Beatrice falls into Ben, it is framed as more than platonic touching. As Beatrice lays on top of him, she tries “not to notice the feeling tightening in my stomach, or the way his chest feels pressed against my own.”16 While Beatrice experiences the beginning of her sexual coming of age, Hero is shown in the same chapter sitting under the pergola with her books spread over the long table, and an older woman perched rigidly beside her.”17 Even when Hero is anchored in the same location of action, she is not permitted to participate in it. While the other characters argue about fascism, Beatrice notes how Hero “hasn’t said a word since I arrived. I don’t think she’s even moved.”18 Similarly during the party when the other characters are building and developing their interpersonal relationships, Beatrice comes across Hero “sitting at the dining table, her chin in her hand, her eyes on the decadent scenes unfolding in front of her. She looks as though she’s at the pictures, watching quietly from the darkness as the light spills towards her.”19 In this scene Hero is not only excluded from participating in the action, but is framed primarily as a spectator of action. In order to preserve the innocence of her character, Hero can only exist on the outskirts of action, living vicariously through Bea. Like the reference about Hero asking for repetition about the toad story, it appears the only excitement Hero can hope to participate in is through the aftershocks of Beatrice’s behavior. This is demonstrated most clearly when Bea appears after her entanglement with Ben, covered in red

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paint. Even though the encounter was Beatrice’s, it is Hero that claims her part of the narrative, recounting the story in painful detail, “‘And then . . . ’ Hero’s voice is gleeful. ‘Bea emerged from the garden, ghostly pale and positively dripping with blood.’”20 As she constantly interrupts Beatrice to continue the story for herself, Hero’s desire for a story of her own is clear, but ultimately her character only serves to be a point of wonder at Beatrice’s narrative. While Kate (Hero) is the same age and in the same friend group as the rest of the characters in I Think I Love You, she is still separated from the other girls by her innocence. Throughout the book, Kate is consistently described as blushing; in fact there are nine references to her blushing, over twice as many as the main character, Emma (Beatrice). Most of the references about Kate’s blushing occur when she interacts with Tom (Claudio). From Kate’s first interaction with Tom in the story, she is described as “blushing at the contact with him” (4).21 From that point on nearly every time Kate speaks to or about Tom, she is described as “turning a steep red,” “the tips of her ears grow pink” and as “positively fuchsia.”22 Beyond just demonstrating an unfamiliarity with romance, Kate is framed as behaving ideally in other contexts, described as “always the peacemaker” and “in her constant fear of getting in trouble.”23 Similarly, Kate is constantly described in terms of being the ‘most.” She is “the sweetest person I’ve ever met” “the most punctual person I know” “the bubbliest person I know.”24 For Kate, there is no room for her character to grow; she is already seemingly the perfect person. The aspects of her personality that make her idealized are set against the accusations leveled at her about cheating. Unlike the source material, Kate is not accused of cheating sexually, but of cheating as part of a film contest. From the point of accusation in this story, Kate’s personality is consistently drawn as being incompatible with someone who would cheat. The reader is constantly assured that “Kate would never do something like that,” and that “Kate is too sweet to contemplate sabotage.”25 In fact, multiple characters assert “Kate Perez? Sabotage? It’s unimaginable” and “there’s no way Kate would cheat on anything.”26 The sentiment of Kate being above reproach in terms of flaws is encapsulated when Emma says “‘This is Kate we’re talking about,’ I say firmly, as if that settles it. Because it does.”27 Kate’s reputation of being a perfect person places her on a pedestal upon which she cannot commit any faults. The characters, therefore, do not view the vitriol with which Tom accuses Kate with as inherently wrong because she should not be spoken to that way as a human, but because it is implausible to think that she would actually deserve to be spoken to that way. By aligning justice with unrealistic idealized behavior, young women are conditioned to expect to be spoken down to if they fail to achieve an impossible standard. Even the book seems to suggest that the idealized girl is a form of performance as Tom

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asks “you’re so sweet all the time. Is that some act?.”28 The sense of a performance is also implied when Emma describes Kate as “a literal pure cinnamon roll.”29 While this term has come to be used colloquially by young people online, it is traditionally used in terms of media criticism, where fictional characters are perceived by the audience as being too good for the things that happen to them, abstracted from a complex characterization and condensed to be characterized purely through their goodness. In terms of I Think I Love You, Kate’s character is similarly compressed so that she can only be conceived of as the perfect girl in order to make the accusations leveled at her all the more disturbing. The book does, however, seem to acknowledge that Kate does have a flaw, and this flaw is exactly what makes her idealized in the story. Kate appears at first to have a moment of character development following the accusation, even being termed “the new and improved Kate Perez.”30 This improved version of Kate is someone who swears and someone who slaps Matt across the face. Part of Kate’s change is spurred by her reading of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, which makes her question the cultural authority of Shakespeare, saying that “We all put Shakespeare up on this pedestal, and tell his stories over and over again like they’re so special, but that play is terrible to women,” continuing on to say “The whole premise is that this girl needs to be ‘tamed’ so she can be a good wife to this asshole?”31 This moment of the story attempts to subvert the misogynistic narrative of Much Ado by empowering Kate with a feminist authority to supersede Shakespeare, allowing her to rewrite her own narrative. Despite the apparent growth, however, Kate does still ultimately forgive Tom for the way he has treated her, because he has performed a grand romantic gesture. While Kate can stand up to other characters in the story, when it comes to Tom, she is still the same girl from the beginning of the story as “a pink tint is already flowering in her cheeks.”32 Even as Kate attempts to author her own ending that diverges from Shakespeare’s ending, she is silenced. She tells Tom “It’s okay. I forgive you. I think we should ease back into it a bit, but—.”33 By not allowing Kate finish her qualifier at the end of the sentence, her character is still being constrained within a narrative that prioritizes female forgiveness over female empowerment. Like I Think I Love You, Nothing Happened is also a contemporary retelling of Much Ado, with this story being set at a summer camp where the characters are camp counselors. Nothing Happened offers a more nuanced characterization of Hero. Unlike Under a Dancing Star and I Think I Love You, in this story Hana (Hero) isn’t completely idealized; rather this version of Hero is a closer representation of a real teenage girl who struggles with mental health issues, has a relationship history, and questions her sexuality. Similarly, while other versions of Hero are set in comparison to Beatrice, where Hero is effortlessly attractive, Hana is described as having “some zits

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and flyaways. Not all of us could look so flawless with zero effort.”34 By including some of the faults a typical teenager has, Hana’s characterization is already more realistic and relatable than other versions of Hero. Where other characterizations of Hero present her as completely innocent, this story affords her multiple personality levels, as Bee (Beatrice) describes “Hana acts all naive, but she’s sneaky, that one.”35 While Hana’s character is not idealized in the way the others are, she is, similarly to Hero in Under a Dancing Star, repeatedly juxtaposed against the group in terms of her younger age. Even after Bee observes that Hana is not as innocent as she makes out to be, she goes on to describe her as “like a stink eye from a baby seal. My sister was the cutest person alive.”36 Similarly, when the group believe Donald is pursuing Hana for himself rather than on behalf of Claudia (Claudio), they are shocked by the age difference, with Bee remarking “Donald liked Hana?! Hana was a baby! What the hell?.”37 John similarly observes the perverseness of the age difference “My older brother making a move on a vulnerable sixteen-year-old.”38 Even when Claudio is framed as the love interest, Hana is still framed in the book through her youth, as Ben describes her as “a good kid.”39 Despite being set up in terms of her youth, Hana is not juvenilized in the same way as Under a Dancing Star’s Hero. Rather, Hana is permitted to have a past love life in this story. Her ex-boyfriend Cristopher forms the crux of the story, providing an identity to Hero’s accused affair. The existence of an ex-boyfriend, however, provides a greater rationale for Claudia’s jealousy. From their first kiss, Claudia thinks “and I’d never kissed like this before. I wondered if she had.”40 While Hana is more empowered than the other versions of Hero by having a history, this history is what provides enough doubt for her character to be decimated. John references Christopher when he tells Claudia that he heard Hana “was hooking up with some townie who’s sneaking into camp at night, after quiet hours.”41 Similarly, when Bee bumps into Christopher the purpose of the encounter is to provide culpability to Hana. As Christopher reveals “If she doesn’t want to talk to me, then why does she keep texting me in the middle of the night?”42 In a later scene Claudio notes how Hana looks at her phone and goes to the bathroom. Combined with the information Claudio has heard already, it appears to be sufficient evidence to investigate further and go to the volleyball courts with John and Donald. As Melissa Croteau states in her review of The Old Globe Theatre’s production of Much Ado About Nothing: The litmus test of any Much Ado production’s willingness to take on the play’s shadowy depths is the director’s choice either to follow Shakespeare’s lead in eliding any visual enactment of Borachio and Margaret’s “amicable encounter” or to interpolate a new scene in which the audience witnesses, along with

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Claudio and Don Pedro, the very convincing sight of Borachio (usually having sex) with “Hero.”43

While giving Hana the capability to make mistakes serves to remove her characterization from the unrealistic constrains of being the idealized maid it simultaneously legitimizes Claudia’s reaction, as “Donald’s sharp intake of breath next to me confirmed that it wasn’t one of my paranoid nightmares.”44 The impact of Hana’s more nuanced personality is similarly seen in the reaction to the accusation by characters throughout the story. Despite Claudia clarifying to Donald that her and Hana never said they were exclusive, Hana is demonized throughout the following chapters of the book.45 The word about Hana’s supposed cheating spreads through Claudia’s public shaming of her, where she says “You’re a liar, Hana.” Her face crumpled in reply. I could feel people moving toward us. Whatever. Let them find out that Hana had a lot of growing up to do. That she didn’t know how to treat people decently yet.46

Through Claudia’s shaming, the story effectively denies her an ability to voice her own narrative, leading to her characterization to be decided externally. Following Claudia’s accusations, Hana is repeatedly slut shamed, with a junior camp counselor commenting “what a total slu—” and a camper also reacting to the gossip with “Wow, what a slut.”47 Beyond being called a slut, Hana is also referred to as being a generally bad person for causing Claudia pain; “Yeah, Claudia’s so messed up about it” “What a bitch,” with similar sentiments being expressed on page 266 and 269.48 Even the people closest to Hana are dubious about believing Hana’s version of events. While in I Think I Love You almost everyone responded with disbelief that Kate had the capability to cheat, in this instance both Hana’s Mom and sister have doubts. In creating Hana’s character in such a way that Claudia’s accusation is believable, the story does not empower Hana; rather it continues to frame this type of public shaming as an act that can be justified. That being said, there are a number of instances in the story where Claudia’s actions are ridiculed by the other characters, with Bee claiming “You don’t get to just apologize and move past humiliating someone” and Ben framing their actions as “This is—crap. It’s unforgivable.”49 Even before John sowed the seeds of doubt for Claudia, she already had an insecure attachment to Hana. As referenced earlier, her first kiss with Hana was marked by thoughts wondering about her past experiences, and even when Donald was helping set up the two girls, Claudia still could not control her jealousy, with Ben describing “Claudia’s earlier flash transformation into a possessive, paranoid snapping turtle.”50 The book appears to disperse fault between both Hana and Claudia; Hana for

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continuing to text Christopher after she started dating Claudia, and Claudia for her problems controlling her jealousy. While both characters are intended to share the blame, Hana is the only one that is punished for her behavior. As with I Think I Love You, despite the severity of the public shaming, Hana ultimately forgives Claudia’s behavior. After the proof that Hana did not cheat is revealed, Claudia apologizes, saying “I’m sorry. . . . I can’t believe I thought—,” before Hana interrupts her to say “It’s okay. You were tricked. . . . This whole thing was unreal.”51 Claudia further punctuated the apology with a romantic gesture in creating garlands from the paper stars Hana threw out, implying that Claudia wanted to apologize before even knowing the definitive truth. By having the truth revealed first, however, Claudia never has to step up and have faith in Hana. By the end of the story it is clear that nothing has changed in the relationship dynamic between Hana and Claudia. When Ben asks Bee about the couple, she answers “‘Back together.’ Bee sighed. ‘That’s three times since this summer.’”52 From the reference to the instability of their relationship, it is clear that the conflict in the story has not been resolved, leaving Hana open to another experience of public shaming where Claudia is not adequately held accountable. Where Hero is presented as a reflection of what the ideal expectations are for young women, Beatrice is not held to the same standards of femininity. In the play, Beatrice is characterized more similarly to a shrew, than an ideal maid like Hero, yet her character is accepted by virtue of her wit. A similar effect occurs in young adult representations of Beatrice where she has a more abrasive attitude compared to Hero, yet this is mitigated by her intelligence. In Under a Dancing Star Beatrice is characterized primarily through her intellect and her interest in nontraditional topics, as she is first introduced in the book capturing larvae. She is similarly framed as not fitting into the standards of twentieth-century femininity, particularly within her aristocratic household. She is described through her failure to meet expectations for femininity, claiming that she is “too big, too loud, too clever—too much.”53 While Beatrice does not fit into the traditional conception of an ideal girl during this period in the way Hero does, she takes pride in her difference. While Ben means to insult Beatrice when he comments on the irony of being “schooled in social niceties by a girl who chases down bandits,” Beatrice comments “that girl sounds so much more interesting than a swooning maiden.”54 In this instance, Beatrice establishes a dichotomy of behavior for women. Girls either chase bandits, or they swoon, and if they swoon, they are uninteresting. In this line, Beatrice sets up the expectations for what is necessary to be interesting as a girl. Just as Beatrice does not meet the expectations of behavior for a young woman, neither does she fit what a young woman should look like. Her distinction from others girls is marked physically on her, positioning her as visibly different. The differences, however, are primarily by virtue of her

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clothing, rather than any physical feature of Beatrice’s. This allows Beatrice to be marked as different in the story, but not different enough for her to be actually marginalized. Her old fashioned clothing only serves to facilitate a makeover scene where she can actualize the woman she is on the inside. Where Beatrice does appear to be happy with herself, she cannot fully reconcile with her personhood while she exists within a society that constrains her. This ultimately leads to her decision to pursue her dreams, which also means leaving her parents. She explains “if I try and fit in their world I’ll end up making us all unhappy. Things have to change. . . . I’m going to school. . . . It’s what I want. It always has been. In think I’ll study medicine.”55 In this story, Beatrice’s nonnormative performance of femininity is acceptable when she uses her skills beneficially. She is able to make inappropriate comments and refuse marriage because she is able to contribute through her distinctly high intellect. The message this communicates is that girls can behave in a way that is nonconforming, as long as they have an attribute that balances their defects. It is similarly Beatrice’s intellect that facilitates her sexual awakening. Where Hero remains distanced from any genuine male interest throughout the story, Beatrice is aligned romantically with Ben. While the difference in attitude toward sexuality is also a result of the age difference between the cousins, it is interesting to note that Hero does display romantic feelings, yet these are not allowed to be fully formed through the narrative. By making Hero’s interest in Klaus impossible to be fulfilled as a result of his sexuality, Hero’s desires can be portrayed as naive, rather than genuine. While having a similar lack of experience, Beatrice is allowed to interact romantically with Ben, primarily through the lens of a science experiment. After Ben highlights the difference between theory and practice when it comes to relationships, Beatrice announces “The logical thing to do if I wish to truly understand that difference is to take a lover. An experiment, of sorts.”56 Ben highlights the absurdity of an experiment with love, and says women are supposed to like hearts and flowers, but Beatrice distances herself from the expectations of other women by claiming she wouldn’t know if that’s what women want. Even when Beatrice finally gives in and kisses Ben, she still attempts to distance herself from typical female desires, “I try to remember the experiment, to think of this kiss as an intriguing result that needs recording.”57 Throughout the book, the relationship is referred to as an experiment. While it is clear neither the characters or the reader is supposed to believe that this is purely an experiment, the allusion of the relationship as an experiment means that Beatrice’s intellect is a framing device that enables the relationship. Where Hero was excluded from romantic potential because of her innocence, Beatrice’s scientific interest is what allows her to be framed in a romantic context.

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Intelligence is a key theme in another contemporary adaptation, The Only Thing Worse than You Is Me which is set at Messina High, a school for geniuses. Even within the setting of all the characters having high IQs, Trixie (Beatrice) constantly sets herself in opposition to other girls in the story both in terms of appearance and behavior. The first description the reader gets of what Trixie looks like is through comparison with Harper (Hero). She describes how Harper “looked like Sleeping Beauty in pink glasses and khakis. Whereas I continued to look like I’d slept on my ponytail. Which I had.”58 Trixie not only characterizes herself as innately less conventionally attractive than her friend, she also consciously chooses to not focus on making her outward appearance attractive. Rather than demonstrating an apathy regarding the way she looks, Trixie is obsessive about framing herself in comparison with other girls. In one passage she compares herself to every other girl in the book, claiming: “I wasn’t adorable like Meg or a lost Disney princess like Harper or elegant like Mary-Anne France. I had brown hair and overcast eyes and small lips. Nothing particularly exciting unless you counted my being two inches above the national average height for Caucasian women.”59 Trixie poses herself as coming up short in the context of what a woman is portrayed as being valuable for. While she claims that attractiveness is not important to her, she is the character who spends the most time thinking about how she looks compared to other people. Far from a neutral attitude toward other girls, Trixie actively demeans other young women for their choices in how they appear, particularly when it comes to makeup and revealing clothing. In particular, Trixie consistently insults an original character, Mary Frances. Trixie explains that Mary Frances is “using her genius only to find ways to make her uniform look couture. Okay, fine. She’d also published two volumes of startlingly insightful poetry, but that’s beside the point.”60 Trixie clearly acknowledges that Mary Frances is more than her appearance and can have an interest in fashion while also having a high intellect. As Trixie feels inferior in a school where nearly everyone is as intelligent as her, yet have attributes alongside their intelligence; she feels the need to minimize the accomplishments of other young women in order to legitimize her own disinterest in appearance. Trixie likewise attempts to trivialize other girls for having an interest in dating. When talking about the Halloween festival, she summarizes their experience as “we get dressed up, we’re the only girls on campus not dressed up like trampy tramps.”61 Again, with this reference Trixie valorizes herself and her friends above that of other girls who choose to wear revealing clothes, reducing them to their bodies rather than any other aspect. In this observation, Trixie reveals her dual attitudes toward others girls, denigrating them for being concerned about their appearance and being

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interested in dating. It is a recurring point throughout the story for Trixie to mock her friends for wanting to begin dating. When she first finds out her friends want to engage in what she refers to as a clichéd mating ritual, she bemoans the revelation as a loss, claiming that “It appeared my beloved best friends were on the fast track to becoming utterly antifeminist. Instead of comparing notes on our classes or comic books or which Joss Whedon show was the best—Firefly, obviously—they’d started this secret campaign to get boyfriends.”62 For Trixie, to acknowledge you are interested in dating is to stop being interesting. Her friends cannot simultaneously be interested in classes or comics while they also date. It is particularly interesting that Trixie refers to their interest in dating as “anti-feminist.” This is a trend throughout the story where Trixie refers to things as anti-feminist and gender normative when she doesn’t seem to grasp the fundamentals of feminism. Feminism for Trixie is to subvert traditional expectations for women, regardless of what individual women did or did not want. Trixie consistently demonstrates that she is actually a victim of internalized misogyny. While she judges other girls for acting feminine, she believes being a girl is inherently inferior, as noted when she comments that she can take an insult “without having to whine to everyone about it like a girl.”63 For Trixie, being a girl is synonymous with being whiny, and to be unlike a girl is valorized. Even by the end of the book when she has recognized she can date and still be herself she continues to denigrate traditionally female interests in favor of traditionally male interests. When Ben introduces her to his four-year-old sister, he recommends Trixie talk to her about unicorns and rainbows, to which Trixie responds “gender normative . . . haven’t you given her comics yet?”64 Trixie assumes Ben is being gender normative in assigning interests to his sister not even considering that those may be her genuine interests, and instead goes about assigning interests that are acceptable to her.64 While Trixie’s character appears to be more nuanced than most of the Hero characters in young adult fiction, in reality she is no more than a caricature. Even within the story Trixie recognizes that her character is not genuine. When thinking of herself, she frames the type of girl she wants to be through superficial ideas of how she wants to be perceived. She describes how she “really just wanted to escape the Mess and be the kind of girl who came to class in a Princess Peach shirt and still managed to decimate everyone in an argument about Kierkegaard. Because that’s the girl that I was in my head. Proudly geeky, not only about comics or sci-fi but about everything I loved.”65 Contrary to the messaging Trixie has been delivering throughout the book, her idealized version of herself is not just based on being able to win philosophical debates, but to do so within her constructed version of self. What this fantasy reveals is not a disinterest in appearance, but a focused desire of appearing disinterested.

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As Ariane Balizet argues, “the heroines of Shakespeare YA novels represent a conflict between the concerns and experiences of their 21st-century girl readership and a ‘Shakespearean’ past that is both hostile and fundamental to modern girlhoods.”66 While a number of these plays have their characters express an interest in destabilizing Shakespeare’s cultural authority, each of the plays discussed ultimately reaffirms Shakespeare’s gender roles in some capacity. Young adult representations of Hero are faced with a dilemma if they choose to reconciliate her with Claudio at the end of the play. Where they present Hero as a perfect “nice” girl, these stories reinforce the narrative that to be a good girl, young women need to forgive harmful behavior. If Hero is presented with more nuance, however, like in the case of Nothing Happened, the story is at risk of presenting a narrative of culpability that contributes to discourses of victim-blaming. In the case of Beatrice, however, authors have a greater opportunity to create a character that is an aspiration for young women. In the cases of both I Think I Love You and Nothing Happened, Beatrice maintains her “battle of wits” with Benedick, yet her characterization is not defined entirely through her wit. In these examples, Beatrice is presented as a complex character that is valuable whether she excels or not; Beatrice does help young adults make sense of the world. Where Beatrice in other examples is set above the concerns of the average young woman, in I Think I Love You and Nothing Happened she becomes a character young women can identify with, who struggles with sexuality, fails sometimes, and worries about leaving home for college. As in the source material, Beatrice’s final coupling is not problematic in the same way Hero’s is as Beatrice’s character can be re-created without the baggage Hero brings. The only way Hero can be translated into a character contemporary young women can identify with is to alter the plot, either have Hero actually be guilty in whatever she is accused of, or exclude any reconciliation with Claudio. In either case, Much Ado About Nothing has the potential to communicate a number of issues that are particularly pertinent to young people today, including dating, gossip, and friendship. If authors can mitigate the problematic aspects of Hero and Claudio’s relationship, there is scope to create an adaptation of the play that provides young people with a book that guides them through a transitionary period of life. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Lily. The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016. Balizet, Ariane M. Shakespeare and Girls’ Studies. New York: Routledge, 2020.

