The audience of the time when Much Ado About Nothing first was played may have been slightly shocked by it, especially by Beatrice’s character, as she was so outspoken and at times rude to the men, ‘I pray you, is Signoir Mountanto returned from the wars or no?’ when she says this she is offending a man and interrupting a man’s conversation. It was quite uncommon for a woman to be like that at this time but it wouldn’t have been completely unknown as my critical quotes show, there were many outspoken women but maybe society just tried to hide them away. So it may not have been that much of a shock because even though society tired to ignore the fact that there were women like her, they could not deny that there were and women like this were probably becoming increasingly known as ‘the rise to power of Mary I and Elizabeth I provided women with positive, aggressive, self-confident female role-models.’ Women were starting to realise that they could get away with being a bit more outspoken and opinionated. Modern audiences are not shocked at all by the play as it is mild compared to what is seen as acceptable today, the women even Beatrice, may seem a bit passive compared to some of the female characters in plays, movies and even normal life today. It gives us a very good insight into the way that society treated women and their general views on many things, such as racism etc. in this period of time.
There are many broad categorisations that critics have used to describe the female characters in Renaissance drama.
One of the first stereotypes of women at this time is ‘Characters of Intellect and Witty Ladies’, Beatrice and Margaret are the women I think of first when I hear that title. We see Beatrice’s great wit and intelligence from the very start of the play, ‘a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a Lord?’ This immediately introduces this side of her character. The comment is aimed at Benedick; we learn pretty early on that there are some harsh feelings between Benedick and herself. She is very critical of him and it leaves us wondering why? Was there something that happened in the past which caused these feelings? The other men don’t seem to be any match for her wit and intelligence,
“Faith niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much, / but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not,”
is all Leonato can reply to her, but we learn that Benedick can match her and we see many examples of that in the play.
“What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?”
This shows that he matches her in wit and intelligence and he is not afraid of hurting her. It appears to be just a bit of harmless banter but sometimes it seems to go deeper than that. ‘Lady Disdain,’ is quite a hurtful thing to call someone as it means that she looks down on people and is hateful, she only really appears to act like this with Benedick. Maybe this is why he calls her it, also the fact that he calls her ‘Lady’ may show that he does respect her. At the masked ball when Beatrice is pretending that she does not know it is Benedick she is talking to she calls him the ‘Prince’s Jester, a very dull fool,’ the use of the word ‘fool’ offends him greatly and when Beatrice says, ‘I know you of old’ it is clear that there has been a past history.
Margaret is very similar in wit to Beatrice, though she gets away with this more often because she is of a lower social class and she is a servant. She makes many sexual puns, “Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man” Hero is quite shocked by this, “Fie upon thee, art not ashamed?” Although she lets her away with it again, and so do the audience because of her lower-class status. Her wit is also very similar to Benedicks and she can joke and use sexual puns with him and he is not shocked by it, ‘Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.’ This displays very clearly how different women of different classes treat the discussion of sex. We notice Hero is quite shaken by Margaret’s comments which shows how higher class women cannot discuss sex so freely.
Our next category of women is ‘Pathetic Women’, Hero lets men rule her the whole way through the play, Carol Thomas Neely says that ‘Patriarchal marriage customs conveniently coalesce with romantic rhetoric, enabling him to maintain Hero as an object of social exchange and possession.’ She is seen as a man’s possession, “Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero,” she is what every man wants a women to be like, she makes men feel like Heroes, and Shakespeare makes a deliberate pun on her name to get this point across. In my opinion this makes her seem quite ‘pathetic’ as she just tries to be what men want her to be. I do not think she is stupid; she probably is intelligent, as she knows that she has to act this way to survive in the male dominated world in which she lives, though she does not get a chance to show it. I do not really think that Shakespeare is challenging the Elizabethan stereotypes through Hero, as she is pretty much everything the stereotypes make us believe the women were. I believe that Shakespeare uses her as an example of what women were supposed to be like and as a contrast to the other women. Although at the same time she isn’t like that in the company of women, this shows that maybe women tried to be more passive in front of men but underneath it all they were outspoken and confident.
Outspoken females is exactly what you think of when you think of Beatrice, she says what she wants and does not think of the consequences or what anyone else thinks about her. ‘She does not hide behind the conventions of the times which demand that a woman to be sweet and fluffy, rather than outspoken and determined,’ Courtini Crump Wright gives us the perfect definition of Beatrice. She doesn’t try to please men the ways that Hero does, she is totally herself all the time, no matter where she is or who she is with. She makes it clear that she will never fall in love ‘not till a hot January.’ Unlike Hero she does not seem to like men in general and says that there is no man out there who will ever make her change her mind. She is continually looking for attention with her witty and sarcastic comments; she also interrupts men’s conversations, which was very unusual for a woman to do as it would seem very rude. The men seem to accept her for what she is, maybe if it was another woman they wouldn’t, as Beatrice does not have any men to rule over her as she doesn’t have a father, or husband thus she gets away with more than other women would. Though we have to think that maybe Beatrice’s outspokenness is just a cover which she can hide behind and she has more feminine insecurities than what appears; although when she falls in love with Benedick she still seems to be the same person she was before so she can’t have had any insecurities about love and men which is what it appears to be at the beginning.
‘Indeed my Lord, he lent it me awhile,/ and I gave him use for it,/ a double heart for a single one./ Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,/ therefore your Grace may well say I have lost it.’
This quotation from Beatrice is also a clear indication of a past relationship between them as she is speaking of giving her heart to Benedick but him loosing it. He obviously broke her heart so that is why she finds it difficult to trust men.
