Beatrice:

witty, proud, funny, good at manipulating language

character development: better opinion of Benedick

contrast to Hero - speaks a lot

Quotes:

“Has Signor Mountanto returned from the wars?”

first thing that she says is about Benedick, also introduces him from Beatrice’s POV

pun/metaphor - innuendo, mocking, double entendre

own way of asking if Benedick is ok, always gravitates towards him

shows her verbal dexterity

“there is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her: they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them”

oxymoron - violence and happiness

uses conflict to describe it - outsiders perspective on their relationship

happens a lot - setting up their relationship

“God help the noble Claudio! if he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere a' be cured”

exclamatory sentence

hyperbole - making fun of benedick

witty - describes benedick as a disease, shows dislike for him

“Is it possible that 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”

“convert” - their feelings convert, foreshadowing?

food imagery - link to Benedick, physical attraction, ruthlessness of eating him

metaphor - disdain is an actual person, Beatrice

witty banter - personification, layers to their arguments - hiding their love

dense with metaphors - trying to hide how they feel

“I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that”

“cold” - framing herself as an unfeeling person

similarity between them

“i” - emphatic

“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me”

dislikes love

isn’t waiting for marriage to come - doesn’t see it is a prize

onomatopoeia - sound is nicer than love declaration

“You always end with a jade’s trick: I know you of old”

pattern to their interactions, longstanding relationship, know each other well

upset that it has ended, hint at feelings?

“What should I do with him—dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”

using her wit to explain her opinion - paradoxical statement

young men are more feminine - masculinity is important

in Shakespeare’s time, young men would play the women

“Not till God make men of some other metal than earth”

dislikes men

biblical

metaphor - material is bad

“Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward mart? No, uncle, I’ll none. Adam’s sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred”

men = dust/ dirt - flimsy, fickle, she is correct based on the men in the play, metaphor, objectification

“wayward” - adjective, gives sense that Beatrice believes that all men are useless and untrustworthy, unreliable

“grieve” - heart-breaking

mocking the bible tradition and marriage tradition - using her wit to reveal her feelings, layers, makes jokes

worried about losing freedom - similar to benedick

“O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!”

exclamatory sentence

automatically doesn’t believe the accusations - loyal

“As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin”

equivocation- loves him the most or loves him not at all, paradox, trying to protect herself

deflecting at the end - focused on hero

“Do not swear, and eat it.” ”I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest”

food - metaphor, asking him to prove his love, link between food, lust and love

“Do not” - command, she has power over him, opposite of gender roles

disdain to love - opposite of beginning

declarative sentence - witty

“Kill Claudio”

imperative- command, blunt short statement, serious

ironic - asking Benedick to choose her over Claudio

“Oh, that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancor -- O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace”

doesn’t understand how Claudio could have done this - uses angry tone, violent language

food - violence, opposite of love

wants to give him the same punishment that he gave Hero

loyal - never changes her view of Hero unlike the men

sense of longing - differences between the genders, women can’t act with emotion in public

“Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.”

angry - reputations at the time

still believes hero

tricolon - shows strength of anger, emphatic

Benedick:

personality: irreverent, witty, comedic, mostly shown through interactions with Beatrice, unserious character, eloquent

development: bounces off Beatrice and develops by becoming closer to her

themes around benedick: marriage, gender, masculinity, wit

Quotes:

“Why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little for a great praise”

witty

comedic wordplay - uses homophones and words with multiple meanings, hyperbole

tricolon - emphasise hero’s flaws, benedick seems mean, comparing her to Beatrice?

“all women shall pardon me” “ I will live a bachelor”

doesn’t like women, believes in cuckoldry

his conclusion is based on his misogynistic beliefs

“The savage bull may, but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and set them in my forehead, and let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write ‘Here is good horse to hire’ let them signify under my sign ‘Here you may see Benedick, the married man.”

“sensible” - it isn’t sensible to fall in love, he doesn’t have that problem, epithet of himself

ironic - he falls in love and plans to get married at the end

making fun of marriage and cuckoldry

“horns” - cuckoldry

doesn’t want to get married for fear of cheating

metaphor - husbands are slaves

“O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not. I cannot endure my Lady Tongue!”

“love” is highlighted by being placed before “not”

semantic field of food - physical attraction?

he is hurt by her - depth of feeling, suffering for love at the beginning

gives her another mocking title

“I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love--- and such a man is Claudio”

“fool” - strong noun, objects of comedy, cements what Benedick thinks of men who fall in love

“shallow follies” - unserious, unmeaningful, sense that Benedick thinks that love is unimportant, ironic that Benedick seems shallow in the play yet he says that love doesn’t matter

“scorn” - beneath him, looks at it with distaste

Benedick performs and is boisterous, has an unconventional view of love and isn’t afraid to express it

“I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabour and the pipe: I have known when he would have walked ten mile a-foot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not”

musical metaphor - less manly by pursuing romance

juxtaposition - masculine objects and feminine objects

rhetorical question - wonders if he could fall in love, answer is foreshadowing

“No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married”

immediately changes his view - liked her all along

in a soliloquy

absurd reasoning - trying to justify his change of heart, dramatic irony - isn’t aware of his contradictions

“Suffer love! A good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will”