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Bina, Natalie August. “Empathy and Dis/Empowerment: Writing Diversity in Young Adult Fiction.” PhD diss., Wesleyan University, 2018. Booth, Molly. Nothing Happened. New York: Hyperion, 2018. Croteau, Melissa. Review of Much Ado About Nothing by the Old Globe Theatre. Directed by Kathleen Marshall, San Diego, California. Shakespeare Bulletin 37, no. 1 (2019). Cusak. Julie Ann. “Nice Girls Who Fight: Performing the Roles of Survivalist, Sex Object, and Sweetheart in Young Adult Novel Film Adaptations,” thesis, University of Nebraska, 2016. Desombre, Auriane. I Think I Love You. New York: Underlined, 2021. Hateley, Erica. “Criminal Adaptations: Gender, Genre, and Shakespearean Young Adult Literature” in Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction edited by Andrew James Hartley, Cambridge University Press, 2018. Iyenga, Sujata, and Evelyn Gajowski. Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory. London: Bloomsbury, 2023. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Claire McEachern, The Arden Shakespeare, London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Wood, Laura. Under a Dancing Star. New York: Scholastic, 2019.

NOTES 1. William Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Claire McEachern, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), II.iii.18. 2. Julie Ann Cusak. “Nice Girls Who Fight: Performing the Roles of Survivalist, Sex Object, and Sweetheart in Young Adult Novel Film Adaptations,” thesis (University of Nebraska, 2016), 3. 3. Sujata Iyenga and Evelyn Gajowski. Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), 3. 4. Sujata Iyenga and Evelyn Gajowski. Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory, 4. 5. Erica Hateley, “Criminal Adaptations: Gender, Genre, and Shakespearean Young Adult Literature” in Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction, ed. Andrew James Hartley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 129. 6. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star (New York: Scholastic, 2019) Molly Booth, Nothing Happened (New York: Hyperion, 2018) Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You (New York: St. Martin Press, 2016) Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You (New York: Underlined, 2021). 7. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 47. 8. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 266. 9. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 266. 10. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 29. 11. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 47. 12. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 49, 45, 47. 13. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 295.

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14. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 148. 15. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 155. 16. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 69. 17. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 72. 18. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 283. 19. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 271. 20. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 74. 21. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 4. 22. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 13, 22, 34. 23. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 23, 28. 24. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 183, 111, 186, 187. 25. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 195. 26. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 220, 227. 27. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 195. 28. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 190. 29. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 201. 30. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 298. 31. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 266. 32. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 300. 33. Auriane Desombre, I Think I Love You, 303. 34. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 63. 35. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 7. 36. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 7. 37. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 59. 38. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 87. 39. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 46. 40. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 99. 41. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 204. 42. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 205–6. 43. Melissa Croteau, review of Much Ado About Nothing by the Old Globe Theatre Directed by Kathleen Marshall, San Diego, California, Shakespeare Bulletin 37 (Spring 2019): 1. 44. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 214. 45. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 215. 46. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 224. 47. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 260, 266, 269. 48. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 239–40. 49. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 264. 50. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 109. 51. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 315. 52. Molly Booth, Nothing Happened, 324. 53. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 11. 54. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 65. 55. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 290. 56. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 123.

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57. Laura Wood, Under a Dancing Star, 169. 58. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 15. 59. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 60. 60. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 31. 61. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 28. 62. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 30. 63. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 120. 64. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 349. 65. Lily Anderson, The Only Thing Worse than Me Is You, 60. 66. Ariane M. Balizet, Shakespeare and Girls’ Studies (New York: Routledge, 2020).

Chapter 10

Much Ado About Nothing, Performance and Cultural Identity Jami Rogers

In the contemporary Anglophone theatre, Much Ado About Nothing has been partly shaped by the feminist movement on the one hand and, on the other, by “the temptations of the courtly milieu for designers.”1 The reevaluation of gender roles in the 1970s and 1980s sparked a major shift in portrayals of Beatrice, which moved from a woman largely conforming to gender norms of modesty and subservience to one who actively challenged those stereotypes.2 Design has also provided ample room for directors to locate Much Ado in picturesque locales, from the play’s setting of Italy to English country houses in the Elizabethan, Carolean, or Regency eras. Some productions have also used their settings to emphasize the patriarchal aspects of the play, such as the RSC versions of John Barton (1976) and Gregory Doran (2002). The former set the play in an Indian outpost of the Raj while Doran used Sicily in 1936 as his backdrop, with the misogyny of the Victorian era and Sicilian omertà cultures highlighting the place of women in those societies. The setting of Much Ado in elegant country houses or Italian villas of the past has had long-term consequences for integrated casting, particularly in Britain, as these choices often reduce Shakespeare’s plays to period drama. On television, these stories set in the past have recently been found to be the least diverse on British screens, as 95 percent of actors cast in them were white.3 There are clear sociopolitical reasons for this disparity, stemming from a common perception that there was no ethnic minority presence in Britain before 1948, when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury and its Jamaican passengers disembarked. In reality the Black presence in Britain dates as far back as Roman times4 and this has remained the case throughout the intervening centuries. As Gretchen Gerzina notes, “They were as familiar a sight to 173

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Shakespeare as they were to [David] Garrick, and almost as familiar to both as they are to Londoners today.”5 The historical narrative Britain tells itself is, therefore, one of absence which is tantamount to the erasure of African Caribbeans on British soil until the mid-twentieth century, which dramas set in the past—including Shakespeare—frequently replicate this erasure. This erasure of a key piece of British history also influences the casting of Much Ado, which has led to the play being one of the least diversely staged comedies in the Shakespearean canon. Unable to imagine a past that was not entirely white, directors often devolve into stereotypes when casting actors from global majority heritages. For Much Ado this means that the characters which are rustically comic (the Watch) or function as servants (Margaret, Ursula) or are outsiders to the country house (Don Pedro, Claudio) are cast using minority ethnic performers; rarely are the leads, Benedick, or Beatrice played by African-Caribbean or Asian actors. In Washington, D.C., this trend is also represented in Nick Hutchison’s 2005 Folger Theatre version, which set the play in an English country house just after World War II. The house’s inhabitants were English while the returning soldiers were American GIs. The only actors from global majority heritages were playing Claudio, the First Watchman, and a double of Balthasar (servant) and George Seacoal (watch). The willful excision of ethnic minorities from British history spans both countries. In this exploration of two productions of Much Ado, this chapter looks at what happens to the play when production norms, such as elegant or picturesque settings, are subverted. Two directors, Timothy Douglas in the United States and Iqbal Khan in Britain, staged productions of the play that approached the play from other perspectives. Douglas set his version in the African American community in Washington, D.C., while Khan placed Much Ado in contemporary Delhi. This chapter looks at these two productions in detail, exploring the societies in which the directors placed them and also as case studies of how the play’s misogyny is tackled. The cultural contexts of the two settings foreground Shakespeare’s women in two very different ways. MUCH ADO IN OBAMA’S WASHINGTON Timothy Douglas’s Washington, D.C.–set production of Much Ado, staged at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in 2009, opened with an aural juxtaposition. As the lights went up on the multicolored stage, an excited announcer’s voice set the scene: “It’s the 17th Annual D.C. Caribbean Carnival extravaganza!” The soundscape cross-faded to a television pundit laying out a common perception of the city’s problems: “Gangs, guns, drugs: there are three things that all the violence in this city and in the region focuses on

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those three things.”6 The sound of screeching tires, gunshots, and police sirens that followed signaled the arrival of three Washington, D.C., police officers: Benedick, Don Pedro, and Claudio. The “action” (1.1.6) from which Shakespeare’s soldiers were returning was, as the director explains, “a major drug bust in the neighborhood” that had occurred “the night before” during which “people were killed.”7 In 2009, Washington, D.C., was—and had been for decades—a majority African American city with a majority Black police force.8 Director Timothy Douglas set Much Ado in the nation’s capital in part because, as he told NPR’s Neal Conan, “rarely do reinterpreted classics [performed] in D.C. get set in D.C.”9 What he developed was a setting that reflected the immigration melting pot that is contemporary America. Contributing to the production’s African-Caribbean feel, music infused the production, with funk and reggae used in the score. This was facilitated by the amalgamation of several characters, including Antonio, into a single one known as “Brother” who was the local DJ. As Douglas recounted, the DJ idea came directly from the Caribbean carnival where “every float had an amazing sound system with a DJ pumping contemporary Caribbean music. And there it was. It was authentic to D.C. and I put it right into the play.”10 Timothy Douglas also wanted to make the production “relevant to the community around the Folger [Theater].”11 The director and his designer, Tony Cisek, achieved this by locating Shakespeare’s Messina a few blocks from the theater, in an area known locally as the H Street Corridor. The set was a re-creation of a neighborhood back alley, a mishmash that protruded onto the stage and represented the kitchen entrance to Messinah’s—“a storefront amid D.C.’s Caribbean community,” in one local blogger’s description—at its center.12 Dominated by a helter-skelter of balconies, stairs linked the competing levels above while Caribbean flags hung across one side of the stage. The theatre’s faux Elizabethan interior was disguised by concrete pillars that had been placed around the theatre’s early modern reproductions. One graffiti-laden pillar was encircled by a bench, providing space for the community’s inhabitants to relax. It was an enclave where neighbors stepped out of their back doors to exchange small talk, where people could sit in the mismatched metal chairs—one orange square, one sky blue scallop—and share the day’s news, or cool themselves by the box fan that was placed upstage. The audience first glimpsed Much Ado’s characters as they prepared for the Caribbean Carnival. A DJ booth was built into the set, housed on the center balcony, and it was to that focal spot that Beatrice (Rachel Leslie) first entered, followed by Brother (Craig Wallace) carrying his CD cases. The DJ’s first choices of music filled the air as Beatrice put posters up advertising the carnival. An impromptu rave became infectious as first Hero (Roxi Victorian) taught Beatrice a few moves, who in turn enticed Ursula (Aakhu TuahNera

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Freeman) to dance and, finally, the fourth woman of the household, Margaret (Fatima Quander), joined the party. Amid this boisterousness, Leonato (Doug Brown) began cleaning the grill and his neighbors, Dogberry (Alex Perez) and Verges (Matt MacNelly), arrived in Messinah’s backyard. Completing the neighborhood were the three police officers, returning from their night’s work: Don Pedro (Tony Nam), Benedick (Howard W. Overshown), and Claudio (Alexis Camins). In creating this onstage community, what Douglas’s D.C.-inflected production portrayed was America as an immigration melting pot of equal opportunity. The central household was a mixture of immigrants and second-generation Americans with Leonato, his daughter Hero, and their servants Margaret and Ursula all speaking in Caribbean accents, which director Timothy Douglas felt benefited the production: “People who are learning English as a second language are so precise with it that we tend to get more meaning out of it than lazy American speaking . . . illuminate[ing] the language itself.”13 This decision added to the cultural mix of Douglas’s production and, crucially, enabled Beatrice to be presented as an outsider within the family unit through her standard American accent. While some productions have presented Beatrice as having lower social status in Leonato’s household, within this context Beatrice was an outsider only in that she was, as the director explained, “visiting [her family in] D.C. for the Carnival.”14 By placing the production within a contemporary American Caribbean community, the women—from Beatrice to a re-gendered Borachio (Dionne Audain)—were portrayed as strong and independent. As Douglas wrote in the program, “By framing Shakespeare’s tale within the Caribbean culture, I was more readily able to lead with the natural, African-inherited essence of the matriarch driven model.” Beatrice’s forthright quality fit perfectly in this female-centric world and Leslie’s Beatrice was sassy from the outset. She had Overshown’s Benedick captivated from their first encounter, encircling one another as they sparred. Always seemingly with the upper hand, Beatrice goaded Benedick until he sulkily quit: she grabbed Benedick’s Red Stripe beer from his hand and drank from his bottle; he moved away when she insulted him. Goaded into retreating from the skirmish, Benedick crossed away from her to sit sulkily on the orange metal lawn chair, with “You always end with a jade’s trick” (1.1.138) ringing in his ears. The female dominance in the play was not limited to Beatrice, and the setting allowed for an interpretation of Hero that was less the mute ingénue than a woman who ruled the household. When she felt her father was out of line in telling Beatrice “thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue” (2.1.16–17), Hero slapped Leonato’s thigh to silence him. This was a daughter respected by her father, a relationship which the contemporary setting helped to frame in terms of equality. As Douglas describes

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their backstory, “[Leonato] adores [Hero], but he doesn’t treat her like a little girl. She’s innately strong and it’s been communicated how much her father regards her.”15 This dynamic was most visible in the church scene, as Roxi Victorian played Hero as a woman with a steel core, while Doug Brown’s Leonato (somewhat contra-textually) defended his daughter. In the confusion of the accusations hurled at Hero by Claudio, Leonato’s initial instinct was to protect his daughter. On Claudio’s “Give not this rotten orange to your friend” (4.1.30), Leonato stepped forward and, putting his daughter behind him, shielded her from her betrothed while simultaneously daring Claudio to continue. Hero’s instinct was to fight back, at first nonverbally. When Claudio insisted “She knows the heat of a luxurious bed” (4.1.39), Hero shook her head violently in repudiation. Deeper into the scene Leonato remained unconvinced of his daughter’s guilt, but as the evidence mounted his conviction began to waver. His “Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?” (4.1.65) was said while the aggrieved father turned in a 360° arc, arms extended in disbelief. There was challenge in that movement, as though the burly man was eager to go mano a mano against Hero’s accusers, while he gestured for Hero to explain. As he addressed Claudio with “All this is so: but what of this, my lord?” (4.1.72), his protective instinct began to crumble in the face of the onslaught of the accusations of the two police officers, Don Pedro and Claudio. In discussing his production, Timothy Douglas explained that in his experience as an audience member watching Hero, “I’ve never seen that actor/ character recover and I don’t understand why she capitulates.”16 Other directors have partially solved the gap between early modern and contemporary father-daughter relationships by using an era more aligned to late Elizabethan thought. Certainly, Flora Spencer-Longhurst found the 1919 setting of Christopher Luscombe’s 2014 RSC production useful to contextualize Hero because “It’s still a time where you would buy that the dutiful daughter is still very much a thing.”17 Douglas’s Washington, D.C., placement of the play within a matriarchal culture allowed for a nontraditional reading of Hero, enabling the character to be portrayed as a strong, contemporary woman more than capable of standing up to the false accusations hurled at her. As she stood at the altar in her knee-length, V-necked white silk wedding dress with a large, white ostrich plume dwarfing the tiara that kept the tulle veil from her face, Hero’s taut torso was ready to pounce on Claudio. “Defend me” (4.1.77) she demanded of her father, pausing for an action that was not forthcoming. When Leonato remained silent, she turned on Claudio demanding, “What kind of catechizing call you this?” (4.1.78). Her fiancé’s answer infuriated Hero and her response was layered with a combination of defiance and sass, “Is it not Hero?” (4.1.80). With this intensity of fury, Hero’s swoon was problematic. The moment highlighted Leonato’s confusion, however, as

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he shifted slightly toward Hero and then stopped himself reluctantly, a man seemingly unwilling to break into the fierce feminine circle that had closed in around Hero. Perhaps driven by the closeness of this father-daughter pair, in the playing of the church scene Doug Brown had been most forceful when challenging the men. Despite the violence of his words, when confronting Hero after the departure of Claudio and his companions, Leonato seemed unsure and unwilling to commit fully to his wish “Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes” (4.1.123). Shakespeare scripted Much Ado in a way that leaves little room for the audience to doubt that Claudio and Don Pedro have been duped about Hero by Don John. In theory this would mean that the audience empathies would lie with Claudio, but this has not generally been the case and the character is often viewed unsympathetically. The descriptor “callow” has been attached to Claudio’s character for several decades as in Frank Rich’s 1988 review of the Kevin Kline–Blythe Danner production18 and, nearly two decades later, Michael Billington’s of the RSC’s 2002 production.19 Directors have also had difficulty in reconciling the character with Hero’s seemingly perfunctory forgiveness of Claudio, sometimes to disastrous lengths as in Josie Rourke’s 2006 RSC production who, in an attempt to show Claudio’s remorse, had him on the verge of attempting suicide at Hero’s tomb, saved only by a ghostly Hero’s appearance, preventing a Romeo-at-Juliet’s-tomb-type tragedy. For Douglas’s production, the “Caribbean culture serve[d] as a tool to even out the male-female power struggle”20 and, as noted about Leonato in the church scene, arguably toned down the playing of the patriarchal elements inherent in Shakespeare’s script. Conversely, what this setting also provided was a cultural rationale for the reconciliation of Hero with Claudio in the final scene. As Douglas explained, in West African culture boys are taken away into the woods to undergo a series of rituals as a rite of passage into manhood that culminate in the men “bringing the boy back to his mother. It is his mother who says, ‘Okay, now you’re a man.’ It’s the woman who says when you are a man.”21 In the female-centric world Douglas created, it was the women who ultimately engineered Claudio’s passage from boy to man. As Douglas explains, Hero “doesn’t disintegrate, she doesn’t crumble” which allows her, in his view, “to fully receive the revelation of what the lie was.” With this interpretation, director and cast began to build a scenario in which it was conceivable that Hero could forgive Claudio and marry him, but, as the director states, “not without testing [Claudio] first.”22 This test began with what could almost be labeled as Claudio and Don Pedro’s return to the scene of the crime. Douglas’s act five began with a private conversation about grief between Leonato and Brother (as Antonio), which was interrupted by Don Pedro and Claudio entering. As both police officers were back in uniform, the appearance was of them patrolling the H Street corridor as a

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matter of course. Their language is sheepish and functions as an avoidance tactic and, in this production, implied in Don Pedro’s “We have some haste, Leonato” (5.1.47) that the police officers should be allowed to exit without reckoning. Brother, however, shifted downstage to prevent their passing and almost simultaneously Beatrice and the Friar entered and began building a shrine to Hero. The first movement in the shrine building came from Beatrice, who hung a photograph of Hero up on the stage left wall. This was followed by the placement of a teddy bear and a bouquet of roses along with some candles, all intended to honor the dead. The Friar added a swath of butcher’s paper and a pen to the collection, clearly designed for people to share their memories of Hero with her bereaved family. The first stage of Claudio’s rehabilitation was his observation of this monument-making, which had him mesmerized and visibly contemplating the consequences of his actions. When confronted with Borachio’s confession later in the scene, Claudio unsteadily made his way to one of the rusting lawn chairs in shock. At the end of the scene Claudio did not exit with Leonato and Don Pedro, but instead rose from his chair and crossed to the shrine. The young man stayed unobtrusively seated on the tree bench facing Hero’s monument throughout the following scene, the encounter between Benedick and Beatrice. Claudio and the friar—who had also not exited with the others into Messinah’s back door—were hunched over a Bible deep in prayer. These interactions established for the audience Claudio’s remorse, which would increase during the lament. Shakespeare provides a scene in which both Don Pedro and Claudio establish for the audience their remorse for their part in what they thought to be Hero’s death. While the pronouncement of Claudio that Hero was “Done to death by slanderous tongues” (5.3.3) has a particular emotional power for the actor playing Claudio, the scene in which it sits has become unpopular in recent years. Directors have taken to excising dialogue they felt to be problematic, which for Christopher Luscombe in 2014 was to delete everything but the song “O Pardon Goddess of the Night” with the music and Claudio’s visible emotional collapse in place of Shakespeare’s text. Timothy Douglas also used the tactic of replacing Shakespeare’s text with a stage picture that established Claudio’s journey to maturity by “adopted the [West African custom of] taking the man out into the woods” to ceremonially turn boy into man.23 Having been left in solitude by the Friar, Claudio’s passage to adulthood began with a singular act of mourning. He yanked the picture of Hero from the shrine, clutching it as he backed to the center of the stage, speaking the “Done to death by slanderous tongues” epitaph. From the DJ station above the stage, synthesized keyboard music played underneath Brother’s recitation of “O Pardon Goddess of the Night.” As grief overwhelmed him, Claudio

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knelt to place Hero’s picture on the floor before him and then collapsed upon the likeness unable to move. Four masked women arrived on the central balcony in front of the DJ station while Leonato and Hero appeared on the one adjacent. Giving his daughter his blessing Leonato placed a carnival mask over Hero’s face, then all the women descended slowly to stage level and encircled the supine Claudio. Positioned as though they were pallbearers— Margaret and Beatrice on one side; Borachio and Ursula on the other—with the chief mourner, Hero, standing at his head. As the women squatted down to Claudio’s level, the men entered the stage from all angles and created an outer circle around the women. The women rose and gently helped Claudio up to a kneeling position. Hero picked her picture from the floor and raised it up so that Claudio was confronting the image, directly in front of his face. The women shifted so that they were all in a line upstage of Claudio and, in a trancelike state, the young man reached out for the woman he had falsely condemned at the altar. Hero placed her picture back on the floor and took Claudio’s hand, stepping a do-si-do, then skipped as they moved upstage. Beatrice took Claudio’s other hand as the cousins led him up the iron spiral stairs that led to the central balcony. From this vantage point, Claudio uttered the final words of the scene “And Hymen now with luckier issue speed’s/ Than this for whom we render’d up this woe” (5.3.32–33). The women had received Claudio, forgiven him and it had been Hero’s decision, the ritual move from boy to man accomplished in this Caribbean culture. A BRITISH DELHI MUCH ADO Iqbal Khan’s Much Ado was staged at the RSC as part of the World Shakespeare Festival (WSF), a subsection of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad umbrella. According to producer Kevin Fitzmaurice, the RSC’s focus for the Festival was to investigate “the work of Shakespeare through the prism of other cultures.”24 The RSC’s artistic director, Michael Boyd, initially approached Meera Syal, the Wolverhampton-born actress of Indian Punjabi heritage, to play Beatrice.25 The actress was well known to British television audiences for her appearance in popular comedies depicting the British Asian experience, Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42. As Kevin Fitzmaurice recalls, the production became a viable idea for the Cultural Olympiad when Syal committed to Beatrice, the first piece of a complex production puzzle: “She was a cornerstone of the whole production, her agreement to play a lead in it. Without Meera, I’m not sure that we would have been able to have got that one going.”26 With Syal attached to play Beatrice, Michael Boyd hired director Iqbal Khan who, like Syal, is also of south Asian descent. Michael Boyd “tentatively”

