Where A Man Belongs: Courtship Advice from Shakespeare

The key scene in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing comes just after the first wedding scene when Claudio tosses Hero aside as a "rotten orange." He has been tricked into thinking that Hero is unfaithful, and that is an affront to his honor. He won't put her away quietly. He puts her away very loudly, very publicly.

Friar Francis doesn't believe it, and thinks there must be some "misprision." But he's a friar, so he barely counts. All the manly men stay together. Don Pedro and Don John (the deceiver) stand with Claudio, and we can assume all the Don Pedro's men are there too. Leonato, Hero's father, believes the charges, and the shock and shame overwhelm him. He can't decide whether to commit suicide or kill his daughter. "Grieved I, I had but one?" he asks, "Why had I one? Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?" (Act 4, scene 1).

That is not the key scene. That is an altogether typical scene: Powerful men standing in judgment against a tainted woman. We've seen this before, century after century, at least back to the controverted story of Jesus with the woman taken in adultery (John 8).

The key moment comes when Benedick breaks ranks. The rest of the men leave, but Benedick follows Beatrice into the chapel. It's the first time they've spoken since both of them have been tricked into believing the other is in love. Like every conversation between Beatrice and Benedick, it's a sharp, jagged, hilarious conversation. "I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?" Benedick says. Beatrice answers, "I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.

Then the test: Is Benedick really with her or no?

"Benedick Come, bid me do anything for thee.

Beatrice Kill Claudio.

Benedick Ha! Not for the wide world.

Beatrice You kill me to deny it. Farewell. . . .

Benedick We'll be friends first."

Eventually, Benedick comes round. He is engaged - engaged to challenge Claudio, and in that same act of engagement engaged with all his heart to Beatrice.

As Tina Packer says in her forthcoming Women of Will , "This is the key scene of the play, and really shows Shakespeare’s sensitivity to the predicament of women. As a man of real honor, Benedick will use his superior place in society to rectify this injustice; and if he truly loves, he will love the whole of her, with no caveats. . . . He violates the honor between officers, choosing instead to follow his love. Love is the higher calling."

In Packer's overview, Will Shakespeare didn't start out writing about women this way: "the Shakespeare who wrote The Taming of the Shrew was not the same Shakespeare who wrote The Tempest ; that the Shakespeare of Henry IV Part 1 was very different from the Shakespeare of Coriolanus ; and where a principal difference lay was in Shakespeare’s relationship to his women. The callow youth who penned Shrew undertook a long, arduous, always-seeking journey to become the playwright who wrote The Winter’s Tale ." In his maturity, he wrote parts for women like no other playwright had done: "No other playwright, writing before Shakespeare or at the same time as Shakespeare, had ever seen women as women." No other playwright saw so clearly that love requires a man to break with other men to cleave to a woman.

The turning point in Shakespeare's development, Packer thinks, is Romeo and Juliet , and in that play too there is a critical scene in which a man severs his ties to other men.

Romeo begins the play longing for Rosaline. He's another Claudio, and he's bound up with family and male friends. It's a casual infatuation, the kind of love that a man can have without altering himself or his place in the world, the kind of love a man can have while spending evenings at the bar watching sports.

His encounter with Juliet changes all that. As Packer points out, their interchange is resonant with the language of religion. Their love is not a casual thing, but an all consuming, holy vocation. In a sonnet spoken as a duet, Romeo's lips are "two blushing pilgrims" ready to offer the worship of a kiss that will smooth the rough touch of his hand. Juliet plays along: "Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, / Which mannerly devotion shows in this; / For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, / and palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss." Lips are for prayer as well as for kisses, and Romeo thinks that his lips will be purged for prayer by the touch of Juliet's. By the end of the passage, they have consecrated their desire, committing sweet trespass and repeating the sin they have already committed with their lips. As Packer summarizes, "They touch fingers, then palms, and then lips. They travel from profanity to unworthiness to holy sin, pilgrimage, prayer, sainthood."

Romeo's passion puts him on a collision course with his boys. He leaves Mercutio and Benvolio behind while they are speculating on Rosaline's "lower parts," jumps over a wall into Juliet's orchard: "All monasteries were surrounded by walls in the Middle Ages—so, if you were going to lead a holy life, you leapt over the wall to begin your spiritual journey." Romeo's friends think he's gone effeminate. He won't fight Capulets anymore, and even tries to pacify Tybalt for Juliet's sake, until he is provoked into a duel that kicks down the first domino that leads to the tragic conclusion. Romeo and Juliet end tragically, but they end together, united forever in death.

Shakespeare isolates the fundamental conflict of romantic love in the contest between honor and love, between the masculine mob and a place (potentially isolating) at the side of the beloved. He isolates the conflict, and dramatizes the right choice. It's the incarnational choice that men must make, again and again.