#how benedick is the 'professed tyrant of their sex'

[tired-fandom-ndn]

The reason why Claudio and Don Pedro didn't tell Benedick about what was going on before the wedding is because he would've run straight to Beatrice and snitched without a second thought and then she would've murdered Claudio in cold blood.

[noshitshakespeare]

Do you think Benedick and Beatrice are the feminist, funny, wonderful couple that Tumblr thinks? I'm just disgusted by Beatrice being like, "if you're not willing to kill someone for me then you don't love me". How is that funny and healthy?

I think that any labelling like ‘funny’ or even ‘cute’ is going to be a simplification whether you’re talking about a couple or a character in Shakespeare. 

As far as Benedick and Beatrice are concerned, a funny, “feminist” and wonderful couple is at least part of what they are. Their ‘merry war’ (1.1.58) is funny and charming in its own way, and the best thing about them is that they can talk to one another as equals; that is, as intellectual equals, and that Benedick is willing to trust Beatrice over his friend and comrade as well as his prince. But as you point out, that’s not all there is to them, and that glimpse of darkness we get when Beatrice tells Benedick to ‘kill Claudio’ (4.1.288) is not easily reconcilable with the image of the witty charming lady of the earlier scenes. There is most definitely a touch of unhealthiness in there. I also think that, while one can argue that Benedick and Beatrice were really in love with one another all along, textual evidence suggests more strongly that their love interest remains half manufactured by their friends to the end, so that Benedick loves Beatrice ‘in despite of his heart’ (3.4.83).

Criticism is not straightforwardly positive on the subject of this couple. What becomes clearer through the most tragic moment of this play is that the whole story is hiding some serious anxieties about marriage and about the relationship between sexes. As many have pointed out, male distrust of women and marriage is the driving anxiety behind this play. And the automatic connection between marriage and cuckoldry suggests a fear of the power women have over men when it comes to the questions of paternity.

Even though it can be taken and played as a light-hearted repartee, the initial battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedick also, on closer look, hides some serious fears and problems both of them face and that reflects the wider problems of the society of their Messina. A sharp tongue and a ready wit is both a weapon and a shield that protects the two protagonists from their fear of the other sex.

For instance, one can’t ignore the fact that Benedick calls himself ‘a professed tyrant to their sex’ (1.1.160-61) putting on the persona of a misogynist (which draws on a long tradition of rhetorical debate literature that argued about the virtues and vices of women). His description of Hero, even in his joking spirit is based on outward appearances alone – ‘too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise…’ (1.1.165-6) – and is frankly abominable. Also Benedick’s general approach to women shouldn’t easily be dismissed as innocent just because of his actions later in the play or because he happens to generalise all of mankind as sexually promiscuous: ‘That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks; but that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me’ (1.1.223–7). The equation of marriage and cuckoldry is problematic and fundamental to an understanding of Benedick’s character.

Beatrice too has her own set of problems. She, like Benedick, likes to play a part, in her case the part of the shrew who ‘must sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband’ (2.1.299-300). She also takes on masculine characteristics and implicitly devalues women in doing so, much as Rosalind is accused of doing by Celia in As You Like It. Even though she’s powerful in her own way, she is only so within the confines of her small world, and as her reaction to Claudio’s treatment of Hero goes to show, she isn’t willing to break down the constraints of society and the decorum of what a man or a woman can and can’t do. In saying ‘O God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place’ (4.1.306-7), for instance, she actually accepts male violence and her inability to step into that world (which is not a feature of Shakespeare’s women is general).

But Benedick’s personality goes beyond the character of the stereotype misogynist (and Beatrice, needless to say, is more than a shrew) in the same way that Hamlet goes beyond the conventions of the revenger character. And one of the greater things that happens in the play is that he shakes off these conventions he professes by choosing to believe in the women he claimed to be a ‘tyrant’ towards. What it reveals, in the process, is that all these constraints of behaviour are neither natural or necessary parts of human relationships. 

Still, I don’t think Much Ado ever quite manages to step out the the confines of social forms (even though it’s apparent that Shakespeare as a writer has a broader perspective on the matter), because in the very process of breaking apart assumptions about the relation between sexes, new constraints related to honour and gender come into play, and that’s the moment that Beatrice asks Benedick to ‘kill Claudio’.

I can understand your disgust about this scene, but it’s complicated because involves early modern notions of honour which by current standards can seem problematic. Beatrice wants to avenge the insult to her family, but feels she can’t because she’s female (showing her adherence to the violent codes of honour). To be fair on Beatrice, she doesn’t enforce the role on Benedick immediately. He offers his help and she refuses it by saying ‘it is a man’s office, but not yours’ (4.1.266). This is a threefold point: she’s saying that he doesn’t owe her anything, that he isn’t a close enough relation of hers to take on the role, and that he’s too close a friend of Claudio’s to do it. Benedick should have seen what was coming at this point. It’s not so much that she says Benedick needs to kill Claudio to prove his love to her (at least initially), it’s more that because he’s told her he loves her (which is the same as a promise of marriage by early modern standards), he is now a close enough relation of Hero’s to avenge the slight. If he doesn’t, then he might as well be saying that he isn’t willing to become her family. In a way, it’s a wonderful moment because it’s explicit about the injustice of a woman’s situation that she cannot stand up for herself. But it also shows the implicit violence of a society that makes giving a man such a choice socially acceptable and the limits of the freedom of these characters that they can’t see past the arbitrary social structures that enforce silence and patience on women and active violence on men. 

It’s probably not such a problem for people to see Beatrice and Benedick as a funny and wonderful couple, because the enjoyment of a play doesn’t need to include an in-depth analysis and a full recognition of the problems that boil under the surface of what seems a light-hearted comedy. It’s worth remembering that people remember and emphasise the parts they enjoy and rationalise other parts based on their perception. I do think, though, that the recognition of the jarring moments in Shakespeare’s plays are key to going beyond the stories and characters to a structural assessment of what the playwright was up to in creating this particular piece. The recognition of one’s discomfort is the first step to a critical appreciation of a work of art that goes beyond entertainment.

[clearenthusiastmilkshake-blog]

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