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suggested to Khan “that ‘as it’s a part of the [World Shakespeare] festival and you’ve got Meera [Syal] playing Beatrice, might you consider doing it in an Indian setting?”27 Khan was at first reluctant to follow Boyd’s proposal, resistant to what he termed a “Best Exotic Marigold Indian Shakespeare experience,”28 but his symbiotic relationship with his leading lady provided a way into Boyd’s suggested concept. Both Syal and Khan found resonances between Shakespeare’s play and the social structures of the Indian subcontinent. For Syal, the “joint-family system” and the contrast between the “arranged marriage” of Hero and Claudio and “the love marriage” of Benedick and Beatrice.29 Khan found similar resonances between the text and contemporary India, recalling that “The more seriously I thought about the themes of the play—chastity and pure blood lines, the rituals of courtship, the arrangements of marriage—I realised all of those things are incredibly vital in India.”30 The director also spoke with the leading actress “about her personal family heritage, which was Punjabi,” and that guided the director to the decision to set Much Ado in contemporary Delhi.31 To explore the setting, Khan, Fitzmaurice and designer Tom Piper went to Delhi for pre-production research. Piper modeled his set on the Mughal hivelis of Old Delhi, the walled city founded by Emperor Shah Jahan in 1639. Built into the two-storied structure that dominated the back wall of the stage were archways of varying sizes, all with exquisite latticework etched into the windows and doors. Iron railings spanned the upper level, creating thin balconies that overlooked the dappled tan tiles of the stage floor. Mughal archways were built into the hiveli’s marble front, providing the most recognizable feature of an architectural style made famous by the Taj Mahal. The latticed windows and heavy, carved wooden doors protected the mansion’s interior from the subcontinent’s oppressive heat, indicated by the warm tones of the bright lighting that visually simulated the baking heat of an Indian summer. The elegance of the hiveli was disrupted by a sturdy tree dominating stage left, its leafless spiky tips pointing skyward like wizened fingers. Modern Delhi was present here in the electric cables, ropes, and light bulbs wrapped around the tree’s gnarled tops, a reflection of what Piper described as the “crazy confusion of cabling and colour and smells and narrow streets” that had entranced him during his trip to the Indian capital.32 In addition to the evocative set design, the intention was also to make this Indian Much Ado an immersive experience. As Fitzmaurice explained, Tom Piper wanted to “introduce the audience into the world before they set foot in the auditorium” as a way of signaling that they would “be experiencing something that was very different from other productions they might have seen.”33 To achieve this, Piper re-created a Delhi street in the theatre foyer, with bicycles hanging from the ceiling, car horns and cycle bells accosting the ears, the smell of incense pervading the air. Added to the cacophony of

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a crowded city were the visual cues of “flowery garlands, sacks of seeds, baskets and buckets littered the [foyer]” and, in the melding of cultural tourism and theatre economics, “Bollywood posters plastered the gift-shop walls.”34 Shakespeare’s dialogue was also interspersed with Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu as churches became temples, the Friar renamed Panditji, Dogberry addressed Verges as “sahib” and Leonato responded to Claudio’s pronouncement on his betrothal to Hero with “Shabash,” meaning “Well done.” The choice to set Much Ado in contemporary Delhi proved to be fertile ground by which to explore the play’s gender relations. Globalization had brought a rapid increase in wealth to the city, which had led to the emergence of young, professional career women, who, as Rana Dasgupta notes, “were the icons of the new India.”35 This newfound independence was in opposition to widely held misogynistic views of women by men. Until then men had “absorbed a singularly domestic view of femininity from their mothers” which had provided them with “a soothing domestic refuge . . . Around young, professional women, they could therefore feel an unsettling kind of misrecognition” which also led to “a more general intensification of misogyny during this period. Nowhere in India was this so acute as in the north, particularly in Delhi.”36 For Meera Syal, the exploration of “the changing roles of women in this crashing together of old and new” within the modern Indian context was one of the aspects of the play which she felt been “layered and enhanced” by the setting.37 This was perhaps nowhere more evident than in the juxtaposition of Beatrice as the new professional woman with Hero, the daughter struggling within the confines of traditional patriarchal society. The audience’s first glimpse of the characters came during an elaborate preshow that greeted them as they entered the auditorium. Meera Syal’s Beatrice, wearing a brown pinstripe pencil skirt and suit jacket overlaid with Indian accoutrements of green silk scarf, gold necklace, bangles, and hoop earrings, prowled the stage, spurning her cousin Balthasar’s attempts to arrange her marriage. “Want to see my future husband?” she asked of the nearby spectators, proffering them her iPad that held his photograph, cataloging his deficiencies that included being “cross-eyed” and having “a bladder problem.”38 Amara Karan’s introduction during the pre-show to the audience as Hero also depicted a modern young woman arriving back at the hiveli from a shopping expedition, accompanied by her companion, Margaret (Chetna Pandya). Both women were clad in denim jeans—Hero’s pale blue, Margaret’s a saucier, skinny variety. The two accessorized their outfits with hoop earrings, bracelets, and designer handbags, Hero’s a modest cream color while her companion sported a more fashionable pink model. Swinging from their elbows and hands were the types of high-end shopping bags provided by only the most exclusive establishments. This illusion of modern female independence was shattered by Hero’s reappearance in the presence of her

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father Leonato (Madhav Sharma) at the beginning of the play proper. She had changed from jeans into an aqua and yellow print kurta, yellow pajama trousers, and a chiffon scarf that matched the kurta. In her father’s presence Hero was transformed from a liberated, westernized young woman into the model of traditional young Indian womanhood. In Khan’s version of contemporary Delhi, the women pushed the boundaries of patriarchal power. In the masque scene (2.1), the women were disguised in the clothing worn by Don Pedro’s men returning from their skirmish, camouflage jackets and blue United Nations Peacekeeper berets. Beatrice, Hero, Margaret, and Verges (Bharti Patel) had stumbled onto the stage, singing a cappella in Hindi and smoking cigarettes. Leonato and his brother, Antonio (Ernest Ignatius), burst through the green double doors of the hiveli and strode into the playing space. Having caught them in illicit activity Leonato shouted an extratextual “What are you doing?” to the women. Cigarettes were hidden quickly and the servants dismissed as control was regained by the household’s men. With Leonato cognizant of Beatrice’s influence over his daughter, the relationship between uncle and niece was distinctly prickly as she made light of marriage, while posturing with a glass of red wine. In contrast to Beatrice’s rebelliousness, Hero was the epitome of an obedient daughter, hurrying to Leonato’s side as he uttered “Daughter, remember what I told you” (2.1.59), as he gave instructions about her marriage. In response to Beatrice’s riposte that Hero should “dance out the answer” (2.1.64–65) and please herself with her betrothal, Leonato interjected with a dark, monosyllabic extra-textual “Hey,” warning his niece not to go too far. At the conclusion of Beatrice’s diatribe, Leonato once again interjected with a stern “Beti!” [daughter]. He leapt up, angered, and silenced Beatrice with a stern “Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly” (2.1.73). This Leonato had no intention of ceding control over his daughter as he broached the arrangement of her marriage. At its heart, Much Ado is a play about marriage and its main plot revolves around that of Hero and Claudio. Much Ado’s focus on Hero’s chastity and the ruptures within Messina’s social order that occur in the church scene when it is alleged that she “knows the heat of a luxurious bed” (4.1.39) closely parallels what Dasgupta describes as the “hyper-aggressive masculinity”39 that pervades contemporary Delhi. The reasons for this are complex, but primarily lay in the defiling of Hindu women by Muslim men in the violence that killed millions in 1947. Dasgupta argues that the violence that accompanied the creation of the separate states of India and Pakistan has become the defining feature of the northern Indian male’s patriarchal outlook about women.40 It was this violent misogyny that was missing from Khan’s staging of Shakespeare’s church scene, obscured in the creation of an immersive spectacle for the largely white, British audience.

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During the visit to Delhi on their research trip Khan, Piper, and Fitzmaurice had visited a traditional Hindu wedding, which became the basis for the staging of Much Ado’s church scene. In a parallel of the pre-show, the interval break was used to set the scene as “servants prepared for the wedding, erecting a small ceremonial stage, hanging red banners, placing pillows and scattering flower petals.”41 With this transformation, the auditorium erupted in sensory overload as the stage filled with men and women in traditional Hindu wedding attire. While Dogberry (Simon Nagra) tried to make his report on the capture of Borachio (Kulvinder Ghir) and Conrade (Neil D’Souza), Leonato, in a pink brocade waistcoat, raw silk Nehru jacket and pink turban, shook the hands of onlookers. Some audience members were invited up onstage and placed on cushions that had been put on the floor, witnesses to the uncomfortable proceedings that would soon unfold. With golds, creams, and purples assaulting the eye, music building to a crescendo with wedding guests clapping and cheering, a sacred fire brought onto the stage and placed in front of the platform that had been erected, and a ceremonial entrance of the bride, Khan cocooned the audience in a feast of the sights, sounds, and smells of a ceremonial Hindu wedding in the buildup to the public shaming of Hero in Shakespeare’s script. This replica Hindu wedding overtook the substance of the scene with its cacophony of sitars, silks, and saris, failing to explore the misogynistic horror of a father earnestly telling his daughter, “Do not live, Hero” (4.1.124). Much of the emotion of the scene was repressed by the use of a handheld microphone during the wedding ceremony. Although apparently an authentic touch, it prohibited an exploration of the attitudes the men held toward the women within either the production setting or Shakespeare’s play, papering over the scene’s emotion with what Thea Buckley observed as “artificially heightened exoticization.”42 From the beginning of the scene the amplifier was passed from hand to hand, making for a series of awkward exchanges between characters, including Claudio’s (Sagar Arya) move downstage to be within Benedick’s (Paul Bhattacharjee) reach, so that the latter could grab the mic for “How now, interjections” (16) and return it immediately in order for Claudio to continue with his lines. These jack-in-the-box movements required to take possession of the mic from a seated position also led to a more comic feel to the scene than the lines depict. There were, of course, some nice human touches within the staging of the wedding, as when Sagar Arya’s Claudio motioned to Leonato to come closer on “Father, by your leave” (17). He draped his arm over his elder’s shoulders and said softly into the mic, “Will you with free and unconstrained soul/Give me this maid, your daughter?” (18–19). It was a moment that glowed with disrespect but lulled Leonato into a false sense of security, contrasted with the brutal words that were on the tip of the youth’s tongue. Claudio also had

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a habit of pacing back and forth across the mandan rather than confronting Hero or her father directly, preferring to put his case to the public sitting on the plush red seats of the auditorium. This lack of engagement with fellow performers is illustrated by the fact that the first time Claudio addressed Hero directly was when he tore his garland off his neck and backed Hero to the corner of the mandan threateningly, asking “What man was he talked with you yesternight/Out at your window betwixt twelve and one” (81–82). It was one of the few times that the confrontation was believable precisely because the actors were speaking directly to one another. Leonato was similarly underplayed, shifting his focus around the audience rather than to the other characters on the stage. Madhav Sharma declaimed Leonato’s lines rather than addressing Hero directly. Rage was not evident in Sharma’s physicality as he took his turban off his head and threw it at Hero, not particularly violently. He then ambled—more a leisurely stroll than a dramatic movement—downstage left rather than confronting her in anger after saying “let her die” (4.1.154). Overreliant on spectacle and under-engaged in the gender dynamics of contemporary Delhi, the wedding scene was indicative of an approach that smothered the beating heart of the play with manufactured emotions and the immersive aural and visual overstimulation of the painstaking reassembly of Delhi on an English stage. CONCLUSION What the contrasting approaches of Timothy Douglas and Iqbal Khan illustrate is how their use of specific cultural settings influence their approaches to Much Ado. Both directors and their casts navigated the patriarchal aspects of the play, with Douglas’s American Caribbean matriarchy expanding the power of women while Khan’s Delhi-infused version used the setting to highlight the cultural changes embodied in Beatrice’s and Hero’s contrasting place in society. The productions both resonated for their local audiences, with the Washington Examiner finding that Douglas’s “engaging urban” production “lights up Shakespeare’s ode to love”43 while Dominic Cavendish felt of Iqbal Khan’s immersive production that “it’s hard to resist whipping out your camera-phone and taking a souvenir snap.”44 These responses also highlight the contrast between two nations’ approaches to integrated casting. Douglas’s choice was to situate Much Ado within the majority-minority environment of Washington, D.C., while Khan’s production appropriated a foreign society which was read in terms of cultural tourism. The American production owned Shakespeare on its own terms and created a wholly American version of the play, while the RSC’s production of Much Ado avoided any direct parallels

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with modern British society. Both productions provided opportunities to explore Shakespeare’s work through a non-Anglophone prism, which reinvigorated the text for their respective audiences. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baldinger, Alex. “‘Much Ado’ about D.C.’s Modern-Day Culture,” Washington Post, October 16, 2009. Billington, Michael. “Review: Much Ado About Nothing.” The Guardian, May 10, 2002. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/stage​/2002​/may​/10​/theatre​.artsfeatures. Boyle, Michael. “I’m a fourth-generation black British man. Yet still I’m made to feel I don’t belong.” The Guardian, October 31, 2021. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/ commentisfree​/2021​/oct​/31​/black​-british​-1800s​-before​-windrush. Buckley, Thea. “Indian Shakespeare in the World Shakespeare Festival” in Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures. Ed. by Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf. New Delhi and London: Sage Publications, 2016. Cavendish, Dominic. “Much Ado About Nothing, RSC Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, review.” Daily Telegraph, August 2, 2012. https:​//​www​ .telegraph​ . co​ . uk​ / culture ​ / theatre ​ / theatre ​ - reviews​ / 9447812 ​ / Much ​ - Ado ​ - About​ -Nothing​-RSC​-Courtyard​-Theatre​-Stratford​-upon​-Avon​-review​.html. Cavendish, Lucy. “Much Ado About Nothing: Much Ado About Meera Syal.” Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2012. http:​//​www​.telegraph​.co​.uk​/culture​/theatre​/theatre​ -features​/9403719​/Much​-Ado​-about​-Nothing​-Much​-ado​-about​-Meera​-Syal​.html. Cox, John F. Shakespeare in Production: Much Ado About Nothing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Dasgupta, Rana. Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-first Century Delhi. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2014 DeMerlis, Caitlin. “Cadences of the Caribbean Sing Shakespeare’s Script.” PlayShakespeare.com, November 13, 2009. https:​//​www​.playshakespeare​.com​/ much​-ado​-about​-nothing​-reviews​/theatre​-reviews​/cadences​-of​-the​-caribbean​-sing​ -shakespeares​-script. Douglas, Timothy. “A Caribbean Take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado.” Interview by Neal Conan. Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, November 25, 2009. http:​ //​www​.npr​.org​/templates​/story​/story​.php​?storyId​=120833744. ———. Interview with author. October 11, 2015. Fitzmaurice, Kevin. Interview with author. July 9, 2015. Flock, Elizabeth. “H Street Corridor: A work in progress.” Washington Post, July 23, 2011. http:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/local​/h​-street​-northeast​-a​-work​-in​-progress​ /2011​/07​/22​/gIQAb1PnVI​_story​.html. Gerzina, Gretchen (1995). Black England: Life before Emancipation. London: John Murray. Hopkins, Justin B. “Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Bulletin 31.2 (2013).

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Iqbal, Nosheen. “Much Ado About Delhi: RSC’s Indian Shakespeare.” The Guardian, August 1, 2012. https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/culture​/2012​/aug​/01​/much​-ado​-rsc​ -indian​-shakespeare. Khan, Iqbal. “Director Q&A.” Royal Shakespeare Company. https:​//​www​.rsc​.org​.uk​/ much​-ado​-about​-nothing​/past​-productions​/iqbal​-khan​-2012​-production. ———. (2016). “1960s Birmingham to 2012 Stratford-upon-Avon” in Shakespeare, Race and Performance: The Diverse Bard. Ed. By Delia Jarrett-Macauley. London: Routledge. Mackay, Barbara. “Shakespeare season proves rich for D.C. in 2009–10.” Washington Examiner, November 17, 2009. https:​//​www​.washingtonexaminer​.com​/shakespeare​ -season​-proves​-rich​-for​-dc​-in​-2009​-10. McEachern, Claire. Introduction. Much Ado About Nothing. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016. “Much Ado About Nothing, Folger Theatre.” Two Hours’ Traffic, October 31, 2009. http:​//​www​.twohourstrafficdc​.com​/2009​/10​/much​-ado​-about​-nothing​-folger​ -theatre​.html. Olusoga, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. London: Macmillan, 2016. Piper, Tom. “Designing Much Ado About Nothing,” Royal Shakespeare Company YouTube Channel, published 25 May 2012, https:​//​youtu​.be​/eHjY1CeN9Ww, last accessed 20 November 2016. Rich, Frank. “Review/Theater; Kline and Danner in ‘Much Ado’ in Park.” New York Times, July 15, 1988. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/1988​/07​/15​/theater​/review​-theater​ -kline​-and​-danner​-in​-much​-ado​-in​-park​.html​?searchResultPosition​=1. Rogers, Jami. Diversity in Broadcast Peak Scripted Television, 2018: A Report Commissioned by Equity’s Race Equality Committee. London: Equity, 2020. ———. British Black and Asian Shakespeareans: Integrating Shakespeare, 1966– 2018. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2022. Smith, Rend. “The Thin Black Line: How D.C.’s majority black police force helps the city.” Washington City Paper, May 20, 2011. http:​//​www​.washingtoncitypaper​.com​ /articles​/40853​/how​-dcs​-majority​-black​-police​-force​-helps​-the​-city​/. Spencer-Longhurst, Flora. Interview with author. March 12, 2015.

NOTES 1. Claire McEachern, Introduction, Much Ado About Nothing (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016), 84. 2. John F. Cox, Shakespeare in Production: Much Ado About Nothing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 66–67. 3. Jami Rogers, Diversity in Broadcast Peak Scripted Television, 2018: A Report Commissioned by Equity’s Race Equality Committee (London: Equity, 2020), 10–11. 4. David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (London: Macmillan, 2016), 29–33. 5. Gretchen Gerzina, Black England: Life before Emancipation (London: John Murray, 1995), 2.

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6. Production information comes from the promptbook and archive held at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the archive video at the University of Maryland. 7. Timothy Douglas, interview with author, October 11, 2015. 8. Rend Smith, “The Thin Black Line: How D.C.’s majority black police force helps the city,” Washington City Paper, May 20, 2011, http:​//​www​.washingtoncitypaper​ .com​/articles​/40853​/how​-dcs​-majority​-black​-police​-force​-helps​-the​-city​/. 9. Timothy Douglas, “A Caribbean Take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado,” interview by Neal Conan, Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, November 25, 2009, http:​ //​www​.npr​.org​/templates​/story​/story​.php​?storyId​=120833744. 10. Douglas, interview. 11. Douglas, interview. 12. “Much Ado About Nothing, Folger Theatre,” Two Hours’ Traffic, October 31, 2009, http:​//​www​.twohourstrafficdc​.com​/2009​/10​/much​-ado​-about​-nothing​-folger​ -theatre​.html. 13. Alex Baldinger, “‘Much Ado’ about D.C.’s Modern-Day Culture,” Washington Post, October 16, 2009. 14. Douglas, interview. 15. Douglas, interview. 16. Douglas, interview. 17. Flora Spencer-Longhurst, interview with author, 12 March 2015. 18. Frank Rich, “Review/Theater; Kline and Danner in ‘Much Ado’ in Park,” New York Times, July 15, 1988, https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/1988​/07​/15​/theater​/review​ -theater​-kline​-and​-danner​-in​-much​-ado​-in​-park​.html​?searchResultPosition​=1. 19. Michael Billington, “Review: Much Ado About Nothing,” The Guardian, May 10, 2002, https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/stage​/2002​/may​/10​/theatre​.artsfeatures. 20. Caitlin DeMerlis, “Cadences of the Caribbean Sing Shakespeare’s Script,” PlayShakespeare.com, November 13, 2009, https:​//​www​.playshakespeare​.com​/ much​-ado​-about​-nothing​-reviews​/theatre​-reviews​/cadences​-of​-the​-caribbean​-sing​ -shakespeares​-script. 21. Douglas, interview. 22. Douglas, interview. 23. Douglas, interview. 24. Kevin Fitzmaurice, interview with author, July 9, 2015. 25. Iqbal Khan, “Director Q&A,” RSC, accessed April 7, 2023, https:​//​www​.rsc​.org​ .uk​/much​-ado​-about​-nothing​/past​-productions​/iqbal​-khan​-2012​-production. 26. Fitzmaurice, interview. 27. Iqbal Khan, “1960s Birmingham to 2012 Stratford-upon-Avon,” in Shakespeare, Race and Performance: The Diverse Bard, ed. by Delia Jarrett-Macauley (London: Routledge, 2016), 141. 28. Khan, “1960s Birmingham,” 141. 29. Lucy Cavendish, “Much Ado About Nothing: Much Ado About Meera Syal,” Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2012, http:​//​www​.telegraph​.co​.uk​/culture​/theatre​/theatre​ -features​/9403719​/Much​-Ado​-about​-Nothing​-Much​-ado​-about​-Meera​-Syal​.html.

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30. Nosheen Iqbal, “Much Ado About Delhi: RSC’s Indian Shakespeare,” The Guardian, August 1, 2012, https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/culture​/2012​/aug​/01​/much​ -ado​-rsc​-indian​-shakespeare. 31. Fitzmaurice, interview. 32. Tom Piper, “Designing Much Ado About Nothing,” Royal Shakespeare Company YouTube Channel, published 25 May 2012, https:​//​youtu​.be​/eHjY1CeN9Ww. 33. Fitzmaurice, interview. 34. Justin B. Hopkins, “Much Ado About Nothing,” Shakespeare Bulletin, 31.2 (2013): 292. 35. Rana Dasgupta, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-first Century Delhi (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2014), 134/ 36. Dasgupta, Capital, 137–39. 37. Production programme. 38. Production archive videos. 39. Dasgupta, Capital, 203. 40. Dasgupta, Capital, 200. 41. Hopkins, “Much Ado,” 294–95. 42. Thea Buckley, “Indian Shakespeare in the World Shakespeare Festival” in Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures, ed. by Shormishtha Panja and Babli Moitra Saraf (New Delhi and London: SAGE Publications, 2016), 87. 43. Barbara Mackay, “Shakespeare season proves rich for D.C. in 2009–10,” Washington Examiner, November 17, 2009, https:​//​www​.washingtonexaminer​.com​/ shakespeare​-season​-proves​-rich​-for​-dc​-in​-2009​-10. 44. Dominic Cavendish, “Much Ado About Nothing, RSC Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, review,” Daily Telegraph, August 2, 2012, https:​ //​ www​ .telegraph​.co​.uk​/culture​/theatre​/theatre​-reviews​/9447812​/Much​-Ado​-About​-Nothing​ -RSC​-Courtyard​-Theatre​-Stratford​-upon​-Avon​-review​.html.

