This Is Shakespeare

by Emma Smith

But however imperfect and fearful a prospect, marriage, as Benedick ruefully acknowledges, is a social inevitability: ‘The world must be peopled’ (2.3.229–30). As in a Hollywood screwball comedy such as Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday (directed by Howard Hawks in 1938 and 1940), the bantering interplay between Beatrice and Benedick functions as a kind of verbal foreplay. We feel we know they ought to get together, because their playful dialogue bespeaks deep intimacy. They just need a little help to change roles. But it is also striking how much social pressure is exerted to resolve these two confirmed singletons, these potential misfits, into a couple. Their initial refusal of convention is a challenge to everyone around them. Each says they do not want to marry, and the community swings into action to prove them wrong.