CHAPTER V. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING' was first printed in 1600. It had been entered at Stationers' Hall on the 23rd of August of the same year. The first edition is not divided into acts; but in the folio of 1623 we find this division. There was no other separate edition. The variations between the text of the quarto and that of the folio are very few. There is a remarkable peculiarity, however, in the text of the folio, which indicates very clearly that it was printed from the playhouse copy. In the second act (Scene 3) we find this stagedirection:-"Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Jack Wilson." In the third act, when the two inimitable guardians of the night first descend upon the solid earth in Messina, to move mortals for ever after with unextinguishable laughter, they speak to us in their well-known names of Dogberry and Verges; but in the fourth act we find the names of mere human actors prefixed to what they say: Dogberry becomes Kempe, and Verges Cowley. Here, then, we have a piece of the prompter's book before us. Balthazar, with his "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more," is identified with Jack Wilson; and Kempe and Cowley have come down to posterity in honourable association with the two illustrious "compartners of the watch." We could almost believe that the play-editors of the folio in 1623 purposely left these anomalous entries as an historical tribute to the memory of their fellows. Kempe, we know, had been dead some years before the publication of the folio; and probably Cowley and Jack Wilson had also gone where the voice of their merriment and their minstrelsy was heard no more. The chronology of this comedy is sufficiently fixed by the circumstance of its publication in 1600, coupled with the fact that it is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. "The story is taken from Ariosto," says Pope. To Ariosto then we turn; and we are repaid for our labour by the pleasure of reading that long but by no means tedious story of Genevra, which occupies the whole of the fifth book, and part of the sixth, of the Orlando Furioso.' "The tale is a " pretty comical matter," as Harrington quaintly pronounces it. The famous town of St. Andrew's forms its scene; and here was enacted something like that piece of villainy by which the Claudio of Shakspere was deceived, and his Hero "done to death by slanderous tongues." In Harrington's good old translation of the 'Orlando' there are six-and-forty pictures, as there are sixand-forty books; and, says the translator, "they are all cut in brass, and most of them by the best workmen in that kind that have been in this land this many years: yet I will not praise them too much because I gave direction for their making." The witty godson of Queen Elizabeth-"that merry poet, my godson"-adds, "the use of the picture is evident, which is, that having read over the book you may read it as it were again in the very picture." He might have said, you may read it as it were before; and if we had copied this picture,—in which the whole action of the book is exhibited at once in a bird's eye view, and where yet, as he who gave "direction for its making" truly says, "the personages of men, the shapes of horses, and such like, are made large at the bottom and lesser upward,”our readers would have seen at a glance how far "the story is taken from Ariosto." For here we have, "large at the bottom,” a fair one at a window, looking lovingly upon a man who is ascending a ladder of ropes, whilst at the foot of the said ladder an unhappy wight is about to fall upon his sword, from which fate he is with difficulty arrested by one who is struggling with him. We here see at once the resemblance between | in Ariosto; nor is slain by her furious lover, the story in Ariosto and the incident in as in Spenser; but she is rejected, believed 'Much Ado about Nothing' upon which both to be dead, and finally married in disguise, the tragic and comic interest of the play as in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' hinges. But here the resemblance ceases. As we ascend the picture, we see the King of Scotland seated upon a royal throne, but no Dogberry; his disconsolate daughter is placed by his side,—but there is no veiled Hero; King, and Princess, and courtiers, and people, are looking upon a tilting-ground, where there is a fierce and deadly encounter of two mailed knights, but there is no Beatrice and no Benedick. The truth is, that Ariosto found the incident of a lady Ariosto made this story a tale of chivalry; Spenser a lesson of high and solemn morality; Bandello an interesting love-romance. It was for Shakspere to surround the main incident with those accessories which he could nowhere borrow, and to make of it such a comedy as no other man has made a comedy not of manners or of sentiment, but of life viewed under its profoundest aspects, whether of the grave or the ludicrous. betrayed to suspicion and danger, by the imagine-for, as a lover of Shakspere, thou We request thee, O gentle reader, to