Chapter 11

Teaching “Kill Claudio” in the Age of Streamed Shakespeare Joseph Sullivan

One of the most memorable lines in Shakespearean drama is the plea from Beatrice to “Kill Claudio.”1 It catches one’s eye, even on the page. The directive’s bluntness arrests our ears. An alliterative spondee jabbing audiences with a straight left. In his 2008 book Shakespeare and Film, Sam Crowl describes the chapel scene as depicted in Branagh’s film. Beatrice’s anger, and her frustration with her gender’s limitations when it comes to taking action in the male world of honor, lead her to respond to Benedick’s offer to “bid me do anything for me” with a line that shatters the romantic mood: “Kill Claudio.” Branagh’s Benedick is transformed by her passion. Earlier we had seen his cocky jester melt into the comic romantic in the gulling scene. Now both of these hyperbolic portraits darken and mature as we watch him absorb and understand the issue that spurs Beatrice’s fury.2

Although I was an inexperienced viewer at the time, Crowl’s description matches well the outline of what I took in as I processed Thompson’s performance. For a number of years afterward, that was the only template of a performed Beatrice available to me. It was additionally, it should be noted, an isolated experience. Because the film was shot on location, my reception was a direct interaction between the actor’s delivery and my limited perception, uninfluenced, for good and bad, by others’ reactions to the performance. The website YouTube launched in 2005, and by 2009, scholars such as Christy Desmet were already advocating for the platform’s incorporation as a pedagogical tool, citing its potential utility as “a locus for honing students’ skills in critical reading and writing (both terms being broadly construed).”3 Over the next decade, classrooms across higher education 191

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were renovated so that instructors could share advanced technology with the entire room. Teacher stations hooked up to projectors became increasingly the norm, and that development made it feasible to incorporate multiple clips via VHS, DVD, or streamed formats into class sessions without major disruption. Course management systems, such as Blackboard and Canvas, offered instructors the ability to cultivate clips for “flipped classroom” homework assignments. Digital scenes preloaded in multiple browser tabs saved instructors the awkward lost time previously spent crouched behind the teacher station swapping out tapes or discs, let along the time cuing a VHS tape to the exact spot. Not to mention the wasted time in front of the class navigating low-tech DVD menus common to the opaquely sourced discs commonly available to Shakespeareans in the 1990s and early 2000s. As Barbara Hodgdon has described the innovation, “The ability to move rapidly from one clip to another, whether to fast forward to another clip or to search for different enactments of the same scene effectively situates performance within a reverberating echo chamber.”4 It was only a matter of time before PowerPoint slideshows at professional meetings routinely featured embedded YouTube clips. Very quickly, faculty were no longer merely using YouTube as a carrot to entice their students to engage with early modern playtexts. They were increasingly relying on it themselves as scholars as an acceptable source of evidence for conference papers and publications. The growth of scholarship devoted to captured performance has been rocket fueled by the ubiquity of YouTube. The global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 drove students away from those multimedia-equipped classrooms and shut audiences out of live theater venues; however, rather than hampering the pedagogical employment of YouTube in classes, the pandemic seems to have only increased it. With the world locked down at home, theater companies and school systems broadened their reliance on YouTube. To get a sense of the site’s overall cultural significance, as of 2023, YouTube is the most popular website in the United States and world, with a billion videos viewed each day and five hundred hours of videos uploaded each minute.5 There is a wide variety of videos archived on YouTube, in terms of length, subject matter, and source. In the late 2010s, a number of streaming platforms launched, offering for the first-time digital access to authorized full performances. These growing resources facilitate more than one approach to performance criticism. Michael Friedman has identified two primary types: 1) diachronic, which focuses on “a single production as it occurs” in its entirety and in real time and 2) synchronic, which “aims to produce critical insights through a three-step process: exploring the range of potential performance choices circumscribed by the printed text, describing the varying effects of such choices, and examining the cultural and historical reasons that one

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effect rather than another might be considered desirable.”6 Because so many full-length productions, authorized and otherwise, have become increasingly available on YouTube, there are more than enough possibilities to choose from for a diachronic examination. While limited to seeing only what the camera shots allow, viewers do have the ability to rewind and rescreen the performance. In other words, viewers have unlimited access to the limited theatrical perspectives found on captured performances. Synchronic criticism focuses rather on clips of a single scene from a play’s text that are excerpted from multiple productions. One can juxtapose a 2013 London Globe live performance of Taming of the Shrew starring Samantha Spiro and Simon Paisley Day with a clip from the 1967 mainstream film release starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and a 1950 Westinghouse Studio One television broadcast starring Lisa Kirk and Charlton Heston. You might even add a clip from the 1929 pre-Code silent film starring Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. This chapter will incorporate aspects of both methods. Audience reactions from several performances will be discussed synchronically; however, more of a diachronic view will be necessary to discuss Christopher’s Luscombe’s production that not only invites us to think of the “Kill Claudio” moment’s relevance to the overall meaning of Much Ado About Nothing, but further invites us to contextualize that moment in rep with a paired play, namely Love’s Labour’s Lost. In doing so we will keep in mind the limitations of these branches of performance criticism. While discussing recent digital editions of the plays that allow readers to watch multiple clips attached to the text, Sarah Werner reminds us that isolated lines pulled from plays “are only clips; they reproduce fragments of something that is more than the sum of its parts, and in breaking that larger whole into smaller bits, they diminish what it means.”7 In addition to the need to remind ourselves that “Kill Claudio” are a mere two words in a text that contains tens of thousands of them, which is a concern more easily assuaged by a diachronic than synchronic approach, Stephen Purcell contends that we should also think twice before basing our interpretation of audience reaction too heavily on the horizon of authorized responses we presume are implied in the text because “changes in language, dramatic conventions, theatregoing habits, living conditions, national and global politics, and much more are surely influential in shaping the ways in which audiences form their responses to Shakespeare’s drama.”8 To illustrate his point, Purcell points to published critical scrutinies of audience reactions to Malvolio in Twelfth Night, as well as to the plays Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice. Purcell argues that critics lend too much significance to their own perceptions of implied audiences. It is a valid point and one the present chapter walks a tightrope over because I do contend that one reaction

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to “Kill Claudio” is more warranted based on the dramatic situation in the play than is another. Not only that, but the reaction in question which I find least warranted, namely, laughter at Beatrice’s plea, is the reaction most commonly noted. The plays Purcell cites are all either problem plays, or are plays with honorary “problem play–like” characters in them. Perhaps Beatrice should join the list of unofficial “problem characters” such as Malvolio, Isabella, Shylock, and Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew that complicate audience reactions to plays which are otherwise conventional comedies. The present discussion limits itself to resources uploaded with the negotiated consent of the content creators themselves or by venders they have contracted to film their work. The four cases we’ll explore are Nicholas Hytner’s 2007 National Theatre production starring Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale (filmed at the start of 2008 and released on DVD by the NT), Jeremy Herrin’s 2011 Globe Theatre production starring Eve Best and Charles Edwards (released in 2012 on DVD by Opus Arte and available for streaming on the Globe Player), Josie Rourke’s 2011 Wyndham’s Theatre production starring Catherine Tate and David Tennant (released on DVD by Digital Theatre), and Christopher Luscombe’s 2014 Royal Shakespeare Company production starring Michelle Terry and Edward Bennett (broadcast live in England and later released on DVD by Opus Arte). Each has in place negotiated deals with their creative teams. John Wyver has reported that NT Live and the RSC have “done a great deal to reassure actors and other creatives, as well as their agents, that their stage work could be appropriately adapted to the screen and that responsible fee structures and rights packages could be agreed.”9 Instructors and researchers have migrated to YouTube and licensed streaming services in order to survey what goes on during live performance. It is an attempt to witness secondhand how all of the elements of a staged production interact with an assembled crowd in order to create the fullest expression of Shakespeare’s plays. Some videos on YouTube offer keyhole views of that, particularly handheld camera shots of school, community, or professional productions. Such a view is limited; however, on the plus side, there is likely no “observer’s effect.” On the other hand, because great care is taken by the four professional companies mentioned above to optimize the viewer’s experience with the best available technology, it is inevitable that the efforts necessary to reach those remote viewers somehow mitigate the conditions in the theatre for anyone present at the time of filming. For starters, filming a performance in front of an audience affects the actors. In the theater, the audience is physically removed from the actors. Sometimes by a large distance. Ian McKellen notes in John Barton’s 1984 book Playing Shakespeare that the distance between the actors and the audience factors into the latter’s perception of “naturalism.” Performing in a large theater

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“leads to a grander, more generalized, open style of acting.”10 McKellen elaborated on this point when he visited the Dick Cavett Show as a guest in 1981. He explained how a “grander” style might appear to someone standing close to the actor. “Though it looks natural to the audience, if a member of the audience were to step up on the stage, and see a person behaving, playing, in this way, once they’d gotten up to him, they’d say, “what’s the matter with this guy? He’s behaving awfully peculiarly.”11 That is, more or less, the situation YouTube viewers encounter when looking at professionally filmed Shakespearean theater, with its mixture of wide-view, medium-view, and close-up shots. When performing in front of a live house while simultaneously being filmed, actors are playing to two separate groups with dissimilar perspectives. In many respects this double vision is insignificant; however, when one is deciphering an actor’s delivery to determine whether or not a laugh in reaction is warranted, the differentiation matters. There are key moments in many plays where an actor playing to a close-up shot on camera and simultaneously to the crowd on hand will be misunderstood by one or the other. The exchange between Beatrice and Benedick about the consequences Claudio should face for destroying Hero is one of those moments. It can be played well intimately and it can be played well from afar. Not both at once. In addition to the fact that YouTube viewers of performance captures are watching up-close actors calibrate their onstage behaviors to the back of the house, there is also the matter of all the additional equipment moving about the theatrical space, which reminds everyone that they are being watched by an untold number of absent people. This in spite of the fact that companies do their level best to transmit high-fidelity facsimiles of performance. Erin Sullivan writes that, “Lighting, wigs, and makeup are tweaked, and considerable miking is incorporated across the stage, auditorium, and onto the bodies of actors, but the creative direction and pitch of the acting are supposedly not meant to change.”12 That desire for unmitigated performance is impossible when there are six or seven cameras moving about the theater throughout the performance. Allison Stone writes that, “the most significant intervention [at the RSC] is the Moviebird 44 crane, named for its forty-four-foot arm that can move right across the playing space, taking the camera close to the action. Whole sections of seating are taken out of the theater to make way for the cameras.”13 Audiences at filmed performances at the Globe, NT, RSC, and Wyndham’s Theatre must be self-conscious of the fact that their reactions are being etched into posterity. Having granted the disclaimers that the perceptions of viewers streaming Shakespeare may become skewed by actors stuck between playing to those present in the house as well as to others remotely and that camera equipment on the premises during the performance may cause actors and audiences to react differently than they otherwise would, it is still valuable to cultivate

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clips to share with students and to consider in one’s own research. First and foremost, the companies under discussion have all produced valuable ancillary content available for free on YouTube that significantly broadens Much Ado’s paratext online. John Wyver explains that these introductions and interviews found on YouTube are meant to provide “privileged entry to aspects of the production process and interpretation of the staging that they might not be able to otherwise access (and that traditionally are included in theater programs).”14 Although no full-length productions are available for free on YouTube, theater companies and the creatives appear sufficiently comfortable posting paratextual videos indefinitely. To view the performances themselves, increasingly they can be found somewhere online to rent or own. One example of a useful resource found on YouTube is Simon Russell Beale’s interview filmed during his National Theatre run as Benedick, asking him about how he approached the wedding scene: “This is something I discovered late on in rehearsals, it’s not simply a question of saying to Beatrice that I can’t kill my best friend. It’s also saying you’ve got the wrong guy. I wonder if she’d said ‘kill Don John the Bastard’ he might have gone ‘fine.’”15 Beale’s experience mapping the role over time revealed to him how Benedick’s relationship with Claudio is as significant a variable in his reaction to “Kill Claudio” as is his relationship with Beatrice. These observations from an artist wrestling with the part in rehearsal connect well with comments other critics have on occasion made about the relevance of Claudio’s actions after he has marched offstage with Don Pedro. Carol Moses’s 1996 article on Branagh’s film notes that, “The disillusionment of the older lovers prepares the audience to see, in Claudio’s youthfulness, an appealing innocence. But the destructive quality of this innocence hints at an allegorical meaning. In effect, Claudio becomes a figure like Young Goodman Brown.”16 Looking at how the actor playing Claudio impacts Beatrice’s mindset with his choices, Michael Billington writes that in Jeremy Herrin’s 2011 production, “Philip Cumbus plays Claudio as a chauvinist hysteric who doesn’t merely spurn his intended bride in church but also physically abuses her: an idea that motivates Beatrice’s later injunction to ‘kill Claudio.’”17 The playtext does not call for Claudio to physically touch Hero in the scene, but it is a reasonable inference that he would be capable of it in the moment. Witnessing such an attack would, as Billington notes, increase the likelihood that Beatrice would sue for reciprocal violence. Interviews with creatives such as Simon Russell Beale are some of the most valuable clips for instructors and researchers of Much Ado on YouTube because, truth be told, the “Kill Claudio” moment itself is only sporadically available on YouTube for professional productions. There are countless YouTube videos of individual actors playing the scene alone as Beatrice or with a colleague playing Benedick. Dozens of high school, university, and

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community theater performances are available as well. It is not unusual to find YouTube videos of acting teachers instructing on the scene in workshop or professors lecturing on it. In fact, during one lecture a professor merely mentions the “Kill Claudio” line while discussing the scene and the audience lets out a hearty laugh at it.18 However, as addressed above, because of creative and financial considerations by the companies on behalf of their creative teams, professional performances themselves are limited in YouTube. The platform is best considered a portal of live performance that pulls together student, community, and professional attempts at bringing the play to life. When it comes to the professional companies, YouTube lets us know what is out there so we can track it down on paid streaming services. The 2007 National Theatre production is an elusive one for clip hunters. Act 4 is not posted, ethically or otherwise, on YouTube, and the production is currently unavailable to stream. What does exist are paratextual resources like the interview with Simon Russell Beale quoted above. The 2007 NT show is worth noting, however, because it has left a multitude of digital traces across the Internet. A review of Simon Goodwin’s 2021 production starring Katherine Parkinson and John Hefferman mentions Wanamaker and Beale in absentia while commenting on the “Kill Claudio” moment, “Most any audience is primed to laugh ostentatiously at ‘Kill Claudio’ but it has never felt more inappropriate as here when there’s such devoted potency to the exchange. I sadly never got to witness Simon Russell Beale and Zoë Wanamaker but I like to imagine that these two are of a par.”19 Again, a professional film of the production does exist. It is just currently off the market in the Shakespearean version of the “Disney Vault.” All one finds on YouTube is a trailer. It will be interesting to see if, in the future, more of act 4 becomes available on YouTube or if the full film itself reenters the marketplace for rent or purchase. One can find Eve Best’s Beatrice and Charles Edwards’s Benedick tangle online in Jeremy Herrin’s Globe run. The “Kill Claudio” scene itself is unavailable on YouTube; fortunately, a trailer for the production is available that can lead one to purchase the show on DVD or stream it on the Globe Player.20 There are trade-offs to both options. I purchased the DVD a few years ago at a time when DVD players were aplenty. At the time of this writing, fewer and fewer personal devices come with DVD players, a factor that makes streaming options even more appealing. Interestingly enough, my school’s multimedia classrooms are the only places remaining where I have access to them. I am also a subscriber to the Globe Player, which offers a variety of listings. Unfortunately, the Globe rotates its titles, so even though I have access at the time of writing to Eve Best’s Beatrice on the Globe Player, that access might be temporarily gone by the time this chapter reaches print.

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When analyzing the reaction to “Kill Claudio,” one ideally must go back as far in the action as the aborted wedding itself, because the chapel scene between Beatrice and Benedick gathers its energy from it. In the 2011 Globe production, there are early signs that the line will be delivered by the cast for a laugh. Soon after Claudio publicly accuses Hero of being “one of those pampered animals / That rage in savage sexuality,”21 Benedick turns sharply to the audience and in a flat detached tone with a bit of a muggy look on his face, deadpans, “This looks not like a nuptial.”22 Clearly, the production with a naturally well-lit house is aiming for a significant Brechtian alienation effect between the audience and the action of the play. After Hero, Leonato, and the Friar leave the stage, there are a number of natural chuckles to the exchange where Benedick and Beatrice announce that they were thinking of announcing that they love one another. During the exchange they move farther away from one another so that by the time that Benedick asks Beatrice if there is anything he can do for her, they are on opposite sides of the stage. Eve Best steps on the delivery of Benedick’s inquiry and quickly exclaims “Kill Claudio” with her hands outstretched and her head tilted in the air with her eyes slightly rolled back. Of all the productions we will examine, this is the only one where the actor appears to be actively playing the line for a laugh. Charles Edwards strikes the viewer at that moment as existing in a different production. He may as well be. The two actors are on opposite sides of the stage from one another. The viewer at home has a better look at Beatrice’s nonverbal gestures than does Benedick. Her mugging at the line leaves open the possibility that Beatrice knows herself that the request is preposterous. Benedick, from a distance, reacts as if it were an entirely serious plea. He drops the “Ha” and shakes his head “no” with a horrified look on his face. Eve Best then joins Charles Edwards back in the same show when she replies with a sincere crestfallen “You kill me to deny it.” The audience falls silent for the next stretch of time where Beatrice prosecutes Claudio’s crimes, save for the line about eating his heart, which again garners a long laugh with raucous applause from the Globe groundlings. When Benedick gets his interjection “Beatrice” only halfway out of his mouth before being cut off by her, Charles Edwards, out of the camera’s view, audibly sighs, enticing another laugh from the crowd. Overall, act 4 of the 2011 Globe production serves as a illustrative example of how companies can maneuver to maximize audience interaction throughout a performance, even in unexpected places. Josie Rourke’s 2011 Wyndham’s Theatre production has an authorized YouTube playlist devoted to it and a minute of the wedding scene’s aftermath available to screen for free.23 The clip does not include the “Kill Claudio” moment but instead focuses on Beatrice’s and Benedick’s hesitant confessions of love to one another.24 To see the full film, one can subscribe to Digital Theatre Plus or rent the title for forty-eight hours.25 Starting from the

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beginning of act four, one notices much less audience engagement in the wedding scene. David Tennant’s Benedick notes that the action unfolding does not seem like a nuptial, but he does so in an understated, surprised manner, as if it were an observation worth stating instead of a self-evident fact deserving a laugh. The exchange between Hero and Claudio quickly follows Tennant’s line so that the chuckles in the audience are swallowed by the subsequent dialogue. This moment when Benedick speaks during the wedding appears to be a dependable bellwether which indicates how a production will likely approach the delivery of “Kill Claudio.” In Rourke’s production, the entirety of the wedding scene, where the imposingly sized Tom Bateman as Claudio shoves Hero violently back toward Leonato as they stand on a hard marble floor and then subsequently straight arms her to the face as he vows “To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm, / And never shall it be in question,”26 plays before a somber and silent crowd. Bateman is a terrifying Claudio who Tennant might only defeat in a duel if he could somehow manage to drop a TARDIS on him. The somber tone persists after Claudio, Don Pedro, and Don John depart the chapel, leaving Hero’s family to process the charges against her. It is only after the remainder of the cast leave the stage and David Tennant and Catherine Tate are left alone that humor is again allowed its compartmentalized moments. Tennant stands straight at attention in his white military uniform and declares nervously to his superior officer, after a long pause, that “I love nothing in the world so well as you.”27 After the audience’s laugh has several seconds to subside, he adds “Isn’t that strange?,” which causes a second warm, relieved collective chuckle. The next several minutes onstage are played for broad comedic effect, cashing in on the chemistry the two actors developed in their time together on the television series Dr. Who. As Benedick moves to get closer to Beatrice, she keeps him at arm’s length by moving chairs between them. When he protests that he loves her in line 294, she breaks into overt laughter herself and circles the stage trying to catch her breath. The physical comedy is highly performative, breaking sharply from the wedding scene and its aftermath. What is interesting to note is that, unlike at the Globe, “Kill Claudio” does not appear to be played as a laugh line, although the audience does laugh at it. As mentioned before, Tate and Tennant’s performance throughout the play is marked by long stretches of comedy and brief moments of drama. They tend not to mix the two in their performances. Unlike most crowds, the Globe audience does not immediately laugh at the “Kill Claudio” line. They do so only after Tennant pauses extensively before chiming in “Not for the wide world,” notably without the “Ha!” Of all the productions one might screen online, the Wyndham’s Theatre’s production might be the one where

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the audience’s laugh at “Kill Claudio” appears to be discernibly hesitant and tangentially motivated. Which brings us to Christopher Luscombe’s 2014 RSC production starring Michelle Terry and Edward Bennett. It is the only one of the four productions with an authorized clip of the “Kill Claudio” moment available on YouTube via the RSC’s website. It was mounted in observance of the centenary anniversary of the Great War and was paired in repertory with Love’s Labour’s Lost. Both plays were set at a large house designed to resemble Charlecote Park, an estate near Stratford. The company’s troupe plays corresponding parts in each play. The double DVD’s brochure makes clear to the viewer that, “Benedick and Beatrice finally settle the merry war between Berowne and Rosalind.”28 The wedding scene begins with the congregation singing a hymn composed from Berowne’s poem to Rosaline in LLL, foreshadowing that the scene has arrived when whomever Edward Bennett is playing will again announce his love to whomever it is that Michelle is playing. As is the case in Wyndham’s production, the bellwether suggests that “Kill Claudio” will not be played for a laugh. Bennett’s Benedick stands at the back in the crowd, as did Tennant, and worriedly thinks aloud that what he is witnessing is no nuptial. It is an aside, but not one mugging to the house. Hero and Claudio jump right back in and there are few, if any, muffled chuckles audible on the recording. When Hero swoons to the floor, the camera shot shifts to ground level. Beatrice holds Hero in her arms as a Pieta and calls for the friar and Leonato. She then slightly pauses, reaches out her hand, and screams for Benedick. The shot also includes the men exiting the chapel. When he hears her name, Benedick stops and turns on a dime back toward her. Stunned, he stands still while the others formulate the plan to fake Hero’s death. When the family and friar leave, he approaches Beatrice. They sit initially removed from one another on the groom’s and the bride’s sides of the church, signaling that there is still some work to do toward their union. When he professes his love and asks if it is strange, one can hear a pin drop in the theater. One of the rare instances where there is little or no laugh at that line. The audience instead laughs when Beatrice tells Benedick not to believe she loves him.29 When Terry’s Beatrice, now standing face-to-face with Benedick, states that “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest,”30 Bennett’s Benedick holds her face tenderly, and they share a long kiss. It is an earned moment. By this time in the paired plays, Terry and Bennett have been circling each other in love for almost nine full acts. The crowd remains silent. No hoots or applause, as if to respect the privacy of the couple. Both actors caress the face of the other. As Benedick bids Beatrice to request anything of him, she slides one hand to caress his hand and looks him in the eyes as she asks for Claudio’s death. In the pause that follows, a long laugh builds in

