‘hot and hasty’ Scotch jig of wooing will end in the ‘cinquepace’ of
repentance.
Although Beatrice often puts herself down, claiming she is not of any
worth, ‘Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt’ meaning
she is unattractive literally because she was left outdoors too long and her
skin has browned (In Elizabethan times skin should have been white), she
still has a marriage proposal from Don Pedro. Instead of accepting she
denies him ‘your grace is too costly to wear every day’ and so lowers
herself, and praises his higher social rank.
Beatrice has had someone else interested in her before:
Benedick, yet she speaks offhand about the incident which is not made clear
to the audience, but gives the impression of underlying feelings between
both Benedick and Beatrice. More is revealed later on: ‘Indeed, my lord, he
lent it me a while [her heart] and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his
single one. Marry, once before he won it off me, with false dice; therefore
your grace may well say I have lost it.’ It seems that Beatrice gave Benedick
affection, after the relationship ended it seems that Beatrice was more upset
and affected by the experience than Benedick obviously was.
This may explain why Beatrice is so against men and their power over
women. It would also give reason for her confrontations with Benedick. She
is obviously still bitter towards Benedick and angry for the way he treated
her, so this must be where her quick-witted insults derive from.
Beatrice is the audience’s favourite character throughout the play; her
wit makes her amusing and her independence and ability to speak of her
mind, lovable. Also her ability to change (from disdainful to charming) for
her love for Benedick, yet still be a dominating character, is admirable.
Her first appearance in Act one scene one would surprise the
audience as she is attempting to outwit a male and indeed succeeding,
changing the moralities and giving authority to Beatrice, the female. She is
rude and forceful in her language, she promises ‘to eat all of [Benedick’s]
killing’ which connects with another of her sayings in Act four scene one,
when Beatrice becomes frustrated by her womanhood, ‘O God that I were a
man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.’ Here eating is not connected
with love but with violence, and so connects with her saying from Act one,
scene one.
Her character quickly changes when she finds out that the man she has
given the impression of hating and vice versa, on the contrary he actually
loves her and she vows to go against her original beliefs and love Benedick,
changing everything about her for this one man. In order to show this
significant change in Beatrice she speaks the soliloquy after the gulling
scene in Blank Verse as opposed to prose, in which she normally speaks.
Her soliloquy is almost a shortened sonnet ‘Benedick, love on; I will requite
thee, taming my wild heart to thy loving hand. If thou dost love, my
kindness shall incite thee to bind our loves up in a holy band.’
The relationship that evolves between Benedick and Beatrice seems to
be a difficult one, as both characters are strong and opinionated so it looks as
though there is no authoritative, controlling male in their complicated
relationship. Normally the male would be more influential than the female
but as Beatrice is so opposed to male domination and as Benedick loves her
so much, it seems there is no way to resolve this. However it is cleverly done
at the end of the play ‘Peace – I will stop your mouth. [He kisses her]’ This
shows Benedick is taking charge as the male should in Elizabethan society,
and so ending the dispute of authority in their relationship. This is the
outcome a typical audience from Shakespeare’s time would have expected.
It would have been difficult to show Beatrice in charge as the audience
would have disputed this.
Hero is a character typical of a young, innocent woman in Elizabethan
times, whose wealth, beauty and social position makes her attractive to the
male audience. She evokes sympathy from the audience through her disgrace
and public humiliation at the questioning of her chastity, and
defencelessness against Claudio’s cruel words. Unlike Beatrice she cannot
speak up against a man, therefore she finds it difficult to redeem herself
when accused by Claudio. ‘O God defend me, how am I beset!’
This is because she understands that men should have power and
authority over women and that Claudio is dominating and superior to
herself. ‘None, my Lord’. She proves to be loyal to him ‘Sweet Hero, now
thy image doth appear in the rare semblance that I loved it first’. Claudio
sees Hero in the same light that he first looked at her in and not in the way
she appeared to him when he assumed that she was disloyal. He is admitting
that he was wrong and that she is not spoilt or ‘rotten’ as he named her
earlier.
Hero’s conversation with Margaret and Ursula displays her keen and
flexible wit and her strategy of praising Benedick, while condemning
Beatrice has her desired effect. ‘I never yet saw man, how wise, how noble,
young, how rarely featured’. Though she is eager to join Beatrice and
Benedick together, she does so by insulting Beatrice profoundly, and calling
her disdainful, the same insult Benedick used against her. ‘Disdain and scorn
ride sparkling in her eyes’.