personation of her own waiting-woman, amongst the popular traditions of the south of Europe this story has been traced to Spain; and he interwove it with the adventures of his Rinaldo as an integral part of his chivalrous romance. The lady Genevra, so falsely accused, was doomed to die unless a true knight came within a month to do battle for her honour. Her lover, Ariodant, had fled, and was reported to have perished. The wicked duke, Polinesso, who had betrayed Genevra, appears secure in his treachery. But the misguided woman, Dalinda, who had been the instrument of his crime, flying from her paramour, meets with Rinaldo, and declares the truth; and then comes the combat, in which the guilty duke is slain by the champion of innocence, and the lover re-appears to be made happy with his spotless princess. The motive which influences the Polinesso of Ariosto is the hope that by vilifying the character of Genevra he may get rid of his rival in her love. Spenser has told a similar story in the 'Faerie Queene' (Book II., Canto IV.), in which Phedon describes the like treachery of his false friend Philemon. The motive here was not very unlike that of Don John in Much Ado about Nothing.' The European story, which Ariosto and Spenser have thus adopted, has formed also the groundwork of one of Bandello's Italian novels. And here the wronged lady has neither her honour vindicated in battle, as canst imagine-that thou wert extant in the year of grace 1600; and that on a fine summer's morning of that year, as thou wert painfully guiding thy palfrey amongst the deep ruts and muddy channels of Cheapside, thou didst tarry in thy pilgrimage for a few minutes to peruse a small printed bill affixed pon a post, which bore something like the following announcement : BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD AT THE GLOBE Theatre at Bankside, This day, being Tuesday, July 11, 1600, will be acted, MUCH ADOE ABOUT NOTHING, WRITTEN BY WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. This, thou seest-for thou art cognizant of the present time as well as imaginative of the past-is not a bill as big as a house, the smallest letters of which are afflicted with elephantiasis; nor is it a bill which talks of "prodigious hit" and "thunders of applause," nor in which you see Mr. William Kempe's name towering in red letters above all his fellows: but a modest, quiet, little bill-an innocent bill-which ought not to have provoked the abuse of the Puritans, that "players, by sticking of their bills in London, defile the streets with their infectious filthiness."* In reading this bill thou receivest especially into thy mind three ideas which set thee thinking-the company *Mirror of Monsters,' 1587. R of actors who perform the play, the name of | Ado;' the "objective reality" the 'about the play to be performed, the name of the Nothing.' The reviewer has given us clearly writer. Thou knowest that it is the best and concisely the results to which the incompany, and the best writer, of the day; quiry, pursued upon this principle, has conbut the play-is the play a tragedy, or a ducted the German critic. The contradichistory, or a comedy? Thou opinest that it tion between life and its aspects "is set is a comedy. If the title were 'Much Ado' forth in an acted commentary on the title of thou wouldst be puzzled; but 'Much Ado the drama;—a series of incidents which, in about Nothing' lets thee into a secret. Thou themselves neither real, nor strange, nor knowest, assuredly, that the author of the important, are regarded by the actors as play will take the spectators into his con- being all these things. The war at the fidence; that he will show them the pre-opening, it is said, begins without reason paration, and the bustle, and the turmoil, and it may be the distress, of some domestic event, or chain of events,-the 'Much Ado' to the actors of the events, who have not the thread of the labyrinth; but, to the spectators, who sit with the book of fate open before them,—who know how all this begins and expect how it will all end,—it is 'Much Ado about Nothing. It is a comedy, then; in which surprise is for the actors, expectation is for the audience. Thou wilt cross London Bridge and see this comedy; for," as the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with expectation."* We have no wish to tutoyer the gentle reader any farther. We have desired only to show the significancy of the title of this play, by exhibiting it in slight connection with the circumstances under which it was published. For the title of this comedy, rightly considered, is the best expositor of the idea of this comedy. Dr. Ulrici, employing a dialect with which the English ear is not quite familiar, tells us that the fundamental idea lies in the antithesis which the play exhibits of the objective reality of human life to its subjective aspect. An able anonymous writer translates this for us into more intelligible language :—“ He considers the play as a representation of the contrast and contradiction between life in its real essence and the aspect which it presents to those who are engaged in its struggle."