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intensity. Muffled at first, it appears to strengthen as the audience members seem to grant each other permission to laugh. With respect to the delivery, neither Bennett or Terry appears to be playing it for a laugh, although the line is followed by a long pause. The pentimento of 2014’s Rosaline bleeds through 2018’s Beatrice and makes the desperate plea, “Berowne, don’t disappoint me in this. I won’t wait for you again.” What stands out after watching the full performances of LLL and LLW is that the paired production features many scenes devoted to broad comedy, but this is not one of them. Case in point, in the scenes where Beatrice and Benedick are duped into acknowledging their loves for one another, as Benedick spies on Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio, he climbs a Christmas tree, and his face appears in the star atop it. A power surge blows through the tree’s strung lights, and Benedick falls from the tree. The slapstick humor reaches its zenith when the hidden Benedick decides to stick a whisky tumbler through the branches of the tree for Leonato to fill. Michelle Terry likewise adopts an overtly performative approach to Beatrice that highlights the play’s theatricality. But when Beatrice asks Benedick to kill Claudio, she makes the request loudly, but without the oversized gestures or voice modulations Terry uses elsewhere in LLL & LLW to connect with the audience. As was the case with the Wyndham’s audience, there is some notable difference between how the RSC’s troupe plays the “Kill Claudio” moment and how the house receives it. Looking at the three screened “Kill Claudio” scenes together, all three elicit a laugh from the crowd. In the case of the Globe, the motivation of the laugh is clear because Eve Best appears to be playing for one. In the other two cases, even though Catherine Tate and Michelle Terry both play Beatrice as a comic character via physical comedy throughout their respective filmed performances, neither appears to be playing “Kill Claudio” for a laugh. And yet the audience laughs regardless. Laughter deriving from sudden surprise? From shock at the hyperbole of the request? I still do not understand it. When I ask myself to explain why a laugh after “Kill Claudio” is unwarranted, I think of what transpires in the playtext early in act five. After Dogberry and his constables interrogate Borachio and Conrade, Don Pedro and Claudio cross paths with Leonato and his brother. In the Globe’s production, Don Pedro and Claudio appear distinctly agitated and on edge. It is played as a fraught and dangerous exchange. In the Wyndham’s production, Leonato’s brother is replaced by his wife. She throws a drink in Claudio’s face and delivers her lines with a subdued but devastating effect. In the RSC version, the scene is portrayed in an ominous courtyard setting at night where all of the characters wear brimmed hats and long dark coats. When Benedick joins the scene, in each case Don Pedro and Claudio express relief. What sticks in my head are the ghost lines left out of all of the productions. In the playtext, Claudio and Don Pedro belittle Leonato and his

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brother by calling them “old men without teeth,”31 even though Leonato has just informed the pair that Hero has died from the trauma of Claudio’s harsh words. When Benedick leaves the scene soon after, in the playtext Claudio and Don Pedro laugh between themselves and attribute their friend’s defense of Hero to the oppressive influence of Beatrice.32 In short, they find the idea of believing Hero’s word against the word of the traitorous Don John’s to be laughable. Cutting these lines not only saves the reputations of Don Pedro and Claudio from additional tarnishing, but it also spares the audience the discomfort of realizing it has just moments before reacted the same way as those disgraced men when first hearing of Beatrice’s plea for justice. One can imagine why Beatrice was so incensed in the church. The default setting was always to believe the men. Never Hero. Never Beatrice. Regardless of how flimsy the evidence. As Beatrice reminds Benedick, Hero was simply accused of talking to a man outside a window.33 For that she was met “with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancor.34 In the playtext, when Benedick proposes a trial by ordeal that originated in a plea from his love Beatrice, they dismiss the idea as laughable. They dismiss it because it came from her. Those lines in 5.1 where Claudio and Don Pedro mock Benedick for believing the word of women and acting on it are not included in most productions, but a reader of the play can be excused for keeping them in mind during the chapel scene.35 It would of course be wrong for Benedick to actually follow through and kill Claudio. But it is not wrong for Beatrice to ask Benedick for harsh justice. Much Ado About Nothing begins with Leonato asking a messenger how many gentlemen have been lost in Don John’s armed rebellion against Don Pedro. The messenger replies, “But few of any sort, and none of name.”36 The Globe and Wyndham’s Theatre productions both keep that line. The RSC cuts it, likely because its production is set at the close of World War I and any suggestion that few lives were lost in that conflict would defeat the RSC’s goal of a centenary memorial and would open the play on a terribly false note. Don John’s second rebellion against Don Pedro results in no casualties other than a masked ball early in act two that sours much of Claudio’s night. Don Pedro learns nothing from the first two rebellions. He still trusts his brother more than he trusts others. Hero consequently becomes a target of convenience in Don John’s third rebellion. Would the messenger from the start of the playtext report Hero’s loss as one “of any sort,” or simply as a disposable young woman? What Beatrice asks of Benedick in 4.1 is for him to foreswear his previous socialization by treating Hero as “one of name.” In an RSC interview, Michelle Terry says, “I find that there is such a sadness in Beatrice. Which she has to mask with this mirth.”37 She drops her mask and presents her authentic self to Benedick. The vulnerability she feels overwhelms her and makes it difficult for her to modulate her request

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into something judicious and prudent. She asks Benedick to kill Claudio. It is a direct, earnest, if extreme, request borne from a lifelong pent-up fear of dismissal, not to mention from freshly striped traumatizing moments of callousness perpetrated by Claudio and Leonato, Beatrice’s own guardian. Claudio casts Hero away, and Leonato wishes her dead. Screening multiple performances of act four has not yet solved for me the mystery of why some laugh at Beatrice’s reaction to such cruelty. But the exercise has helped my students put the “Kill Claudio” moment into a fuller context within the whole of act four and has demonstrated anew with each pedagogical experience how universally relieved we all are in the audience and even in the classroom once Benedick has heard enough and resolved himself to engage. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bard on the Beach. “Exploring Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing.” July 28, 2017. YouTube video. 47:53. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=HLvew3BY2U8​ &t​=1s. Barton, John. Playing Shakespeare: An Actor’s Guide. New York: Anchor Books, 1984. Billington, Michael. “Much Ado About Nothing-Review.” The Guardian. (May 27, 2011) https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/stage​/2011​/may​/27​/much​-ado​-about​-nothing​ -globe. Broadband Search. “The Most Popular Internet Sites of 2022.” https:​ //​ www​ .broadbandsearch​.net​/blog​/most​-visited​-popular​-websites. Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare and Film: A Norton Guide. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. Desmet, Christy. “Teaching Shakespeare with YouTube.” English Journal 99, no. 1 (September 2009): 65–70. Dick Cavett Show. “Ian McKellen Explains the Difference Between Acting on Stage and InMovies.” April 12, 2019. YouTube video. 7:37. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/ watch​?v​=QzOlVLDMLAQ. Digital Theatre Plus. “Much Ado About Nothing—David Tennant | Act 4 Scene 1 | Digital Theatre+” May 29, 2013. YouTube video. 1:20. https:​ //​ www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=yK0jlGM​-uSI​&list​=PLh1​_OpNt5HhTCwPCdw0t T6FxuWu4L1Ir&index=5. Digital Theatre Plus. “Playlist: Much Ado About Nothing.” Last updated August 18, 2022.https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/playlist​?list​=PLh1​_OpNt5HhTCwPCdw0t​ -T6FxuWu4L1Ir. Friedman, Michael D. ‘The World Must Be Peopled’: Shakespeare’s Comedies of Forgiveness. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002. Herrin, Jeremy, dir. Much Ado About Nothing. Shakespeare’s Globe. Globe Player, 2012. Hodgdon, Barbara. “(You)Tube Travel: The 9:59 to Dover Beach, Stopping at Fair Verona and Elsinore.” Shakespeare Bulletin 28, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 313–30.

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Luscombe, Christopher, dir. Love’s Labour’s Lost & Much Ado About Nothing, or Love’s Labour’s Won. London: Opus Arte, 2015. DVD. Moses, Carol. “Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing: Shakespearean Comedy as Shakespearean Romance.” Shakespeare Bulletin 14, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 38–40. National Theatre. “Simon Russell Beale on the wedding scene in Much Ado About Nothing” February 8, 2013. YouTube video. 6:35. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​ ?v​=W​_MJyd1wo8c. Purcell, Stephen. Shakespeare and Audience in Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Rourke, Josie, dir. Much Ado About Nothing. 2011. Digital Theatre Player. https:​//​ www​.digitaltheatre​.com​/watch​/37632860. Royal Shakespeare Company. “Act 4 Scene 1, Much Ado about Nothing, 2014, Royal Shakespeare Company.” RSC Shakespeare Learning Zone. January 29, 2019. YouTube video. 3:29. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=ArKwN​-gTOE8. ———. “Beatrice’s Journey” | Much Ado about Nothing: in performance Royal Shakespeare Company” RSC Shakespeare Learning Zone. May 18, 2016. YouTube video 3:14.https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=I6oD1VxRYL0. ———. “‘Kill Claudio’±Act 4 Scene 1—Key Scene.” RSC Shakespeare Learning Zone.https:​//​www​.rsc​.org​.uk​/shakespeare​-learning​-zone​/much​-ado​-aboutnothing​/ language​/kill​-claudio. Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Folger Shakespeare Library. Edited by Barbara A Mowat and Paul Werstine. Updated edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018. Stone, Allison. “Not Making a Movie: The Livecasting of Shakespeare Stage Productions by the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company.” Shakespeare Bulletin 34, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 627–43. Sullivan, Erin. “’The forms of things unknown’: Shakespeare and the Rise of the LiveBroadcast.” Shakespeare Bulletin 35, no. 4 (Winter 2017): 627–62. There Ought to Be Clowns. “Review: Much Ado About Nothing, National Theatre.” July 19,2022. Blog. https:​//​oughttobeclowns​.com​/2022​/07​/review​-much​-ado​-about​ -nothingnational​-theatre​.html​/. Werner, Sarah. “Performance in Digital Editions of Shakespeare,” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance. Edited by James C. Bulman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Wyver, John. Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History. New York: The Arden Shakespeare, 2020.

NOTES 1. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Barbara A Mowat and Paul Werstine (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 4.1.303. References are to act, scene, and line. 2. Samuel Crowl, Shakespeare and Film: A Norton Guide (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), 191.

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3. Christy Desmet, “Teaching Shakespeare with YouTube,” The English Journal 99, no. 1 (2009): 66. 4. Barbara Hodgdon, “(You)Tube Travel: The 9:59 to Dover Beach. Stopping at Fair Verona and Elsinore,” Shakespeare Bulletin 28, no. 3 (2010): 315. 5. Broadband Search. “The Most Popular Internet Sites of 2022,” https:​//​www​ .broadbandsearch​.net​/blog​/most​-visited​-popular​-websites. 6. Michael D. Friedman, ‘The World Must Be Peopled’: Shakespeare’s Comedies of Forgiveness (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 16. 7. Sarah Werner, “Performance in Digital Editions of Shakespeare,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, ed. James C Bulman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 346. 8. Stephen Purcell, Shakespeare and Audience in Practice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 71. 9. John Wyver, Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History (New York: The Arden Shakespeare, 2020), 171–72. 10. John Barton, Playing Shakespeare: An Actor’s Guide (New York: Anchor Books, 1984), 16. Playing Shakespeare originated as a 1982 television series. While all of the episodes of the series are available on YouTube, at the time of this writing, there are no authorized versions available. Consequently, the book is quoted instead. 11. Dick Cavett Show, “Ian McKellen Explains the Difference Between Acting on Stage and In Movies | The Dick Cavett Show,” YouTube video, 7:37, April 12, 2019, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=QzOlVLDMLAQ 12. Erin Sullivan, “‘The forms of things unknown:’ Shakespeare and the Rise of the Live Broadcast,” Shakespeare Bulletin 35, no. 4 (2017): 631. 13. Allison Stone, “Not Making a Movie: The Livecasting of Shakespeare Stage Productions by the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company,” Shakespeare Bulletin 34, no. 4 (2016): 633. 14. Wyver, Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History, 175. 15. National Theatre, “Simon Russell Beale on the wedding scene in Much Ado About Nothing,” YouTube video, 6:35, February 8, 2013, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/ watch​?v​=W​_MJyd1wo8c. 16. Carol Moses, “Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing: Shakespearean Comedy as Shakespearean Romance,” Shakespeare Bulletin 14, no. 1 (1996): 39. 17. Michael Billington, “Much Ado About Nothing—Review,” The Guardian (May 27, 2011), https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/stage​/2011​/may​/27​/much​-ado​-about​ -nothing​-globe. 18. Bard on the Beach, “Exploring Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing,” YouTube video, 47:53, July 28, 2017, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =HLvew3BY2U8​&t​=1s. 19. There Ought to Be Clowns, “Review: Much Ado About Nothing, National Theatre,” Blog, July 19, 2022, https:​//​oughttobeclowns​.com​/2022​/07​/review​-much​-ado​ -about​-nothing​-national​-theatre​.html​/. 20. Herrin, Jeremy, dir., Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s Globe, Globe Player, 2012, https:​//​player​.shakespearesglobe​.com​/productions​/much​-ado​-about​ -nothing​-2011​/.

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21. Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.61–62. 22. Ibid., 4.1.71. 23. Digital Theatre Plus, “Playlist: Much Ado About Nothing,” Last updated August 18, 2022, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/playlist​?list​=PLh1​_OpNt5HhTCwPCdw0t​ -T6FxuWu4L1Ir. 24. Digital Theatre Plus, “Much Ado About Nothing—David Tennant | Act 4 Scene 1 | Digital Theatre+,” YouTube video, 1:20, May 29, 2013, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​ /watch​?v​=yK0jlGM​-uSI​&list​=PLh1​_OpNt5HhTCwPCdw0t​-T6FxuWu4L1Ir​&index​ =5. 25. Rourke, Josie, dir, Much Ado About Nothing, 2011, Digital Theatre Player, https:​//​www​.digitaltheatre​.com​/watch​/37632860. 26. Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.113. The Folger text quoted in this chapter reads instead for line 113 “And never shall it be more gracious.” 27. Ibid., 4.1.281–82. 28. Luscombe, Christopher, dir, Love’s Labour’s Lost & Much Ado About Nothing, or Love’s Labour’s Won, DVD, (London: Opus Arte, 2015), 6. 29. Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.285. 30. Ibid., 4.1.300–1. 31. Ibid., 5.1.129. 32. Ibid., 5.1.206–7. 33. Ibid., 4.1.323. 34. Ibid., 4.1.319–20. 35. Ibid., 5.1.172–96, 5.1.297–98. 36. Ibid., 1.1.6. 37. Royal Shakespeare Company, “Beatrice’s Journey” | Much Ado about Nothing: in performance | Royal Shakespeare Company,” RSC Shakespeare Learning Zone, YouTube video, 3:14, May 18, 2016, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​ =I6oD1VxRYL0.

Chapter 12

“Almost the copy of my child that’s dead” Ghosts and Adaptation in Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing Jim Casey

Joss Whedon’s 2012 black-and-white adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is a film haunted by ghosts, even if no literal ghosts appear. First, there is the “ghost character” of Innogen, Leonato’s wife, who appears in the quarto stage directions of the play but does not speak and is never spoken to. Next, there is Antonio, Leonato’s brother, who has more than fifty lines in Shakespeare’s Much Ado but does not appear in Whedon’s film. Then there are the ghosts of the actors’ previous roles, where earlier characters and performances are superimposed on current roles. Finally, the film is haunted by the early modern play itself, with revenants of “Shakespeare” materializing in the film. These specters of the hypotext (the earlier text) float through the hypertext (the subsequent text),1 with Shakespeare’s stage play continually appearing and disappearing in Whedon’s Much Ado. Obviously, the ghosting and haunting extends beyond the film and characters, with Whedon’s own past projects and behavior informing the film’s reception— both at the time of the film’s release and now, with his reputation as a feminist and an actor-friendly director suffering from recent accusations of infidelity and inappropriate behavior on set—but that will not be the primary focus of this essay. Instead, it will explore the way the many ghosts of Much Ado connect both Shakespeare’s play and Whedon’s film to modern and early modern issues of reputation, social shaming, and cultural erasure. Ultimately, the essay tries to reframe Shakespeare’s play through the lens of Whedon’s 207

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film, while grappling with the difficult question of how modern audiences should react to an artist whose work they love, but whose views or actions are incompatible with their own (such as Whedon, H. P. Lovecraft, Mel Gibson, J. K. Rowling, or Roman Polanski). GHOST CHARACTERS AND CULTURAL ERASURE In the quarto version of the play, there is a stage direction for Leonato’s wife Innogen to enter at the beginning of act one and again at the opening of act two (along with “a kinsman” of her husband), but Innogen does not speak or interact with anyone else. She is a “ghost character” who makes no impact on the play and disappears into the background, as if she were never there. In truth, she may not have been. By the time Much Ado was performed, Hero’s mother may have been written out of the play, and her appearance in the stage directions may be a vestige of an early draft. There is an Innogen-figure in the potential source-tale from Matteo Bandello’s La prima parte de le novelle (1554), and some scholars advocate for the silent presence of the character in Much Ado,2 but these critics argue for her inclusion based on political or thematic concerns rather than for theatrical reasons. In performance, the play is probably better without her. As Claire McEachern observes, the removal of Innogen makes Hero more socially vulnerable and isolated, with her father more likely to abandon her. Moreover, Shakespeare seemed to find this “father-motherless daughter dyad . . . dramatically and psychologically profitable” in other plays, such as The Tempest, King Lear, and The Merchant of Venice.3 Sheldon Zitner agrees that “in the theatre Much Ado would be awkward with a fully functioning Innogen,” suggesting that the character’s “maternal protests would have diluted the pathos of Hero’s situation and her dependency on Beatrice.”4 Dramatically, the effect of removing this figure of feminine power and compassion is to highlight Hero’s social weakness, Beatrice’s physical impotence, and Claudio’s public cruelty. In the Shakespeare film, Whedon also deletes a character, eliminating Leonato’s brother, Antonio, who plays a minor but important role in the original play. Introduced in the stage directions of the First Folio as “old man, brother to Leonato,” Antonio is defined by his age, providing comic relief and presenting a stark contrast to the callowness of Claudio and the virility of Benedick. For example, after the theatrical denunciation of his daughter, Leonato confronts Claudio, challenging him to a “trial of a man” (5.1.66).5 When the young man tries to ignore the challenge, the governor of Messina rebukes him, asking, “Canst thou so doff me? Thou hast killed my child; / If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man” (5.1.78–79). In only six lines, Leonato and his brother address Claudio as “boy” four times

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(5.1.79–84), stressing the young man’s immaturity and inexperience. Antonio underlines this contradistinction when he adds, “He shall kill two of us, and men indeed” (5.1.80). Of course, the character’s manhood has been compromised by age, and his blustering here is often depicted as “caricature dialogue.”6 On stage, the bellicose posturing of the two old men often leaves the audience “tittering,” as in Douglas Seale’s 1958 production.7 Just two scenes earlier, when Beatrice urges Benedick to “Kill Claudio” (4.1.288), she tells him that “It is a man’s office” (4.1.266), but Antonio and Leonato are denied that opportunity because their “grey hairs and bruise of many days” (5.1.65) make them unfit for the office. Performatively, their bodies are juxtaposed with that of the “good soldier” Benedick (1.1.50) and found lacking.8 This supposed decrepitude allows Claudio to dismiss their trial with no loss of honor, something he cannot do with Benedick’s challenge. In fact, because age has weakened them so much, their bodies are aligned more closely with Beatrice’s, and their actions are similarly limited. Following Claudio’s disavowal of Hero, Beatrice cries out, “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace” (4.1.304–5), but she acknowledges that she “cannot be a man with wishing, therefore [she] will die a woman with grieving” (4.1.320–21). Antonio and Leonato are likewise constrained in the play. This sociocultural limitation puts more focus on Benedick as the male defender of female honor. His youth and strength allow him to step in and fight where women and old men are unable. Jean Howard argues that when Beatrice and Benedick fall in love, they “reveal their successful interpellation into positions within a gendered social order,”9 but that structured organization also requires a man to submit himself to violence and possible death not only for the woman he loves but also for her kinswoman. In Whedon’s film, these complex gender relations become watered down, making the entire situation a bit muddy. In addition to omitting the character of Antonio, Whedon has also cut the scene in which Leonato confronts Claudio. When Benedick offers his own challenge, both the young man and the Duke misunderstand him, genuinely believing his words are a joke until Benedick slaps Claudio in the face and declares, “You are a villain. I jest not” (5.1.143). Without the earlier encounter with Leonato and Antonio, and without Claudio’s growing awareness of Benedick’s anger, this shift is sudden and shocking. Of course, it’s also good cinema. Rather than attempting to negotiate cultural mores that may be incomprehensible to modern audiences, Whedon modifies the conflict in order to make it more interpersonal than cultural. This allows him to sidestep the difficulty of explaining early modern attitudes regarding progeny, marriage, and honor (both masculine and feminine) to a postmodern viewership. Shakespeare’s audience may have understood how Claudio could have reacted so extremely or how Hero’s alleged betrayal

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might have been perceived as an offence against her father, but Whedon’s audience would not. To them, Claudio’s mock ceremony and Leonato’s admonition to “let her die” (4.1.154) seem sickeningly disproportionate to the crime. When asked about the way Leonato and Claudio disown and abandon Hero, Whedon suggests that Claudio does not call off the wedding because he has learned that his wife may not be a virgin but instead because he thought he saw her sleeping with another guy the night before the wedding. That’s different than, “Are you a virgin?” That’s, “Do you love me? Are you lying? Are you cheating on me? Is this a joke to you?” That’s hurt and betrayal and jealousy, and I think that’s very modern. I don’t think he’s thinking about her hymen. It’s the human, not the hymen. I think he’s thinking, I’m cuckolded. I’m a fool. And that’s the worst kind of pain. Now, what he does is reprehensible, but the pain of it is something that’s absolutely relatable. And there are some things in the movie that are slightly different than the play.10