However, she may say this playfully, which would reflect her
warmness and gentleness and show her sisterly love towards Beatrice. In
contrast to her usual manner she may, perhaps, be jealous of Beatrice ‘If I
should speak she would mock me into air,’ though this seems unlikely as her
directions to Margaret, ‘steal into the bleached bower’, bespeaks her
delicacy.
Hero uses many metaphors ‘Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun,
forbid the sun to enter - like favourites made proud by princes’ when
speaking to Margaret, which again shows her tenderness and she ends her
conversation with Margaret with prophetic comments on love, poetically. ‘If
it prove so, then loving goes by haps. Some Cupid kills with arrows, some
with traps.’ This is ironic as she is the one who is being trapped by marrying
Claudio, as opposed to her attempts to trap Beatrice with love.
Claudio’s reaction is odd to a contemporary audience; finding out
about the prospect of Hero losing her virginity and the way he treats her as if
she were nothing, this would make the audience question his love for her.
Surely if he loved her he would either defend her or protect her from being
slandered and not humiliate her publicly? ‘Give not this rotten orange to
your friend.’ This metaphor is full of implications both of his jealousy and
also of the corruption of women. Men are concerned that the ‘dish’ (or
women) they want to eat (or make love to) should turn out to be rotten; after
all oranges were sold by whores in the Elizabethan theatre, thus
representing both wild sex and the risk of sexual diseases. Even after
Claudio learns of Hero’s death, he is still happy with his actions and shows
no signs of affection or remorse, and finds himself innocent of killing
Hero, ‘My villainy?’
This may be because he is partly marrying her for her wealth and
inheritance from her father ‘Count, take me of my daughter and with her my
fortunes .’ And once Leonato offers him another bride who has the same
riches he accepts showing no compassion towards Hero, ‘My brother hath a
daughter almost the copy of my child that’s dead, and she alone is heir to
both of us,’ ‘I do embrace your offer,’
Hero is being treated as an object here, as she is disposed of quickly
and replaced with someone else who Claudio has never met, seen, or spoken
to but only knows of her heritage and wealth that comes with that and
accepts on these grounds. Also he may feel that he has done penance for his
crimes and so now deserves her. It seems that her death has only represented
to Claudio that he has lost something he wanted, and so cannot have it,
therefore moves onto something else, as if there is no value to Hero.
It is also surprising that Hero accepts Claudio back after the way he
treated her and shamed her in front of everyone and his eagerness to marry
someone else that he did not know so soon after her death. She is now on a
higher moral ground than her future husband, as she has been the one in the
right and he has been in the wrong, perhaps putting a strain on the marriage
in the future, although socially Claudio will remain a higher rank, as he is
the dominant figure in their relationship and irreplaceably the male.
This is in total opposition to Beatrice’s actions. She would, perhaps,
have found it difficult to forgive someone, especially a male, who treated her
so badly and who now finally realised that they were in the wrong. It may
have disappointed Beatrice and any other feminist watching this play today,
but Hero takes on the role of the morally correct, conventional, romantic
heroine of the Elizabethan period.
Hero and Claudio’s relationship seems to be a strange one as neither
know each other well, though they are to be married, so when Claudio
ironically denounces Hero for not being all she seemed; ‘and seemed I
otherwise to you?’ and giving a false impression to him, it is an
impossibility, as he had already idealised her and moulded her in his mind to
be what he wanted her to be, probably something to do with the expectations
at the time the play was written.
Hero does not say much at the beginning of the play and does not
seem to be a very main character, though she is referred to often through
Claudio’s love. Yet as soon as she is to be married to Claudio she is included
a lot more in the play in terms of speaking and trying to put together both
Beatrice and Benedick.
Overall, both women that Shakespeare presents are contrasting and
reflects the difference between people in love. Hero is presented to be a
women conventional in her etiquette and manners who is attractive to the
male audience and exemplary in her patience and forgiveness, whereas
Beatrice is presented as a women who knows what she wants and how to get
it, who is not independent or reliant on males. Her sharp wit has youth and
eternal spirit, and she shows wide experience and intelligence with a just
impatience at an unequal society. Perhaps she is the true heroine of the play.