This could just be her way of surviving in male dominated world.
Hero is the complete opposite of Beatrice when she is in a man’s company; and even around Beatrice, she is quiet and polite. She is the perfect example of the stereotypical Elizabethan woman; Rachel Clayton says that ‘she is admired for her modesty, beauty and primarily wealth.’ When she is in the company of other women, especially the servants she is much more outspoken and almost seems like a different person, ‘In the company of women Hero is able to display a powerful control of language which is stifled when men are present.’ Shakespeare is trying to show the power men had over Hero that they actually changed her personality; if they were not so controlling over her, Hero may have acted this way around everyone and not just women. When talking to Ursula she ridicules Beatrice even though she has always stood up for Hero, no matter what. Hero may feel that Beatrice overshadows her so she tries to get some attention to make herself feel better.
‘No, truly Ursula, she is too/ disdainful/ I know her spirits are as coy and wild/ As haggards of the rock.’
Shakespeare does seem to be challenging the Elizabethan Stereotypes of women, especially through Beatrice’s character. Hero seems to be very similar to what was expected of a woman to be like. Although at the same time there are some aspects of her character, like when she is around women and also her underlying intelligence which I believe is quite apparent in the play, which do challenge the stereotypes.
Benedick seems to be the perfect example of the 16th century man; he sees women as objects and assumes that every woman will be unfaithful. Though it is probably not right to say that he is like all men as that would be a very broad generalisation, Benedick seems to hate all women and never wants to get married, ‘I will live a bachelor,’ and not all men were like that. Going back to the idea of a past relationship between Benedick and Beatrice, ‘O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!’ He tries to deny the fact that Beatrice hurts him, but it is obvious that she does, ‘She speaks poniards, and every word stabs.’ Maybe this is why he seems so against love and marriage, he is just insecure but he has an underlying fear and jealousy of love and marriage. Most men of this time seemed to have insecurities about marriage and women in general; their positions, by law, as controller of women as well as their fears, make them expect women to act like Hero, as they needed that to make them feel better and more powerful. If a woman was strong and outspoken, like Beatrice, it made men feel that they had no control because they could not tell them what to do. Therefore men made these stereotypes because of their fears, it almost allowed them to design women they way that they wanted them. He seems to find it difficult to face up to his true feelings, he calls other men fools for being in love, even though it is quite obvious that he loves Beatrice. He eventually gives into his feelings and accepts the fact that he is in love, despite his former views on it,
‘I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of broken wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage.’
He knows that he will have to face ridicule but he is prepared to do that for Beatrice. Some audiences and critics, especially feminist critics, believe that there is a certain point, just after Hero’s shaming, when Benedick rejects all male values and comes over to the women’s side. Love appears to have changed him and he stands by the women now and will stand by Beatrice no matter what, even when she says horrible, hurtful things to him. He shows maturity and stands up for the older men, in the argument between Leanato and Claudio,
‘Fare you well, boy…/I will leave you now to your gossip-like humour.’
He also seems to be a lot more romantic than before, ‘I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes.’
When Hero was accused of being unfaithful, Claudio and Leanato, the two people who were supposed to care for her most, treated her worst. Again this proves that men had many fears of women being unfaithful or making them look bad. Claudio is angry as it makes a ‘cuckold’ of him and makes him look stupid. Today, if a woman is unfaithful it sometimes makes her partner look foolish as he obviously wasn’t satisfying her, though in the days of this play, this could not have been the case, outside of a marriage situation, as women were expected to remain virgins until they were married. It was just the fact that men did not seem to trust any women and when their fears came true, they believed that it proved that women could not remain faithful and could not be trusted.
Leanato treats Hero very badly, as her father he should have stood by her no matter what she had done. This shows a major downfall in his character. He automatically believes the men over his own daughter, this is a good indication of how society treated women; men would always be trusted more.
Shakespeare clearly challenges Elizabethan stereotypes of woman in this play, to a certain extent. Characters such as Beatrice and Margaret show that some women were outspoken and were not afraid to speak out against and interrupt men.
As Courtini Crump Wright said, ‘he was not completely defending women; he showed that they were not perfect either.’ He knew that even after the changes brought about by Elizabeth I, women were still not treated as men’s equals, so he depicted strong women as the heroines of his plays to show that it was possible. This is very true in Much Ado About Nothing as in my opinion Beatrice is the heroine. Wright says that, ‘Beatrice is actually a much more prominent figure in the play and the lives of the other characters.’ Even though at the beginning Hero seems to be the main focus of the play, by discussion of her impending marriage to Claudio, by the end it is Beatrice. Some feminist critics believe that Shakespeare undermines Beatrice’s character through the kiss with Benedick at the end of the play. If this was true it would mean that Shakespeare was not challenging the stereotypes as Beatrice would have slipped back into the stereotype. I believe that she will remain the same and there is no way that love will change her; she has just fallen in love, this will not weaken her character in any way. Especially as she has a man who respects her and allows her to be the way that she wants to be, without trying to change her. Hero is the one who remains to be ruled by men, Claudio wins as he still gets her after everything, and this makes me loose all my respect for her. Claudio and Benedick both get what they want in the end, but I don’t think that this means that the men have won because Beatrice gets everything that she wants; she has found love though still is as outspoken as ever, she remains herself. Shakespeare knows that he cannot be too forward about the subject as it was still seen as quite taboo for a woman to be so outspoken and opinionated. It certainly wasn’t the beginning of the emancipation and empowerment of women, though he does show that times were changing and women were starting to get stronger, but as I said before women always have had a certain degree of power over men no matter how much they tried to deny it.