In general, these differences privilege the exigencies of plot over the intricacies of theme, but they also reveal the sensibilities of the director and his time period. When Much Ado was filmed, Whedon was still revered by fans and actors alike, known especially for creating cult favorites that spoke to youthful viewers. In Much Ado, Whedon ejects not only the old man Antonio but old age itself, creating a version of Shakespeare that is young and hip and ready to party. Leonato, for example, is described as a “white-bearded fellow” (2.3.120) in the playtext, but in the film he is played by Clark Gregg, who was still in his forties when the movie was shot. At the same time, Whedon doesn’t seem to view Shakespeare as too old for film. Commenting on the four-hundred-year-old play, he claims, “It’s very modern. The language, the jokes, and the attitudes translate really, really easily. [The actors] do say the words as they’re written [in the play], but they connect to a modern audience in a way that portions of the other comedies don’t necessarily.”11 Perhaps the abundance of prose in Much Ado makes it seem more accessible, or perhaps Whedon was drawn to the play for its witty dialogue and sharp banter—attributes in common with the writer’s own creations. Either way, the film resonates with things that are no longer there. For instance, even though Whedon removes Antonio from the film, he retains Leonato’s lines about a fictional niece, who is “Almost the copy of my child that’s dead” (5.1.279). This almost-copy seems to be a fine metaphor for the relationship between the film and the play. Like Antonio’s purported daughter, Whedon’s film is related to Shakespeare’s play, but culturally positioned to be inferior, a second-choice consolation. The original, like the supposedly deceased bride, haunts the union like a ghost. In the end, however, we discover that the two are really the same, with Shakespeare’s play resurrected

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to live again in Whedon’s film. And like Hero’s imagined ghost, the living and the dead merge into one living phantom, with the specter of Shakespeare in the words of the drama and the shadow of Whedon in the bodies that speak them. GHOSTS OF PREVIOUS ROLES Much Ado About Nothing was filmed in only twelve days in the fall of 2011, during a “vacation” between the shooting and the editing of Marvel’s The Avengers.12 Whedon created the “stealth movie” at his home in Santa Monica “in secret,” with no news of the project leaking to the press until after principal photography had wrapped on the 23rd of October.13 For some time, Whedon had been inviting his favorite cast and crew members to monthly Shakespeare readings at his house,14 and he drew heavily from this coterie to cast his film. In fact, almost every actor in Much Ado had appeared in some earlier Whedon project. As Richard Corliss notes, “Of the dozen major roles, only one is filled by an apparent Whedon virgin: Spencer Treat Clark as Don John’s villainous cohort Borachio.”15 For Beatrice and Benedick, Whedon enlisted Amy Acker (who had played important roles in Angel, Dollhouse, and The Cabin in the Woods) and Alexis Denisof (who had appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, joined the main cast of Angel, and was then offered supporting roles in Dollhouse and The Avengers), with the other parts filled primarily by Whedon alums. Fran Kranz, who plays Claudio, starred in Dollhouse and Whedon’s horror film The Cabin in the Woods. Hero is portrayed by Jillian Morgese, who was an uncredited extra in The Avengers, and her father Leonato is presented by Gregg, whose performance as Phil Coulson in The Avengers would eventually lead to a starring role in Whedon’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series. Nathan Fillion, playing Dogberry, is probably most famous for his lead in Firefly and the subsequent film Serenity, but he also appeared in five episodes of Buffy and in the web musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Sean Maher, another Firefly and Serenity actor, portrays the villainous Don John, while Reed Diamond from Dollhouse depicts his brother Don Pedro. Tom Lenk, as Verges, had small but memorable roles in Buffy, Angel, and The Cabin in the Woods, while Riki Lindhome, as the gender-swapped Conrade, appeared in one episode of Buffy. Ashley Johnson, who plays Margaret, had acted in two episodes of Dollhouse, and both she and Romy Rosemont, the sexton, had cameos in The Avengers. For viewers familiar with the Whedonverse, the recognition of these actors and the associations generated by their previous roles creates a multilayered experience of the Shakespearean film. When Fillion enters as the pretentious, malapropistic Dogberry, for instance, he immediately brings to mind

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both the beloved Captain Reynolds from Firefly and the bombastic Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The earlier Fillion characters superimpose themselves over the present embodiment of Dogberry and affect the viewer’s reception and interpretation of the character. This double-vision (or triple- or quadruple-vision) is similar to what Robert Weimann describes as “the stage’s dual capacity” to project both the immaterial fantasy of the fictional character and the material reality of the actor’s body. Weimann argues that the stage “privileged the authority not of what was represented (in historiographical and novelistic narrative) but of what was representing and who was performing.”16 And because the bodies of the actors on stage and in film are privileged over the bodies of the characters, past iterations of those bodies cannot be forgotten. They haunt the present performance like ghosts. It is appropriate, then, that Marvin Carlson refers to this phenomenon as “ghosting.” He suggests that “the appearance of an actor, remembered from previous roles” is a “complex bearer of semiotic messages” that will “inevitably in a new role evoke the ghost or ghosts of previous roles if they have made any impression whatever on the audience”; in many cases, the earlier role imposes itself so strongly on the new interpretive experience that it “colors and indeed may dominate the reception process.”17 In Kenneth Branagh’s earlier version of Much Ado About Nothing (1993), for example, the numerous negative reviews of Michael Keaton as Dogberry consistently argued that he merely recycled his performance from Beetlejuice (1988), making his portrayal of Shakespeare’s character “unfunny, incomprehensible and out of period,” almost as if he were “from another universe.”18 Among the otherwise excellent cast, Keanu Reeves as Don John also seemed out of place. Even after all these decades, I still remember how terrible I thought Reeves was, partly because his earlier appearance in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) made me hear “Dude!” after nearly every line. In Whedon’s Much Ado, the ghosting of previous characters is most relevant in Acker and Denisof’s portrayal of Beatrice and Benedick. These casting choices seemed to please a large number of loyal Whedon fans, mainly because the pairing allowed the viewer to successfully ship the actors’ previous characters Winifred “Fred” Burkle and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce,19 whose tragic, unfulfilled romance in Angel ended in death rather than “conjoined / In the estate of honourable marriage” (5.4.29–30). More than merely fanfic wish-fulfillment, the joining of these superimposed characters also allows for a richer interpretive experience because the bodies of the actors are already so freighted with meaning. For example, viewers who witnessed Wesley Wyndam-Pryce’s multi-season transformation from ridiculous object of mockery and disdain to respected figure of bravery and skill will more easily accept Benedick’s swift metamorphosis from comic lover to serious warrior.

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Similarly, the sweetness and intelligence of Fred Burkle primes the filmgoer for the wit and charm of Beatrice. Yet even when earlier roles diverge from the Shakespearean character, there is a pleasant frisson of acknowledgment, such as when Don John turns out to be the villain that Simon Tam from Firefly never was. Moreover, this doubling has the potential to satisfy the two main demographic groups who might seek out the film: Whedon fans get to see familiar bodies in new roles while Shakespeare fans get to see familiar roles in new bodies. GHOSTS OF SHAKESPEARES PAST In a way, the play Much Ado About Nothing also has a new body in the film. As with the bodies of the actors, however, the ghost of the original hypotext becomes projected over the hypertext of the film. And just as there is a tendency to privilege the actor’s earlier role, some viewers tend to privilege the earlier play over the more recent film. But Whedon’s Much Ado is not necessarily inferior to the early modern play, any more than Shakespeare’s version is inferior to Bandello’s older tale. The iterations all differ in myriad ways,20 but variation alone doesn’t make a text better or worse—just different. Even radical adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays may still be categorized as “Shakespeare,” despite comprising important moments or primary elements that are decidedly “not Shakespeare.” Often, these Shakespeare/not Shakespeare outliers are among the most compelling and revelatory texts within the larger Shakespearean rhizome precisely because they vary so much from the early modern creation.21 Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is not a radical adaptation, but its transmediation, moving from stage to page to film, makes it analogous to one. Like an adaptation, the film attempts to (re)tell or (re)present the story of Messinese lovers, but it can never quite exorcise the tale’s earlier incarnation. Linda Hutcheon refers to this propensity of adaptations to eternally overwrite but never quite erase their affiliated intertexts as “palimpsestuous,” a term she borrows from Scottish poet and scholar Michael Alexander; she stresses the fact that “an adaptation is a derivation that is not derivative—a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic thing.”22 Similarly, Whedon’s film comes later but is not therefore lesser. Actually, Much Ado About Nothing is a fine film, but it is not merely a filmed Shakespearean play, nor was it meant to be. Because the formal requirements are different, even a “faithful” film must alter the play in order to be successful as a film. In this case, the limitations of the project actually seem to improve the final product. For example, the film was shot in black and white at Whedon’s own house for budgetary reasons, but these circumstances create a product that

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is reminiscent of both art-house movies and classic Hollywood rom-coms. Whedon categorizes Much Ado About Nothing as “a noir comedy” that he developed from the “notion that our ideas of romantic love are created for us by the society around us.”23 By setting the film in a beautiful mansion, bounded by a beautiful view, and populated by beautiful people, Whedon makes it clear what kind of society surrounds these characters. He visually frames their see-and-be-seen lives by repeatedly shooting through mirrors, windows, and doorways, and by presenting the occasional perspective of the paparazzo’s camera or the watch’s security cam. He also uses flashbacks, extratextual scenes, and a lot of physical humor to frame the various relationships within the household. Moreover, background and foreground mini-dramas have been added to reveal the decadence, sexuality, and loose social structure of Messina. All these moves take advantage of the style and syntax of film, conveying meaning in ways that are generally unavailable on stage. Nonetheless, the ghost of the stage-play still lingers, floating in the periphery and haunting the film with its undying influence and authority. Maurizio Calbi defines this “spectral Shakespeare” as the “fragmentary presence” one finds in a wide assortment of media and texts, consisting of “the uncanny articulations of temporality and spatiality that this spectrality entails.”24 Calbi co-opts Jacques Derrida’s anti-materialist concept of “hauntology” in order to visualize this Shakespearean poltergeist, and Derrida’s “spectrogenic process,” through which the invisible ghost manifests itself “in a space of invisible visibility” and “paradoxical incorporation”25 seems to be an appropriate analogy for the Shakespooking of the film. Ghosts are invisible, yet their invisibility must be seen in order for them to enter into existence. Similarly, their incorporeal bodies originate in the past and appear in the present, yet they belong to neither. They occupy an impossible space of antithetical physicalities and temporalities. Just as importantly, as Derrida points out, “The specter is also, among other things, what one imagines, what one thinks one sees and which one projects—on an imaginary screen where there is nothing to see.”26 Thus, the apparition of Shakespeare’s Much Ado only appears as the incorporation of what the audience imagines, or projects, or thinks it sees on the screen of Whedon’s film. But this projection goes both ways, with the twenty-first-century film shaping the reception and interpretation of the early modern play. As a descendant text (overtly associating itself with the hypotext by using the same title), Whedon’s “Fakespeare” Much Ado has the potential to become “its own pure simulacrum,” a hyperreal hologram of the play that is more real than the “real” Shakespeare text.27 Like the primacy bestowed on the actor’s body, the presence/present-ness of the film offers the possibility of interpretive preeminence, especially when it may be the only version of the play that many

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people ever see. Of course, any positive recency bias has now been damaged by factors unrelated to the film itself. When Much Ado was released, Whedon was considered an unmitigated genius by his loyal and active fanbase. Today, public and industry reactions are much more conflicted. THE HAUNTING OF JOSS WHEDON In Much Ado About Nothing, several characters are judged and ridiculed for their past actions. When he decides to love Beatrice, Benedick correctly predicts, “I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage” (2.3.27–29). And when Beatrice hears that she has been “condemned for pride and scorn,” she bids farewell to “Contempt” and “maiden pride” (3.1.108–9). These scenes are humorous and lighthearted, with all the characters (excluding Don John and his confederates) forgiven and made “friends” again (5.4.115) by the play’s conclusion. In real life, Whedon has not yet experienced a similar happy ending. While not the focus of this essay, I want to close with a brief consideration of how we might view the film in light of the controversies surrounding Whedon. In 2017, Whedon’s ex-wife Kai Cole published an open letter on an online industry news site, accusing him of long-term infidelity and hypocrisy.28 Cole’s assertions damaged Whedon’s reputation as a feminist, but he remained a well-respected and sought-after director and auteur until the summer of 2020, when Justice League stars Ray Fisher and Gal Gadot claimed that the director had mistreated them, with Fisher tweeting that Whedon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew was “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.”29 Actors from Buffy and Angel took to Twitter in support of Fisher and Gadot, with Charisma Carpenter characterizing Whedon’s professional behavior during those TV runs as abusive and “casually cruel.” Shortly after, Amber Benson concurred, describing Buffy as a “toxic environment” and stating, “it starts from the top.”30 As more tweets and stories and complaints emerged, the online fan community erupted in outrage and betrayal. In truth, it’s a bit surprising that people were so shocked by these allegations. Whedon’s projects are full of snarky, mean-spirited humor and flawed, complicated characters. Is it really so unexpected, then, to discover that Whedon himself is flawed and complicated, or to learn that his own humor is snarky and mean-spirited? Just like the characters he describes in Much Ado, Whedon has been shaped and altered by the society around him. That society is partially responsible for Whedon’s creative successes, but it is also partly responsible for the damage done to him and to those around him. The

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hero-worship that Whedon enjoyed following Buffy contributed to his many subsequent accomplishments. It gave him the confidence to pursue his own artistic vision, but it also enabled his own personal and professional abuse of others. In response to the various grievances against Whedon, HBO “parted ways”31 with him in November 2020, removing his name entirely from any marketing for The Nevers,32 a series he had developed and worked on as a writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner. Weeks later, WarnerMedia released a statement announcing the conclusion of their investigation into the Justice League scandal and assuring fans that “remedial action” had been taken, although no details were given.33 A few months after that, in March 2021, HBO Max released a director’s cut of the film, titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Most critics claimed that the new version was more coherent than the theatrical cut, with greater emotional depth given to the characters,34 but this should be expected—the director’s cut is more than twice as long as Whedon’s studio-mandated two-hour version.35 Nevertheless, Whedon, who had been brought in for rewrites, reshoots, and other postproduction duties on Justice League after Snyder stepped down following his daughter’s suicide, was reviled by certain fans not only for his aesthetic mistakes but also for his moral failures. As Lila Shapiro notes, “A remarkable reversal had taken place”: fifteen years earlier, Snyder’s film 300 was widely seen as problematic, even “overtly racist,” but “Now, the internet had recast Snyder as a progressive hero while branding Whedon, its progressive hero of yesterday, as a villain and bigot.”36 Like Hero in Much Ado, Whedon was publicly shamed and rejected. When Shapiro interviewed him in January 2022, she noted the physical toll that the opprobrium had wrought, describing Whedon as “Pale and angular with bags under his eyes, he no longer much resembled the plump-cheeked Puck who once impishly urged a profile writer to describe him as ‘doughy’ and ‘jowly.’”37 And just as Whedon himself has been ravaged by the intensely negative perception of him, so too has the reception and evaluation of his Much Ado been affected. For many viewers, the reputation of the director will forever taint the experience of the film. But the Whedonverse is full of characters seeking redemption for the terrible things they have done, and perhaps Whedon himself will one day be restored. Other Hollywood figures have come back from far worse crimes and far greater disgrace. Mel Gibson, for example, demonstrates “how a man who by his own admission did monstrous things can convince people that disappearing from the public eye for a few years makes up for those monstrous things.”38 After a decade of being blacklisted for numerous offenses, including drunk driving, anti-Semitic rants, and domestic abuse, Gibson was able to salvage his career and return

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to the spotlight by directing Hacksaw Ridge in 2016, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Director. In the five years following that, Gibson starred in more than a dozen films, beginning with Daddy’s Home 2, which grossed $180 million worldwide. I do not know if Whedon can secure a similar return from ignominy. When Hero is resurrected in Much Ado, her father explains that “She died . . . but whiles her slander lived” (5.4.66). For Whedon, his slander may survive longer than he does, but regardless of his own fate, the film should be judged independent of him and independent of the original play. There is much to admire in Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing, and the film should not be diminished by scandal’s specter. There are enough ghosts haunting it already. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, David Weil. “‘Surpris’d with all’: Rereading Character in Much Ado About Nothing.” In Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading, edited by David Galef, 228–45. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” In Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster, 166–84. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Calbi, Maurizio. Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Casey, Jim. “Shaken Manhood: Age, Power, and Masculinity in Shakespeare.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 20, no. 2 (2014): 11–31. ———. “Shakespeare, Fakespeare: Authorship by Any Other Name.” In Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, edited by Lissette Lopez Szwydky and Glenn Jellenik, 113– 33. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. ———. “The Slippered Pantaloon: Manhood and Ageing in Shakespeare.” In Autumnal Faces: Old Age in British and Irish Dramatic Narratives, edited by Katarzyna Bronk, 37–70. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017. Chitwood, Adam. “‘Justice League’: Warner Bros. CEO Reportedly Mandated a Runtime Under 2 Hours.” Collider, November 6, 2017. https://collider.com/ justice-league-runtime-budget-revealed/. Cole, Kai. “Joss Whedon Is a ‘Hypocrite Preaching Feminist Ideals,’ Ex-Wife Kai Cole Says.” The Wrap, August 20, 2017. https://www.thewrap.com/ joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/. Corliss, Richard. “Much Ado About Nothing: Joss Whedon’s House Party.” Time, June 7, 2013. https://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/07/ much-ado-about-nothing-joss-whedons-house-party/. Cox, John F., ed. Much Ado About Nothing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

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Derrida, Jacques. Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994. Desmet, Christy, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey. “Introduction.” Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare, edited by Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey, 1–22. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Ebert, Roger. “Much Ado About Nothing” [Review]. Chicago Sun-Times, May 21, 1993. Archived at Roger Ebert.com. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ much-ado-about-nothing-1993. Eco, Umberto. Travels in HyperReality: Essays. Translated by William Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. Ermarth, Elizabeth Deeds. History in the Discursive Condition: Reconsidering the Tools of Thought, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011. Friedman, Michael. “‘Hush’d on Purpose to Grace Harmony’: Wives and Silence in Much Ado about Nothing.” Theatre Journal 42, no. 3 (October 1990): 350–63. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Govocek, Nicola Rene, and Jim Casey. “‘Take me out to the black’: Firefly, Fanfiction, and the (Re)Making of Modern Myths.” In Who Makes the Franchise? Essays on Fandom and Wilderness Texts in Popular Media, edited by Rhonda Knight and Donald Quist, 189–205. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2022. Grady, Constance. “Mel Gibson Has Set the Blueprint for a #MeToo Comeback. Expect Other Men to Follow It.” Vox, September 26, 2018. https://www.vox.com/ culture/2018/7/24/17460392/mel-gibson-comeback-metoo-times-up. Hinson, Hal. “Much Ado About Nothing (PG-13)” [Review]. The Washington Post, May 21, 1993. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/ videos/muchadoaboutnothingpg13hinson_a0a81a.htm. Howard, Jean. “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in Much Ado About Nothing.” In Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, edited by Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor, 163–87. New York: Methuen, 1987. Hutcheon, Linda, with Siobhan O’Flynn, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Lanier, Douglas. “Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value.” In Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, edited by Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin, 21–40. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. McEachern, Claire. “Introduction.” In Much Ado About Nothing, edited by Claire McEachern, 1–144. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Moisan, Thomas. “Deforming Sources: Literary Antecedents and Their Traces in Much Ado About Nothing.” Shakespeare Studies 31 (2003): 165–83. Perez, Lexy. “‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’: What the Critics Are Saying.” Hollywood Reporter, March 15, 2021. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/ movie-news/zack-snyders-justice-league-what-the-critics-are-saying-4149522/#!. Schaefer, Sandy. “Joss Whedon Scrubbed from The Nevers Marketing as Buffy Cast Speaks Out.” CBR, February 11, 2021. https://www.cbr.com/ hbo-joss-whedon-scrubbed-from-the-nevers/.

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Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing, edited by Claire McEachern, London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Shapiro, Lila. “The Undoing of Joss Whedon.” Vulture [New York Magazine], January 17, 2022. https:​//​www​.vulture​.com​/article​/joss​-whedon​-allegations​.html. Stedman, Alex. “‘Justice League’: WarnerMedia Says It’s Concluded Investigation, ‘Remedial Action’ Taken.” Variety, December 11, 2020. https://variety. com/2020/film/news/justice-league-investigation-warnermedia-ray-fisher-josswhedon-1234852206/. Thorne, Will. “Joss Whedon Exits HBO Series ‘The Nevers.’” Variety, November 25, 2020. https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/ joss-whedon-hbo-series-the-nevers-exit-1234840465/. Vary, Adam B. “Charisma Carpenter Alleges Joss Whedon ‘Abused His Power’ on ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’: ‘Joss Was the Vampire.’” Variety, February 10, 2021. https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/ charisma-carpenter-joss-whedon-abuse-of-power-allegations-1234904995/. ———. “Joss Whedon on ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Stealth Production.” Entertainment Weekly, October 24, 2011. https://ew.com/article/2011/10/24/ joss-whedon-sean-maher-amy-acker-much-ado-exclusive/. Vineyard, Jennifer. “Joss Whedon on Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare-Buffy Parallels, and Avengers 2.” Vulture [New York Magazine], June 6, 2013. https:// www.vulture.com/2013/06/joss-whedon-much-ado-about-nothing-interview.html. Weimann, Robert. “Representation and Performance: The Uses of Authority in Shakespeare’s Theatre.” In Materialist Shakespeare: A History, edited by Ivo Kamps, 198–217. London: Verso, 1995. Weinstein, Joshua L. “Joss Whedon Wraps Secret Shakespeare Movie Project.” The Wrap, October 23, 2011. https://www.thewrap.com/ joss-whedon-adapts-shakespeare-twitterverse-thinks-so-32093/. Zitner, Sheldon P. “Textual Introduction.” In Much Ado About Nothing, edited by Sheldon P. Zitner, 79–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

NOTES 1. Gérard Genette defines hypertextuality as “any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call the hypertext) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary” (Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997], 5). 2. See, for example, Michael Friedman, “‘Hush’d on Purpose to Grace Harmony’: Wives and Silence in Much Ado about Nothing,” Theatre Journal 42, no. 3 (October 1990): 350–63 or David Weil Baker, “‘Surpris’d with all’: Rereading Character in Much Ado About Nothing,” in Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading, ed. David Galef (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 228–45. 3. Claire McEachern, “Introduction,” in Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Claire McEachern (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 140.