“suffer” - intense feelings, deep

wordplay - oxymoron

he has developed, serious feelings

“Peace! I will stop your mouth”

link to “tongue” at the beginning, Beatrice also says this earlier in the play to hero

lust, still banter in their relationship

Hero:

stereotypical Elizabethan woman

foil to Beatrice

Quotes:

“I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband”

obedient - “my lord”

loves Beatrice

“modest” - adjective, links back to her own modesty

alliteration

“Nature never framed a woman's heart Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice”

contrast between them

personification - biblical, everyone is made from the earth

“my heart is exceeding heavy”

alliteration

foreshadowing - bad feeling of what will happen

“Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero”

her value is attached to men in her life - ownership, she is an object, misogyny

accusing her of cheating - cuckoldry

“If I know more of any man alive Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant, let all my sins lack mercy!”

alliteration

euphemism - terrible

exclamation mark - shows how hurt she is, how much she wants them to believe her, defending herself

“O my father, Prove you that any man with me conversed At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight Maintain'd the change of words with any creature, Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death!”

trying to prove her innocence and defend herself

social hierarchy - women can be disowned for this

repetition of “me” - shows that she is very emphatic

tricolon - dramatic like her father

exclamatory sentence

“One Hero died defiled, but I do live, And surely as I live, I am a maid”

alliteration

repetition of “live”

euphemism

Claudio:

personality- gullible, immature, fickle, easily manipulated

Quotes:

“Can the world buy such a jewel?”

metaphor - objectifying her, based on appearance - beautiful

women are objects

rhetorical question

“How sweetly you do minister to love, that know love’s grief by his complexion! But least my liking might too sudden seem, I would have salved it with a longer treatise”

he is worried that he has fallen in love to fast - self-awareness, rare, very quick

“'Tis certain so; the prince wooes 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;
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. Farewell, therefore, Hero!”

immediately believes don john, never learns, gullible

women negatively affect male relationships - lack of loyalty

contrast to Beatrice - believes friendship is the most important

sexist

dramatic monologue / soliloquy in verse- comedic shift in emotion, dark, mocking Claudio’s fickleness

foreshadowing - quickly gives up hero

“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were
but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as
you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for
you and dote upon the exchange.”

“perfectest” - hyperbole, dramatic, superlative, over the top happiness

shows how dramatic Claudio is - ironic becuase he is still speaking

“dote” - verb, suggests devotion

irony - he is manipulated very soon after

“Out on thee! Seeming! I will write against it: 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 pamper'd animals That rage in savage sensuality.”

goddess Diana - virgin goddess, hunter - opposite of hero, metaphor, only focuses on virginity for comparison

Diana is goddess of the countryside - isolation, people who aren’t affected by consequences - he can say what he wants becuase Hero can’t do anything

“intemperate” - complete opposite of hero, doesn’t know her

“savage sensuality” - alliteration, sibilance, emphasis, animal imagery

semantic field of emotion of sensuality - completely misinterpreting hero, irony - he is all of these things

“Done to death by slanderous tongues Was the Hero that here lies”

contrast to angry monologue - complete change of emotion, fickle

complete lack of accountability - immature

“I'll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.”

racist!!

he will do anything to make it up to Leonato - shows how fickle he is, will marry any woman

Leonato:

Quotes:

“Her mother hath many times told me so”

joke about cheating - not funny

society’s fear of cuckoldry

“By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue”

alliteration - shows that he is being very emphatic

showing the ideal woman - quiet

“Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?”

rhetorical question - shows how important a woman’s virginity was

believes the men and not hero

shows his shame and despair at the accusation

“Death is the fairest cover for her shame”

metaphor - shows his strong patriarchal views on women, removing her from society to restore her reputation

“Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes”

repetition - emphatic

imperatives - command, shows anger and how he has power over hero

“Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill'd Mine innocent child?”

question - angry

believes in hero’s innocence finally

“slave” - insult, degrading, shows his anger

she was killed by the accusations - “breath”

Don Pedro:

Quotes:

“Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won”

“fair” - appearance

loyal, looks out for his friends

“I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules’ labors, which is to bring Signor Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, th’ one with th’ other”

“will” - certainty

will take a lot of work - divine task, requires strength

“I will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick”

scheming, being a good friend

no free-will

“cupid is no longer an archer, his glory shall be our, for we are the only love gods”

is confident that it will work

they are matchmakers - have strength

“as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her”

repetition - loyalty

sticking with his friend

“He is composed and framed of treachery”

declarative sentence - fact

knows that his brother is bad

Don John:

Quotes:

“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.”

values freedom over privilege

doesn’t try to be something he isn’t - is the stereotypical evil bastard

“it must not be denied but I am a plain dealing villain”

declarative statement - completely owns who he is, proud

assonance of “a”

“that young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow”

possessive pronoun - personal vendetta against Claudio

assonance of “a”

“The lady is disloyal”

declarative statement

adjective sets off the shaming of hero

“fie, fie, they are not to be named my lord, not to be spoke of”

so terrible they cant talk about it - deceptive

repetition - showing that he is acting, pretending to be shocked

“come let us go: these things thus come to light, smother up her spirits”

alliteration and sibilance

seems proud of his actions