+ The "subjective aspect," then, is the 'Much *Coleridge, Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 78. ↑ Edinburgh Review,' July, 1840. and ends without result; Don Pedro seems to woo Hero for himself, while he gains her for his friend; Benedick and Beatrice, after carrying on a merry campaign of words without real enmity, are entrapped into a marriage without real love : the leading story rests in a seeming faithlessness, and its results are a seeming death and funeral, a challenge which produces no fighting, and a marriage in which the bride is a pretender; and the weakness and shadowiness of human wishes and plans are exposed with yet more cutting irony in the means that bring about the fortunate catastrophe,—an incident in which the unwitting agents-headed by Dogberry, the very representative of the idea of the piece-are the lowest and most stupid characters of the whole group." The reviewer adds-" The poet's readers may hesitate in following his speculative critic the whole way in this journey to the temple of abstract truth.” There are many of the poet's readers who will altogether reject this abstract mode of examining his works. To them the "abstract truth" appears but as a devious and uncertain glimmering-a taper in the sunshine. Have we not in Shakspere, say they, high poetry, sparkling wit, the deepest pathos ? are not the characters well defined, adroitly grouped; his plots interesting, his incidents skilfully evolved? True. And so, in nature, we have sky and water, and the forms and colours of leafy trees, and quiet dells, and fertile fields, and dewy lawns, and brilliant flowers; and we can understand the loveliness of separate objects, and we partly see how they form what the eye calls a picture. But there comes an artist, and .... he sets us to look at the same objects from | and added enough to prove his want of another point of view; and he watches a judgment"-this lady even is not insensible moment when there is a sunny gleam upon to the merits of parts of the composition: this part of the landscape, and a softened "There is a great deal of true wit and shade upon the other part; and he tells us humour in the comic scenes of this play; the to look again with the eye of his technical characters of Benedick and Beatrice are knowledge, and the scene has become al- properly marked." But there are critics, and together picturesque; and, when we have those of a higher order, who do not quite habituated ourselves to this mode of view- agree with Mrs. Lenox in giving to Shakspere ing the works of nature, we have acquired this comparatively small merit. Mr. Campbell almost a new sense. So it is with the works tells us,-" during one half of the play we of the poet he looks upon nature, and have a disagreeable female character in that copies nature, not with a camera-lucida of Beatrice. Her portrait, I may be told, is fidelity, but with the higher truth of his deeply drawn and minutely finished. It is; own art; and, till we have arrived at some- and so is that of Benedick, who is entirely thing like a comprehension of the principle her counterpart, except that he is less disof harmony in which he works, we are not agreeable. But the best drawn portraits, by qualified to judge of his work as a whole, the finest masters, may be admirable in however we may be pleased with many of execution, though unpleasant to contemplate; its details. With regard to Shakspere, a and Beatrice's portrait is in this category great deal of the false judgment upon his She is an odious woman." With powers, which has long passed current, is every respect for a poet's opinion of a poet's to be traced to the utter blindness of the work, we presume to think that Mr. Campbell critics to the presence of any pervading idea has fallen into a mistake; and that his running through a particular work, which mistake arises from his contemplation of should illuminate all its parts. Had the Beatrice as a single portrait cut out of a Zoili of the last generation conceived that large picture, and not viewed in reference to Shakspere worked upon some principle its relative position with, and its dependence which, like the agencies of nature, was to upon, the other parts of that picture. For, be seen more in its effects than in its mani- in truth, whether Beatrice be disagreeable festation of itself, could such a sentence as and odious, or "cette charmante et redoutable this have been written of the comedy before | femme," as a French critic has it, she could us?" This fable, absurd and ridiculous as be no other than the identical Beatrice, in it is, was drawn from the foregoing story of the place in which she is. For is she not Genevra, in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso,' a one that at first presents to us the prosaic fiction which, as it is managed by the epic side of human nature-the jesting, gibing, poet, is neither improbable nor unnatural; sarcastic side; one who has no faith in valour, but by Shakespear mangled and defaced, and is not to be subdued by courtesy; who full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and prefers a "skirmish of wit" to making blunders."