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4. Sheldon P. Zitner, “Textual Introduction,” in Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Sheldon P. Zitner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 81. 5. All quotations of the play are from William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, ed. Claire McEachern (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006). 6. Zitner, “Textual Introduction,” 38. 7. John F. Cox, ed., Much Ado About Nothing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 209n. 8. I have written extensively about the diminished masculinity of Shakespeare’s old men in “Shaken Manhood: Age, Power, and Masculinity in Shakespeare,” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 20, no. 2 (2014): 11–31, and its companion piece, “The Slippered Pantaloon: Manhood and Ageing in Shakespeare,” in Autumnal Faces: Old Age in British and Irish Dramatic Narratives, ed. Katarzyna Bronk (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017), 37–70. 9. Jean Howard, “Renaissance Antitheatricality and the Politics of Gender and Rank in Much Ado About Nothing,” in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, eds. Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor (New York: Methuen, 1987), 178. 10. Jennifer Vineyard, “Joss Whedon on Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare-Buffy Parallels, and Avengers 2,” Vulture [New York Magazine], June 6, 2013. 11. Adam B. Vary, “Joss Whedon on ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Stealth Production,” Entertainment Weekly, October 24, 2011. 12. Richard Corliss, “Much Ado About Nothing: Joss Whedon’s House Party,” Time, June 7, 2013. 13. Joshua L. Weinstein, “Joss Whedon Wraps Secret Shakespeare Movie Project, The Wrap, October 23, 2011. 14. Lila Shapiro, “The Undoing of Joss Whedon,” Vulture [New York Magazine], January 17, 2022. 15. Corliss, “House Party.” 16. Robert Weimann, “Representation and Performance: The Uses of Authority in Shakespeare’s Theatre,” in Materialist Shakespeare: A History, ed. Ivo Kamps (London: Verso, 1995), 207–8. 17. Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 8. 18. Hal Hinson, “Much Ado About Nothing (PG-13)” [Review], The Washington Post, May 21, 1993; Roger Ebert, “Much Ado About Nothing” [Review], Chicago Sun-Times, May 21, 1993, archived at Roger Ebert.com. 19. The term “shipping” comes from “relationshipping,” generally believed to have originated around 1995 and coined by internet fans of The X-Files who wanted the characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to be romantically involved. In modern fan communities, the concept has been around much longer under different names, such as the “slash” fiction of the late 1970s that involved sexual and romantic pairings of Kirk/Spock from Star Trek. For more on the way fan fiction reshapes the original to fill perceived gaps in the canon text, Whedon’s Firefly in particular, please see Nicola Rene Govocek’s and my “‘Take me out to the black’: Firefly, Fanfiction, and the (Re)Making of Modern Myths,” in Who Makes the Franchise? Essays on Fandom

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and Wilderness Texts in Popular Media, eds. Rhonda Knight and Donald Quist (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2022), 189–205. 20. For Shakespeare’s divergence from his own source material, see Thomas Moisan, “Deforming Sources: Literary Antecedents and Their Traces in Much Ado About Nothing,” Shakespeare Studies 31 (2003): 165–83. 21. For more on how a text may at once “be” and “not be” Shakespeare, see my “Introduction,” with Christy Desmet and Natalie Loper, in Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare, eds. Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–22. For more on the Shakespeare rhizome, see Douglas Lanier, “Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value,” in Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation, eds. Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 21–40. 22. Linda Hutcheon, with Siobhan O’Flynn, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 6, 8–9. Hutcheon coopts “palimpsestuous” for adaptation theory, but Alexander’s wonderfully evocative word first appears in Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth’s application to the “discursive conditions” of individual identity (Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, History in the Discursive Condition: Reconsidering the Tools of Thought, 2nd ed. [New York: Routledge, 2011], 56). 23. Vary, “Stealth Production.” 24. Maurizio Calbi, Spectral Shakespeares: Media Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 2. 25. Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 10, 126. 26. Derrida, Spectres of Marx, 100–1. 27. Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988), 173. Elsewhere, I have adopted the term “Fakespeare” not as a derogatory term but rather to embrace the hyperreal nature of Shakespearean adaptation. Inspired by Umberto Eco’s “Absolute Fake” (Umberto Eco, Travels in HyperReality: Essays, trans. William Weaver [San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986], 35), the word acknowledges the fact that the image of some unified, transcendental Shakespeare (or Shakespearean text) is an illusion. All versions of Shakespeare are in some way fake, but Fakespeare adaptations embrace their dual position as simultaneously “Shakespeare” and “not Shakespeare.” For more on Fakespeares and descendant texts, see my “Shakespeare, Fakespeare: Authorship by Any Other Name,” in Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century,” eds. Lissette Lopez Szwydky and Glenn Jellenik (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan), 113–33. 28. Kai Cole, “Joss Whedon Is a ‘Hypocrite Preaching Feminist Ideals,’ Ex-Wife Kai Cole Says,” The Wrap, August 20, 2017. 29. Shapiro, “Undoing.” 30. Adam B. Vary, “Charisma Carpenter Alleges Joss Whedon ‘Abused His Power’ on ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’: ‘Joss Was the Vampire,’” Variety, February 10, 2021.

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31. Will Thorne, “Joss Whedon Exits HBO Series ‘The Nevers,’” Variety, November 25, 2020. 32. Sandy Schaefer, “Joss Whedon Scrubbed from The Nevers Marketing as Buffy Cast Speaks Out,” CBR, February 11, 2021. 33. Alex Stedman. “‘Justice League’: WarnerMedia Says It’s Concluded Investigation, ‘Remedial Action’ Taken,” Variety, December 11, 2020. 34. Lexy Perez, “‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’: What the Critics Are Saying,” Hollywood Reporter, March 15, 2021. 35. Adam Chitwood, “‘Justice League’: Warner Bros. CEO Reportedly Mandated a Runtime Under 2 Hours,” Collider, November 6, 2017. 36. Shapiro, “Undoing.” 37. Shapiro, “Undoing.” 38. Constance Grady, “Mel Gibson has Set the Blueprint for a #MeToo Comeback. Expect Other Men to Follow It,” Vox, September 26, 2018.

Afterword Claire McEachern

Blended in tone, and braided of plot, Much Ado About Nothing has had a perennial ability to generate interesting and insightful criticism. The chapters of this collection are no exception to this tradition. Viewed collectively, they also have the ability to point us to certain trends in the recent interpretations of this play. Whereas, for instance, the early centuries of this play’s criticism dwelt on the questions of character, or its formal unity, and the latter decades of the twentieth century were largely devoted to feminist criticism of the play’s misogynies, in these chapters we find the focus moving more toward critiques of the systemic and structural aspects of Messinese society and their ramifications for the climate of deception that make possible both the play’s losses and its triumphs. Triumphs notwithstanding, however, it is undoubtedly the case that all of these essays tend to focus on the more somber elements of the play’s social world, which is to say the slander plot of Hero and Claudio. The delights of Beatrice and Benedick’s wooing, and the comedy of the Watch, are all but absent from their preoccupations. It could also be noted that all but one are unconcerned with the play’s stylistic elements, focusing more on its social climate, and none of them avail themselves of the traditions of editorial work on the play. Only one essay concentrates on religious themes. Several of them are concerned with the specific historical and intellectual conditions of Elizabethan England that inform the play, but more of them are focused on the ways in which current circumstances (such as the Me Too movement, or post-traumatic war conditions, or a truth-degraded public sphere) either exhibit continuity with the past or provide a modern lens with which to view some of the play’s issues. Instead of historicist work that brings the reader back into the time period of the play, many of these essays bring the play “forward” (as it were) into the time period of the reader or modern audience. 223

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The focus on the social structures of Much Ado’s world is in many respects an extension of the work of new historicism and cultural materialism of the late twentieth century. Yet unlike much of that work, which was so keen to point out the unique historical specificity of Shakespeare’s world, these essays are more concerned to underscore the similarities with our own. The subject of, and explanations for, the structural social instability exhibited in the play is a recurrent concern in these essays. What would once have been viewed as a function of private psychosexual dynamics—the mutual distrust of the sexes, or male homosocial fear of female fidelity—or perhaps as a concern of Elizabethan domestic ideology (e.g., the unruly woman), now appears to be a feature of more structural public pathologies. Chamberlain, for instance, considers the trouble brought upon the Messinese household of Leonato to be an aspect of the dynamics of strangers and hospitality in xenophobic Elizabethan England: “Although welcomed by Leonato, Governor of Messina, Don Pedro and his men are, in fact, strangers to the city: their arrival ushering in references to disease as well as tension and trauma for its citizens.” Also concentrating on social structure, and equally devoted to a historicist approach, is Styrt—though to opposite effect. In his reading of the Messinese setting of the play, and its prominent associations in Elizabethan England with Spanish imperial ambitions, he views the relations between local government and visiting soldiers as close ones: “Don Pedro and his companions are established as frequent visitors to Messina. . . . All of these signs point us to a Messina that has comfortably served as a Spanish base for a long time, a place to which the Spanish have frequent cause to return and which is glad to welcome them when they do. . . . The play hinges on the close, familiar associations between the Spanish army and the town’s inhabitants.” Due to this imperial presence, for Styrt the romantic pairings “are not simply love matches, but calculated political moves . . . connect[ing] both of them more closely into the Spanish imperial political structure.” For Styrt, it is because of this close association between visitors and citizens that the play’s tragic overtones are amplified: “Precisely because the Spaniards are so much a part of the native Sicilian business of Messina, Claudio’s repudiation of Hero, backed by Don Pedro, is utterly devastating.” The fact that these two analyses come to such disparate conclusions built on divergent evidence is testament to the complexity of the play’s portrayal of the relations of the soldiers to the locals. (Drama is notoriously built around conflict, even at a granular level: clearly, Shakespeare both estranges and naturalizes the soldiers in Messina. As an editor, I find both of these analyses enlightening.) Another point of divergence between two readings lies in the difference between the analyses of Styrt and Ridge when it comes to the presence of the war that precedes the play’s opening. For Styrt, the ubiquity

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of the Spanish imperial presence means that “the war at the start of the play is so unexceptional as to be easily forgotten. War does not directly touch this Messina, but it is a frequent fact of life for them that others go to war and then come back to them.” Ridge, on the other hand, finds that “war trauma has been noticed, responded to, and healed by the society of Shakespeare’s Messina. . . . That this society is post-conflict cannot be disputed.” Rather than forgotten, for Ridge the unaddressed war haunts the world of this play: “What does it say about a postwar culture that it will not admit it is in a post-conflict state, and how can such a society care for people harmed by the conflict, when they are determined not to acknowledge the war at all?” Despite their differing conclusions, what these two chapters share is a sense that the local personal conflicts—of distrust and misogyny, for instance—are shaped by the overriding social structures of this play’s world (not an unreasonable assumption, of course, although somewhat mitigating of individual agency and responsibility). A similar take on comprehensive social structures, as well as a reliance on a lens of current twenty-first-century social formations, informs the reading of Smith, who considers “the way in which our current era of misinformation can reorient our understanding of [a play] famously associated with deception and misinformation.” Contrary to the previous critical tradition of distinguishing between “good” and “bad” deceptions in the play, Smith asks us to view Messina as “a society with a culture of deception” akin to the current “post-truth” world we live in. For instance, the prince’s confusing plan to woo Hero in Claudio’s stead “for which no explanation is given, signals to the audience in the theater the nature of the world of this play, wherein circuitous, duplicitous paths are chosen, without apparent reason or necessity.” Even the friar’s benevolent plan to deceive Claudio as to the fact of Hero’s death is folded into this world of misinformation. While modern commentators are inclined to view our own society as particularly mendacious and epistemologically fraught, Smith argues that the play demonstrates that such conditions are, if not perennial nor universal, at least preceded by the world Shakespeare depicts in Much Ado. Plus ça change. Other essays in this collection also are keenly aware of how the issues the play foregrounds continue to reverberate over time and tide. Anthony Guy Patricia, in his reading of “slut shaming” and “revenge porn” in the play’s case of Hero and in the case of US Representative Katie Hill, argues that the “cruel and destructive tactics that were deployed against women in Shakespeare’s England . . . continue to be deployed against women in the early twenty-first century.” Here not only do patriarchal inequities have an iron grip on the world of early modern Messina, but they continue to reverberate today. So too Jolene Mendel finds in Margaret’s unwitting participation in the window scene a harbinger of later issues of sexual consent: “In looking at

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the act that occurs between Margaret and Borachio, it is clear that the act does not meet the definition of enthusiastic consent and does fall into the category of rape by deception.” Far from considering their readings anachronistic or presentist, essays such as Patricia’s and Mendel’s, much like Smith’s, focus on the ways in which many of the more dispiriting social-structural conditions represented in Shakespeare’s play persist today—one reason, surely, that the play continues to hold our attention. Similarly, Anna Graham’s essay detailing the ways in which YA adaptions of Much Ado continue to reinforce conventional gender roles even in modern-day settings reveals the continuing currency of many of its characterizations. In this light, four hundred odd years have not made much of a dent in relations between the sexes of definitions of female propriety. Another way of apprehending the setting of the world of Messina and its continuities with other times and places is through its realization in disparate stagings of the play. In Iqbal Khan’s 2012 RSC production setting the play in Delhi, for instance, “a traditional Hindu wedding . . . became the basis for the staging of Much Ado’s church scene:” “With golds, creams, and purples assaulting the eye, music building to a crescendo with wedding guests clapping and cheering, a sacred fire brought onto the stage and placed in front of the platform that had been erected, and a ceremonial entrance of the bride, Khan cocooned the audience in a feast of the sights, sounds, and smells of a ceremonial Hindu wedding.” Friction among old and new contemporary gender relations in modern India, meaning a tension between more traditional and more modern ideas of female identity, helped to make this setting persuasive for the play’s exploration of female rebellion and submission. Rogers found however that the staging’s retreat from the possible violence in the “hyperaggressive masculinity” of modern Delhi meant a missed opportunity to explore the “true misogynistic horror of a father earnestly telling his daughter ‘Do not live, Hero.’” More to Rogers’s liking was the Timothy Douglas 2009 production at the Folger Shakespeare Theater, which took Washington, DC’s annual Caribbean festival as its occasion: “what Douglas’s DC-inflected production portrayed was America as an immigration melting pot of equal opportunity.” The present-day setting of the play allowed its female characters to portray “strong, independent women” derived from what director Douglas described as the “natural, African-inherited essence of the matriarch-driven model.” In addition to producing a strong Beatrice, Hero’s role was also bolstered, a “dynamic most visible the church scene, . . . with Hero having a steel core and . . . Leonato (somewhat contra-textually) defend[ing] his daughter.” On the other hand, the female-focused production made (paradoxically) the final reconciliation between Claudio and Hero more palatable, as in “the femalecentric world Douglas created, it was the women who ultimately engineered Claudio’s passage from boy to man.”

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What Rogers’s analysis reveals is again that recent staged settings of the play, like the critical apprehensions, tend to assume the directionality of social influence and self is society-impacts-character, rather than the other way around. Given recent decades of historicist-political criticism that focuses more on society’s shaping impact on individual agency than the converse, this is perhaps no surprise. There also tends to be an assumption that the “world” of the play is more cohesive and hegemonic and less conflict-ridden than perhaps Shakespeare’s play presents (especially when it comes to gender relations). On the other hand, somewhat of an exception to these world-first takes among these essays is the piece by Sélima Lejri, whose study of acknowledgment and self-recognition in the play also takes up the question of the plausibility of Claudio’s repentance when considered in light of Reformation models of conversion. Her chapter is a useful reminder that what might not look like sufficient repentance to us moderns may well have carried a different intonation for Reformation audiences: “the Resurrection scene functions as the second moment of recognition thanks to which Claudio retrieves the intuitive part of his conscience that first made him see and acknowledge virtue in Hero.” Another blow for the role of individual agency is struck by Joseph Sullivan in his account of the ways in which an actor’s performance can nudge and nuance the constraints of the script, in his review of the “Kill Claudio” moment as it is played across myriad productions available on YouTube. Conversely, Jim Casey argues that the ghost of Shakespeare’s play, like the previous roles of its actors, hovers over the 2012 film of it directed by Joss Whedon: “The original, like the supposedly deceased bride, haunts the union [of film and play] like a ghost . . . the living and the dead merge into one living phantom, with the specter of Shakespeare in the words of the drama and the shadow of Whedon in the bodies that speak them.” As may be gathered from this brief overview, character criticism is definitely on the wane in this collection, as is more conventional literary-critical examination of possible sources and analogues. The one exception to the trend is represented by the work of Christine Hoffman, whose study of the Ovidian resonances of Beatrice’s tongue seeks to examine how “Beatrice’s loose identification of herself . . . as a vocalizing bird suggests a preexisting tension between her voice and the expectations of Messina’s verbal social order.” Like other essays in this collection, Hoffman reads the play in light of the #MeToo moment, to “see, with a new and searing clarity, that the play’s real scandal is not (only) that ladies are expected to convert woes to nonnies, but that the men they live among are not expected to notice that conversion as an event, because they are not expected to recognize the difference between a woman’s peace and her pain.” What do these smart and suggestive essays collectively tell us about the play now, and the place of current literary criticism in shaping our understanding

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of it? Perhaps the first thing to note is that it is very much a play that continues to speak to us in our own moment, in part because the inequities (above all between the sexes) it is predicated on persist four hundred odd years on from the moment of Shakespeare. Unlike previous traditions of criticism on the play, however, the findings about the sources for the conflicts upon which the play turns are less a function of interpersonal or psychological dynamics than they are systemic—or rather, the personal is largely a function of the political rather than the other way round. In an age conscious of the structural nature of sexism and racism, or of seemingly intractable economic inequality, or the unstoppable juggernaut of climate emergency, this widespread and dispiriting focus on the deeply baked-in social pervasiveness of the play’s conflicts is perhaps no surprise. We find it hard to believe in the possibility of heroes these days (if not Hero). Along with the sense of deep-rooted and ineradicable gender injustice in the play, and the epistemological precarity that afflicts the characters, goes a sense that this play is far more somber than sunny. None of these critics attend to the playfulness of the Beatrice and Benedick material, or indeed the fact that the far-from-confidence-inspiring Watch not only stumbles upon the truth of the slander but knows, eventually, just what to do with that truth. It is undeniably the case that Dogberry’s self-importance and general muddledness prevents that truth from coming out in time to prevent the chaos and harm of the abortive wedding scene—incidentally, there is a dearth of attention here to social status in the play—but we know even as we watch the debacle that the cavalry is on the way, a fact which serves to inoculate us (if not the characters) somewhat from its damages. This play is not quite yet Othello—but why not? The focus on the darker elements of the play is perhaps not surprising given the troubled age we live as well as the direction in which academic critique is usually pitched. We always find the Shakespeare we need; critics are meant to criticize, and the urge to point out injustice is a laudable one. Comedy can seem unseemly in dark times, and just as having to explain a joke usually kills it, analyzing comedy can take all the fun out of it. Yet we do the play a disservice if we fail to acknowledge the ways in which it delights as well as dismays us. Chief among these, for me, is offered in the character of Beatrice. While I would be the first to admit that her powers, such as they are, are ultimately circumscribed in the “Kill Claudio” moment (when her trademark protest turns lethal), Beatrice’s skepticism of male privilege is a welcome presence from the very beginning of the play, starting with her encounter with the messenger (4.1.288). She embodies the spirit of resistance, critique, and ultimately protest and as audience members we revel in it (indeed, the essays in this volume follow in her footsteps). While she ultimately is ineffective when it comes to what she considers true agency—killing Claudio

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herself (thank goodness)—it is not without consequence that throughout its action she calls attention to the inequities of male privilege. Protest matters, however incremental its material gains. Even the prince Don Pedro is not immune to her skeptical eye—“if the prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything” (2.1.62–63)—and while she is never brought faceto-face with Dogberry, the self-importance he works so hard to establish is the very thing she is willing to cede in herself, when it comes to loving Benedick: “Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu; / No glory lives behind the back of such.” And just as Beatrice has absolute faith in her cousin despite the way of the world, so too she offers the prospect of an innate moral compass that cuts through all the white noise of circulated rumor: “For others say thou dost deserve, and I / Believe it better than reportingly” (3.1.109–16). In a world where “noting” does so much harm, it is a blessing to meet someone who operates from conviction and intuition; she offers the possibility of true soul-knowledge, untrammeled by a public gaze. That Shakespeare was able to imagine and write such a character gives me, for one, hope for the human race. As for the pairing of Benedick and Beatrice, while there is always, in these dispiriting days, the politically correct temptation to agree with Jean Howard (cited by Jim Casey herein) that when Beatrice and Benedick fall in love they “reveal their successful interpellation into positions within a gendered social order,” it is also the case that there is something deeply touching, even moving, about the way in which both parties learn to overcome their own well-wrought defenses and allow themselves to fall in love with each other (and not just with themselves). For while it is true that the world of the play is one in which deception runs rampant, it is also worth noting that among those deceptions, self-deception is perhaps the most “deformed thief” of all (3.3.126). But it is also, given the right provocation and incentive, the most susceptible to correction (here the Aristotelian sense of comedy as a satirical corrective of our faults is brought to bear). The notion—however naively utopian—that self-defensiveness might be cast aside in favor of a true bond between intellectual partners, and that that bond might be enough to persuade an inveterate bachelor to renounce his vaunted loyalty to his male friends solely for the conscience of a woman—“Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?”—is deeply appealing. (Her answer is thrilling: “Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul” (4.1.325–27).) For all of its entrenched anxiety and mutual distrust, this play also offers the possibility of self-transformation. As Benedick himself sallies in closing, “Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No, if a man will be beaten with brains, ‘a shall wear nothing handsome about him” (5.4.100–3). It was once the case that comedy was considered, in a Bakhtinian sense, subversive of established order, even if only for an interlude. Among

