Much Ado About Nothing (Folger Shakespeare Library)

by William Shakespeare

That a woman conceived me, I thank her; 234 that she brought me up, I likewise give her most 235 humble thanks. But that I will have a recheat 236 winded in my forehead or hang my bugle in an 237 invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. 238 Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust 239 any, I will do myself the right to trust none. And the 240 fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a 241 bachelor.

The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you 68 be not wooed in good time. If the Prince be too 69 important, tell him there is measure in everything, 70 and so dance out the answer. For hear me, Hero, 71 wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a 72 measure, and a cinquepace. The first suit is hot and 73 hasty like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the 74 wedding, mannerly modest as a measure, full of 75 state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, 76 and with his bad legs falls into the cinquepace faster 77 and faster till he sink into his grave.

I never yet saw man, 62 How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured, 63 But she would spell him backward. If fair-faced, 64 She would swear the gentleman should be her 65 sister; 66 If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, 67 Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed; 68 If low, an agate very vilely cut; 69 If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; 70 If silent, why, a block moved with none. 71 So turns she every man the wrong side out, 72 And never gives to truth and virtue that 73 Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

Well, everyone <can> master a grief but he 27 that has it.

But fare thee well, most foul, most fair. Farewell, 108 Thou pure impiety and impious purity. 109 For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love 110 And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang, 111 To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm, 112 And never shall it more be gracious

I know not. If they speak but truth of her, 200 These hands shall tear her. If they wrong her honor, 201 The proudest of them shall well hear of it. 202 Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, 203 Nor age so eat up my invention, 204 Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, 205 Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, 206 But they shall find, awaked in such a kind, 207 Both strength of limb and policy of mind, 208 Ability in means and choice of friends, 209 To quit me of them throughly.

For it so falls out 228 That what we have we prize not to the worth 229 Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, 230 Why then we rack the value, then we find 231 The virtue that possession would not show us 232 Whiles it was ours.

I pray thee, cease thy counsel, 4 Which falls into mine ears as profitless 5 As water in a sieve. Give not me counsel, 6 Nor let no comforter delight mine ear 7 But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine. 8 Bring me a father that so loved his child, 9 Whose joy of her is overwhelmed like mine, 10 And bid him speak of patience. 11 Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine, 12 And let it answer every strain for strain, 13 As thus for thus, and such a grief for such, 14 In every lineament, branch, shape, and form. 15 If such a one will smile and stroke his beard, 16 <Bid> sorrow wag, cry “hem” when he should 17 groan, 18 Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk 19 With candle-wasters, bring him yet to me, 20 And I of him will gather patience. 21 But there is no such man. For, brother, men 22 Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief 23 Which they themselves not feel, but tasting it, 24 Their counsel turns to passion, which before 25 Would give preceptial med’cine to rage, 26 Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, 27 Charm ache with air and agony with words. 28 No, no, ’tis all men’s office to speak patience 29 To those that wring under the load of sorrow, 30 But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency 31 To be so moral when he shall endure 32 The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel. 33 My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

But for Benedick, the returning soldier, this fear of women seems less generic than personal: the cuckold’s horns that he envisions as his own future headdress are specifically those of a defeated soldier who has lost his bugle to another soldier. It is not surprising, then, that Benedick’s anticipation of a farewell to arms here parallels Othello’s lament for the loss of heroic identity through an imagined sexual betrayal by Desdemona:

For soldiers like Benedick and Othello, marriage threatens loss of a valued form of masculine singleness, a loss of control.

Much Ado is not unusual in its reiterated wordplay on horns, since jokes about the wearing of cuckolds’ horns are commonplace throughout the literature of this period. But, in the drama of the period, there is a marked disparity between the frequency of the jokes and the infrequency of wifely infidelity. Many more wives are falsely accused than are, in fact, guilty. This discrepancy between fears of betrayal and actual guilt suggests that we should focus less on the infidelity itself than on the real source of patriarchal anxiety, which was patriarchy’s inevitable dependence on (and inability to verify) the chastity of wives and mothers. For only such chastity secured a social structure based on legitimate inheritance of lands, wealth, property, rank, and name.

medieval misogyny and post-Reformation marriage theory could not comfortably coexist. From the tension between them, the double plots of Shakespeare’s comedy come into being.

Misogyny and courtly love are coconspiring abstractions of the feminine whose function was from the start, and continues to be, the diversion of women from history by the annihilation of the identity of individual women . . . and thus the transformation of woman into an ideal.”