* We have done with this style 'account of her life to a clod of wayward of criticism, of course, now; but it has only marl?" But is not the real Beatrice at been banished by the disposition of the world bottom a true woman,-a high-spirited, to look at Shakspere's art, and at all art, a imaginative woman,—one who, with all her little more from the abstract point of view. wit, has no slight portion of woman's sensibility about her; and is by no means very gay when she says "I may sit in a corner, and cry, heigh ho! for a husband?” Truly she is a woman that falls into the trap of affection with wonderful alacrity; who, while hidden in But Mrs. Lenox, who, in default of a sense of the poetical picturesque, has thus told us of "inconsistencies, contradictions, and blunders," and who is farther pleased to say that Shakspere, in this play, "borrowed just enough to show his poverty of invention, * Shakespear Illustrated,' vol. iii. p. 261. | 66 * Moxon's Edition of Shakspeare. Life. "the pleached bower, Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun, Forbid the sun to enter," hears it said of her, and hears it without any violence or burst of passion, "Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, Misprising what they look on; and her wit Values itself so highly, that to her All matter else seems weak: she cannot love, Nor take no shape nor project of affection, She is so self-endeared." And why is she so calm under this bitter reproach, which she believes to be real? Why shows she no after resentment against her cousin for the representation which she has drawn of her? Simply because she knows she has been playfully wearing a mask to hide the real strength of her sympathies. "Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!" She is not a thing of mere negations; a fashionable, brilliant, untrusting thing. It is she whom we next encounter, all heart, presenting to us the poetical side of human nature, when all around her is prosaic; who, when her cousin's wedding "looks not like a nuptial," and that poor innocent Hero is deserted by lover and father, has alone the courage to say, 66 Oh, on my soul, my cousin is belied." It is the injury done to Hero which wrings from Beatrice the avowal of her love for Benedick. Is it a reproach to her that she would have her lover peril his life against the false accuser of her cousin? She has thrown off her maidenly disguises, and the earnestness of her soul will have vent. She and Benedick are now bound for ever in their common pity for the unfortunate. The conventional Beatrice has become the actual Beatrice. The "subjective appearance" has become the "objective reality." The same process is repeated throughout the character of Benedick, for the original groundwork of the character is the same as that of Beatrice. "Would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex,' presents the same key to his character as "I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me," does to that of Beatrice. They are each acting; and they have each a shrewd guess that the other is acting; and each is in the other's thoughts; and the stratagem by which they are each entrapped-not, as we think, into an unreal love, as Ulrici says-is precisely in its symmetrical simplicity what was necessary to get rid of their reciprocal disguises, and to make them straightforward and in earnest. The conclusion of the affair is the playful echo of all that is past : "Bene. Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity. Beat. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion." The 'Much Ado about Nothing' was acted under the name of 'Benedick and Beatrice,' even during the life of its author. These two characters absorb very much of the acting interest of the play. They are starcharacters, suited for the Garricks and Jordans to display themselves in. But they cannot be separated from the play without being liable to misconstruction. The character of Beatrice cannot be understood, except in connection with the injuries done to Hero; and except, once again, we view it, as well as the characters of all the other agents in the scene, with reference to the one leading idea, that there is a real aspect of things which is to be seen by the audience and not seen by the agents. The character of Don John, for example, and the characters of his loose confederates, are understood by the spectators; and their villainy is purposely transparent. Without Don John the plot could not move. He is not a rival in Claudio's love, as the "wicked duke" of Ariosto: he is simply a moody, ill-conditioned, spiteful rascal:-such a one as ordinarily takes to backbiting and hinting away character. Shakspere gets rid of him as soon as he can : he fires the train and disappears. He would be out of harmony with the happiness which he has suspended but not destroyed; and so he passes from the stage, with "Think not on him till to-morrow." But his instrumentality has been of the utmost |