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Shakespearean comedies, this theory has been most easily applied to the plays with “green world” alternative universes where identities are challenged and inverted before order is reestablished at the play’s close. Much Ado famously possesses no alternative green world, though the mishearings and misinformations that circulate around Leonato’s household are not unlike the hallucinogenic fairy-instigated confusions of a play like, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The marriages at the end reestablish social and gender hierarchy (if indeed it was ever in question) with a vengeance; for centuries, the editorial assignment of the line “Peace, I will stop your mouth” (5.4.97) to Benedick— instead of, as the quarto has it, Leonato—reinforced this sense of hegemony closing in, and got a laugh to boot. The social world of Much Ado is populated by people who make mistakes, sometimes the same mistake more than once. In Don John and company it possesses a downright if somewhat enigmatic villain, motivated in some degree by the male rivalry that leads men to distrust each other, particularly when it comes to women. The fact that “man is a giddy thing” is on full display (5.4.106). But it also holds out the utopian hope that when people are shown their errors, some of them, at least, have the potential to amend them. The funniest scenes, to my mind, are the gulling scenes, where Benedick and Beatrice both strive despite their respective intellectual self-importances and avowed singleness to hear themselves spoken about in the company of love. The gulling strategies are different, and yes, sex-specific: Benedick’s chivalry and generosity are appealed to, and Beatrice is chastised for unmaidenly pride. But there is something both ridiculous and heartening about their capitulations—heartening because ridiculous, maybe—in the sense that neither is too proud to admit to loving and being loveable. The social structures of Much Ado About Nothing may be reestablished in full force at the play’s close, and there is scant hope that the kinds of misinformations and misdirections that have dogged its motions will be laid to rest permanently—people are after all people—but at the heart of the play are at least two people who despite past injuries take it upon themselves to change their ways and bury their hatchets and trust in each other’s beneficence, if it means the hope of love is within reach. (It is a micro-level solution to the problem of systemic ills, but that is also to say it is human-scaled.) When Benedick says “there’s a double meaning in that,” to the disdainful dismissal of Beatrice (I believe this is hands-down the funniest line in the play), he could be giving an epigram to all of the play’s epistemological instability, but he is also expressing the ways in which desire can and will construe meaning when the heart is at stake (2.3.249). It is the reputation of this prospect which no doubt accounts for the shorthand reputation of this play as the lighter province of Benedick and Beatrice: the notation in the Lord Chamberlain’s accounts of 1613 of payment for (among fourteen other plays) “Benedicte and Betteris”; the penciling in

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in Charles I’s copy of the Second Folio of “Benedik and Betrice” next to the title of the play; the accolade of Leonard Digges in his dedicatory poem: “let but Beatrice / and Benedick be seene, loe in a trice, the Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes all are full.”1 What of the watch? It is indeed hard not to think that we are only meant to laugh at, not with, Dogberry and his crew. Dogberry himself verges (as it were) on the maddening—of all of the characters’ displays of self-importance and verbal preening, surely his are the most unnerving—and dangerous. The studied Englishness of the watch’s names—George Seacoal, Hugh Oatcake— amid the baroque Latinate climate of Leonato’s household suggests a certain native (and naive) stalwartness. Yet however “senseless” these men are, they do prove themselves “fit”: “We have discovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that was ever known in the commonwealth” (3.3.159–60)! Though Conrade and Borachio are not impressed with their captors, in some respects it is the trial of being subject to their very foolishness that impels Borachio to his confession. It is clumsily got, yes, and ill-timed (the fault of Leonato’s hasty dismissal as well as Dogberry’s tediousness), but the watch do fulfill their amateur charge and manage to catch the perpetrators red-handed almost as soon as the crime has been committed. For all the misinformation that swirls around this world, truth will out, if out of the mouths of babes. To assert the ultimate beneficence of this comic world is not to discount the real costs enacted by some of its inhabitants, particularly upon Hero, who faces the prospect of permanent immurement all due to the caprice of a villain and the wounded faithlessness and rank immaturity of her suitor. Women in this world (as in our own) draw the short straw, which is what makes Beatrice’s outburst so cathartic: “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace” (4.1.304–5). Human animals, like other kinds of animals, are power-seeking creatures, constantly grappling for toeholds in the pecking order. Criticism of these features of our existence such as is in this volume is ever valuable, and ever necessary. Shakespeare too has written a play that exposes the errors of these ways and spotlights protest against them. It also offers a prospect of the marriage of true minds, as imperfect as both minds and marriage can be. Comedy can do no better. BIBLIOGRAPHY Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing, revised edition. Edited by Claire McEachern. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015.

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NOTE 1. Quoted in Claire McEachern, introduction to Much Ado About Nothing, rev. ed. (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), 114–15.

Index

Abo-Hilal, Mohammad, 115 Acker, Amy 211–212 Alcyone, 94 Alexander, Michael, 213 Alexander, Sam, 116 anagnorisis, 21 Anderson, Lily, 158 Anderson, Thomas, 53 Arden of Faversham, 35 Ariely, Dan, 47n48 Ariosto, Ludovico, 151 Aristotle, 14, 17, 21, 229 Arya, Sagar, 184 Atticus, 14 Audain, Dionne, 176 Bach, Rebecca Ann, 86 Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, 229 Balizet, Ariane, 169 Bandello, Matteo, 68–71, 77, 108, 116, 119n3, 151, 208, 213 Barton, Anne, 33 Barton, John, 173 Başoğlu, Metin, 121n31 bastard, 5, 57, 62, 71, 76–77 Bateman, Tom, 199 Bates, Catherine, 45n26 Battle of Lepanto, 67, 77 Baudrillard, Jean, 221n27

Beale, Simon Russell, 194, 196–197 Beckwith, Sarah, 24 Bennett, Edward, 194, 200 Benson, Amber, 215 Best, Eve, 197 Bhattacharjee, Paul, 184 Billington, Michael, 178, 196 birdlime, 35–36 Blome, Richard, 36 Bloom, Harold, 33 Boose, Lynda, 125, 134 Booth, Molly, 158 Boswell, Josh, 136, 138n52 Botelho, Keith M., 32 Boyd, Michael, 180 Branagh, Kenneth, 8, 54, 91, 116, 150, 191, 196, 212 Breitenberg, Mark, 120n23 Brinkema, Eugenie, 88, 96 Bronfen, Elisabeth, 112 Brown, Doug, 176–178 Buckley, Thea, 184 Burkle, Fred, 213 Burton, John, 194 Burton, Richard, 193 Burton, Robert, 20 Calbi, Maurizio, 214 Camins, Alexis, 176 233

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Index

Carlson, Marvin, 212 Carpenter, Charisma, 215 Carroll, William, 90 Casadio, Giovanni, 30n54 Casey, Jim, 219n8, 220n19–21, 227, 229 Castiglione, Baldassare, 144 Catholicism, 13, 23–25 Cavell, Stanley, 14, 22–23 Chadwick, Alexandra, 29n29 Chamberlain, Stephanie, 224 Charalampous, Charis, 29n29 Chillington, J. Carol, 116 Cicero, 14–15, 73 Clark, Spencer Treat, 211 Clarke, Bruce, 89 Cochrane, Eric, 65n3 Coeffeteau, Nicholas, 20 Cole, Kai, 215 Collins, Susan, 31 Common Law, 57 Conan, Neal, 175 Consent Awareness Network, 146 Cook, Carol, 39, 46n40 Corliss, Richard 211 Coulson, Phil, 211 Cox, John, 14 Croteau, Melissa, 163 Crowl, Sam, 191 cuckoldry, 113 Cumbus, Philip, 196 Curteis, Alice, 57 Cusak, Julie Ann, 157 Dasgupta,Rana, 182–183 Davis, Walter, 32 Day, Simon Paisley, 193 Denisof, Alexis, 211–212 Derrida, Jacques 51, 53, 54, 63n7, 157, 214 Desmet, Christy, 191 Desombre,Auriane, 159 deception, 31–41, 55, 57–60, 61 Diamond, Reed, 211 Digges, Leonard, 231 disease, 52–53

disguise, 56 Dolan, Frances, 45n33 Doran, Gregory, 173 Douglas, Timothy, 174–179, 185, 226 D’Souza, Neil D., 184 Ecarma, Caleb, 133 Edwards, Charles, 194, 197–198 Enlightenment, 124 Enterline, Lynn, 87 Fairbanks, Douglas, 193 Felderr, Andrew, 93 Fernie, Ewan, 19 Fillion, Nathan, 211–212 First Nations, 117 Fisher, Ray, 215 Fitzmaurice, Kevin, 180–181, 184 Flannery, M.C. 102n6 Fox, Cora, 90 Franzen, Jonathan, 45n29 French Revolution, 124 Freud, Sigmund, 15 Friedman, Michael, 192 Gadot, Gal, 215 Garrick, David, 174 Gajowski, Evelyn, 157 Garcia-Rada, Ximena, 47n48 Genette, Gerard, 219n1 Gerzina, Gretchen, 173 Ghir, Kulvinder, 184 Gibson, Mel, 208, 216 Girard, René, 14–16, 23, 28nn14, 17, 23 Given-Wilson, Chris, 57 Goldstein, David B. 54 Goodwin, Simon, 197 Gould, Martin, 138n52 Graham, Anna, 226 Gray, Patrick, 17–19, 29n37, 30n39 Greenhill, Pauline, 105n56 Gregg, Clark, 210–211 Grell, Ole Peter, 51 Guasco, Annibal, 143–144

Index

Hadfield, Andrew, 69 Haines, Simon, 22 Hall, Jonathan, 96 hamartia, 21 Hamlin, William, 22, 29n36, 30n46 Hapsburg, 67, 71–72 Harting, James Edmund, 43n32 Hateley, Erica, 158 Hawkes, Terrence, 135 Hawkins, Harriet, 120n23 Hazlitt, William, 8 Heal, Felicity, 59, 60 Hecuba, 94 Hefferan, John, 197 Henze, Richard, 32, 58 Herman, Judith, 111 Herrin, Jeremy, 194, 196–197 Heslep, Kenny, 131, 133 Heston, Charlton, 193 Hill, Katherine (Katie), 125, 131– 135, 225 Hinton, Devon F, 111 Hodgdon, Barbara, 192 Hodgkinson, John, 116 Hoffman, Christine, 227 Holinshed, 68 hospitality, 49–50, 53–55, 57 Howard, Jean, 44n12, 52, 208, 229 Huguenot, 51 Hunt, Maurice, 29n33, 30n51 Hunt, Lynn, 124–125 Hutcheon, Linda, 213, 220n22 Hutchinson, Nick, 174 Hytner, Nicholas, 194 Ignatious, Ernest, 183 insurrection at U.S. Capitol, 6 Jan. 2021, 31 Iyengar, Sujata, 120n23, 157 Jahan, Shah, 181 Jardine, Lisa, 44n24 Johnson, Ashley, 211 Kállay, Géza, 98

Kant, Immanuel, 50 Karan, Amara, 182 Kavanagh, Brett, 31–32, 40 Kavanagh, Jennifer, 32, 35, 40–41 Keaton, Michael, 212 Kelly, Graham, 132–133 Kermode, Lloyd Edward, 51 Khan, Iqbal, 174,180–181, 183–185 Kirk, Lisa, 193 Knight, Steve, 131 Kranz, Fran, 211 Kreps, Barbara, 33–34 Lefort, Rosine, 15 Lejri, Sélima, 227 Lenk, Tom, 211 Leslie, Rachel, 175 Levith, Murray, 78 Lewis, Cynthia, 39, 45n36, 148 Lewis-Fernandez, Roberto, 111 Lindhome, Riki, 211 Lovecraft, H.P., 208 Lupton, Julia Reinhard, 53, 54 Luscombe, Christopher, 177, 179, 193–194, 200 MacNelly, Matt, 176 Maher, Sean, 116, 211 Mazzio, Carla, 87 McCloskey, John C., 32 McDonald, Russ, 33 McEachern, Claire, 52, 208 McKellen, Ian, 194–195 McNulty, Tracy, 54 Mendel, Jolene, 225–226 Messina, 33 Micros, Marianne, 104n52 Mitchell, David T., 120n13 misinformation, 31–32, 35, 41 misogyny, 60 Moisan, Thomas, 69, 220n20 Montaigne, Michel de, 20–21, 23 More, Thomas, 24 Morgese, Jillian, 211 Moses, Carol, 196

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236

Moulton, Ian Frederick, 124, 125 Mulryne, J.R. 120n25 Myhill, Nova, 33, 37, 45n36 Myrrha, 94 Nagra, Simon, 184 Nam, Tony, 176 Newlands, Carole, 90 Newman, Karen, 56 Niobe, 94 O’Flynn, Siobhan, 220n22 Oldenburg, Scott, 51–52, 65nn11–12 Orlin, Lena Cowen, 33 Oughourlian, Jean-Michel, 15, 28n16 Overshown, Howard W., 176 Ovid, 86–87, 90–94, 99, 125, 227 Parkinson, Katherine, 197 Parvini, Neema, 29n37 Patel, Bharti, 183 Patricia, Anthony Guy, 225–226 People v. Croswell, 147 Perez, Alex, 176 Perkins, William, 20 Philomela, 86–87, 93, 98 Pickford, Mary, 193 Piper, Tim, 181, 184 Polanski, Roman, 208 Plutarch, 30n54 Prince, Kathryn, 147 Procne, 86, 93 Protestant, 12 punishment, 39–40 Purcell, Stephen, 193–194 Pythagoras, 90 Quander, Fatima, 176 R. v. Linekar, 147 Rackin, Phyllis, 52 Rand Corporation, 32 RANN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), 146 Reeves, Keanu, 116, 212

Index

Reformation, 12. See also Huguenot, Protestantism reputation, 59, 60, 62, 63 Returns of Aliens, 51 Rich, Frank, 178 Rich, Michael D., 32, 35, 40–41 Richlin, Amy, 103n29 Ridge, Kelsey, 119n2, 224–225 Roe v. Wade, 31 Rogers, Jami, 226–227 Rome, 67 Rosemont, Romy, 211 Rosenberg, Jessica, 63 Rouke, Josie, 178, 194, 198–199 Rowling, J.K., 208 rumor, 32 Satan, 17 Scientific Revolution, 124 Seale, Douglas, 209 Seneca, 17, 28n22 Sexton, Joyce, 46n43 Shakespeare, William, works: All’s Well That Ends Well, 35; Comedy of Errors, 71; Cymbeline, 123; Julius Caesar, 74; Hamlet, 135; King Lear, 17, 54, 57, 62, 208; Love’s Labour’s Won, 116; Macbeth, 20, 53–54, 119n7; Measure for Measure, 193; The Merchant of Venice, 71, 193, 208; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 210; Othello, 21, 123, 125–126, 133, 228; “The Rape of Lucrece,” 85; Romeo and Juliet, 71, 121n29; The Taming of the Shrew, 162, 194; The Tempest, 208; Titus Andronicus, 60, 86; Twelfth Night, 53, 193; “Venus and Adonis,” 125; The Winter’s Tale, 53–54, 69, 123 Sharma, Madav, 183, 185 Shapiro, Lila, 216 Sicily, 67 skandalon, 17 Skulsky, Harold, 89–90, 93 Smith, Emma, 51

Index

Smith, Katherine Kalpin, 225 Snyder, Sharon, 120n13 Snyder, Zack, 216 Spencer-Longhurst, Flora, 177 Spiro, Samantha, 193 Stoics, 18 Stone, Allison, 195 Stranger, 49–51 Stymphalian, birds, 86 Styrt, Philip Goldfarb, 224 Sullivan, Erin, 195 Sullivan, Joseph, 227 Syal, Meera, 180–182 The Tale of Mr. Fox, 97–98 Tam, Simon, 213 Tate, Catherine, 194 Taylor, Brian, 102n3 Taylor, Elizabeth, 193 Taylor, Mark, 148 Tennant, David, 194, 199 Tereus, 86 Terry, Michelle, 194, 200, 202 Teskey, Gordon, 93 Thompson, Emma, 91 Tiffany, Grace, 30n51 trauma, 107, 110–112, 114 TuahNera, Aakhu, 175

Tufekei, Zeynip, 46n47 U.S. Supreme Court, 31 Van Laar, Jennifer, 131–133, 138n52 Venice, 67 Victorian, Roxi, 175–176 Waldron, Jennifer, 13 Wallace, Craig, 175 Wanamaker, Zoe, 194, 197 Weimann, Robert, 212 Wells, Jane, 56 Werner, Sarah, 193 Whedon, Joss, 116, 150, 168, 207, 210–217, 227 Wheeler, Stephen, 103n26 White, Gilbert, 36, 45n30 Wood, Laura, 158–159 Wright, Thomas, 20 Wyver, John, 194, 196 xenophobia, 49, 52 Yungblut, Laura Hunt, 51–52 Zitner, Howard, 208

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About the Editors and Contributors

EDITORS W. Reginald Rampone Jr. is an alumnus of Washington and Lee University, Boston College, Brown University, and the University of Rhode Island. He has published Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare and coedited Shakespeare’s Global Sonnets: Translation, Appropriation, Performance with Professor Jane Kingsley-Smith of the University of Roehampton, and he is currently editing Shackerley Marmion’s Hollands Leaguer. Nicholas Utzig is lecturer on the literature faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, where he teaches and writes about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature. His research primarily focuses on war and militarism in early modern English drama. Nick’s work appears in the Shakespeare Bulletin, the Journal of War and Culture Studies, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. CONTRIBUTORS Jim Casey is a Fulbright Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Grant recipient, editor of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Two Noble Kinsmen, and coeditor of the collection Shakespeare/Not Shakespeare. He has over thirty peer-reviewed publications, including essays on fantasy, monstrosity, pedagogy, theory, age, comics, masculinity, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Ovid, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica. Stephanie Chamberlain, professor emerita of English at Southeast Missouri State University, has published widely on Shakespeare, including “Eroticizing Women’s Travel: Desdemona and the Desire for Adventure in Othello,” in Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World, edited by Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea; “Rotten Oranges 239

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About the Editors and Contributors

and Other Spoiled Commodities: the Economics of Shame in Much Ado About Nothing,” Journal of the Wooden O; and “Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England,” in College Literature. Her current research interests include exile, immigration, and travel on the early modern stage. She is editor-in-chief of The Journal of the Wooden O and Editor of SHAKSPER: The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference. Anna Graham has recently completed her PhD at Queen’s University Belfast. Her dissertation examined the varying representations of aging women in early modern drama. It highlighted the inadequacy of the female life cycle by identifying the spectrum of diverse characterizations of female aging. She has had an extract from her thesis published in the Postgraduate Journal of Medical Humanities on the medicalization of menopause in early modern medical and popular literature. She now plans to continue expanding her research on aging women by examining experiences of early modern female aging through women’s life writing including diaries and letters. Christine Hoffmann is associate professor and assistant chair of the English department at West Virginia University. She writes and teaches about early modern English literature and culture; the rhetoric and ethics of social media; and the transhistorical connections between literary and curatorial practices of collecting. Her essays have appeared in edited collections and in such cultural studies and literary theory journals as SubStance,  PMLA,  College Literature, and Rhizomes. Her book Stupid Humanism: Folly as Competence in Early Modern and Twenty-first-Century Culture was published in 2017 as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Early Modern Cultural Studies series. Sélima Lejri is assistant professor at the University of Tunis, where she teaches British and American drama and British literary history. She completed a PhD on Shakespearean and Greek tragedy in 2005 at the University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle under the supervision of Professor François Laroque. Her research interests are: Greek drama, Shakespearean drama, early modern religion and politics, and anthropology. Her latest publications are: “‘Dip Napkins in His Sacred Blood’: Mourning as Catholic Resistance in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar” in Journal of the Wooden O and “‘It Is His Hand’”: Villainy Through Letters in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Twelfth Night” in Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media, edited by Nizar Zouidi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Claire McEachern is professor of English at the University of California– Los Angeles. Her books include Believing in Shakespeare: Studies in Longing

About the Editors and Contributors

241

(2018), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy (2003; second edition 2014), Religion and Culture in the English Renaissance, coedited with Debora Shuger, (1997), and The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590–1612 (1996). She is the editor of several editions of Shakespeare’s plays, including the Arden third-series Much Ado About Nothing (2005; second edition 2015), Twelfth Night (Barnes & Noble, 2007), King Lear (Longman, 2004) and for the Penguin series: All’s Well that Ends Well (2001), King John (2000), Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 (2000), and Henry V (1999). Jolene Mendel is assistant professor of English at American Public University. She earned her PhD in humanities from Faulkner University in 2015, with a dissertation focused on Christopher Marlowe and Renaissance humanism. Her scholarly work focuses on sixteenth-century drama’s continuing influence on popular culture and feminism. Recent publications have looked at the Shakespearean influences on works such as Thor, Sons of Anarchy, and Succession. Anthony Guy Patricia is associate professor of English in the Department of Humanities at Concord University in Athens, West Virginia. He is the author of  Queering the Shakespeare Film: Gender Trouble, Gay Spectatorship and Male Homoeroticism (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare). He has also published a number of essays in edited collections over the years, ranging from Presentism, Gender, and Sexuality in Shakespeare to, most recently, The Arden Research Handbook of Contemporary Shakespeare Criticism. He has additional work forthcoming in Shakespeare On Screen: Romeo and Juliet (Cambridge University Press) and Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Modern Language Association). Kelsey Ridge, who received her PhD from the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham, concentrates on representations of the military, trauma, and gender/sexuality in English literature. She has published on The Tempest in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. Her book Shakespeare’s Military Spouses and Twenty-First Century Warfare was published by Routledge in 2021. Jami Rogers was born and raised in West Virginia and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and holds an MA and a PhD from the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. Prior to obtaining her doctorate, she worked for PBS and at WGBH-TV/Boston on PBS’s flagship series Masterpiece Theatre. Jami has taught classical acting, acting for musical theatre, Shakespeare, and English literature at Arts Ed, the Universities of Warwick, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton. She has worked

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About the Editors and Contributors

with director David Thacker on community outreach programs at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, and with Equity and the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity on a variety of research projects, advocating for greater equality in the live and recorded arts. She is the author of British Black and Asian Shakespeareans, 1966–2018: Integrating Shakespeare. Kathleen Kalpin Smith is professor of English at USC Aiken. She specializes in the English early modern period, with particular interest in drama, cultural studies, and gender studies. She has published research on English Renaissance dramatists, including Shakespeare, as well as early modern women and pedagogy. In addition to scholarly journal articles, she has published two books: an edition of Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well, for the New Kittredge Shakespeare Edition collection, and a scholarly monograph, Gender, Speech, and Audience Reception in Early Modern England from Routledge University Press. Philip Goldfarb Styrt is assistant professor of English at St. Ambrose University, in Davenport, Iowa. His work focuses primarily on the circulation of social, political, and religious ideas in the Renaissance and their influence on the drama. His book Shakespeare’s Political Imagination: The Historicism of Setting (Bloomsbury/Arden Shakespeare, 2021) argues that Shakespeare’s plays are rooted in the contemporary understandings of the political societies in the settings. Joseph Sullivan is professor of English at Marietta College. His work focuses on audience reception. An article on the witches in the Scottish Play appeared in 2022 in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. He has appeared onstage in roles such as Egeus and Leonato with the annual Shakespeare in the Park festival in Marietta, Ohio.