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out of the "Hundred Merry Tales"

Well, this was Signior Benedick that said so

- Act II, scene i, lines 128-30

The "Hundred Merry Tales" was a popular, and therefore orn, collection of funny stories, most of the that she had gotten her witty sayings out of Joe Miller's joke book

It was a deadly thing to say to Beatrice and in vengeance (she probably knew very ho) she floods Benedick with cruel remarks which he cannot counter

the infernal Ate

Benedick has so much the worse of it on this occasion that after the dance he boils over with frustration, and says to Don Pedro concerning Beatrice:

She would have made Hercules have turned spit,

yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too

Come, talk not of her

You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel

- Act II, scene i, lines 250-54

She is such a shrew, in other words, that even Hercules would bow before her in fear

As a e is not too far re Hercules As a punishment for some crime, Hercules was condemned to serve Omphale, Queen of Libya, for three years She chose to have hi,beds, while she wore his lion's skin and carried his club

As for Ate, she is the Greek goddess of vengeance and ods that she was cast out of heaven and condemned to live on earth, where, Benedick implies, she has taken on the likeness of Beatrice

the great Cham's beard

And when Beatrice enters, Benedick bounds to his feet at once and demands to be sent away He says to Don Pedro melodramatically:

Will your Grace command me any service

to the world's end? I will go on

the slightest errand now to the Antipodes

that you can devise to send me on;

I will fetch you a toothpicker now

from the furthest inch of Asia;

bring you the length of Prester John's foot;

fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard;

do you any emies-rather

than hold three words' conference with this harpy

- Act II, scene i, lines 261-69

The Antipodes ("with the feet pointed opposite") is a term invented by the Greeks When their philosophers worked out the fact that the earth was spherical, there appeared at once the odd and paradoxical situation that people ht live on the other side of the earth, with their feet pointed upward (from the standpoint of the Greeks)

Since the teested there was a burning zone about the equator that men could not pass and that the world of the Antipodes (the Southern Hemisphere) could never be reached

(By Shakespeare's time this was shown to be false, but the Antipodes remained as a symbol of the distant and unattainable)

Prester John ("John the Priest") was a mythical monarch whose existence idely accepted in the later Middle Ages He was supposed to be a Christian king of i who had conquered the pagan regions and converted them to Christianity (hence his title)

There were indeed Christians in the Far East These were the Nestorian Christians, a heretical sect that had been driven out of the East Roman Empire in the fifth century and had found haven in Persia and beyond They penetrated to central Asia and China and, for a while in the twelfth century, were influential a power

In 1145 a Syrian bishop, Hugh of Gebal, brought the tale to the papal court He spoke of a great Christian ol conqueror (as not a Christian) with the Nestorians (ere not kings) In 1177 Pope Alexander III wrote a letter to this supposed Prester John, suggesting an alliance against the Mosle the letter never returned and nothing is known of his fate Nevertheless, people continued to believe in the reat Christian empire somewhere beyond the horizon

In 1206 the greatest of the Mongols took the nah not a Christian one For a bloody and unbelievable half century the Mongols expanded with unheard-of speed and built the largest continuous land empire the world had yet seen In 1240 they even penetrated central Europe, defeating all arainst them

Under Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, they reached their height In the late thirteenth century the Italian traveler Marco Polo spent seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan and thereafter wrote an immensely popular account of his travels The reen, therefore, and it is the beard of the Mongol ruler which Benedick offers to pluck (though by Shakespeare's tiol Empire remained)

The Pygmies were a dwarfish race first mentioned in Hoe I-63) The Harpies, in Greek legend, were originally symbols of the stored birds of prey omen's heads They were described as horrible, filthy creatures that snatched food away fro what they could not take

like favorites

Having said all this, Benedick stalks off in a huff, to Beatrice's aroup are happy too, as it quickly turns out that Don Pedro has wooed on his friend's behalf, and successfully Soon there will be a wedding between Claudio and Hero

Don Pedro, having listened to Benedick and Beatrice berate each other, suddenly thinks it would be delightful to trick the in love It is quite obvious to everyone that they are actually in love and it is just necessary to find so each to admit it

Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio therefore seize an opportunity when Benedick is within earshot, to pretend they don't know they are being overheard, and to begin a long, circu in love with Benedick and being afraid to show it They say that she may die of it

Benedick is quite incredulous at first, but the three are , and, in his heart, he wants to believe, of course So it coirl die and heher

Next, Beatrice , Ursula, will talk in the garden and Beatrice will be lured there to overhear the that the talk will be in a shady place where the plants

Forbid the sun to enter-like favorites,

Made proud by princes, that advance their pride,

Against that power that bred it,

- Act III, scene i, lines 9-11

Considering the year in which the play ritten, this sounds like an une I-120), who had been the favorite of Queen Elizabeth and as now falling out of favor and taking it hard Soon he was to atteainst the Queen and be beheaded for his pains

Shakespeare was patronized by Essex and was surely sye I-119) In fact, there is every reason to suppose he did not forgive Elizabeth for executing the Earl, and when Queen Elizabeth died he re spitefully noted by the poet Henry Chettle, rote an elegy in the dead monarch's honor

And yet here is this passage in Much Ado About Nothing We ht suppose that Shakespeare, not one to risk his neck, or his living either, fearful that his connection with Essex e as an indication of disapproval of Essex Such an indication ht side and out of trouble

The girls' stratagem works and Beatrice is tricked into love out of pity, just as Benedick was

they that touch pitch

Everything is going better and better, but there is Don John even yet His earlier bit ofmore effective His companion, Borachio, has an idea Why not fras so that he hiaret at Hero'sDon Pedro and Claudio will be allowed to overhear and be ht behavior who bestows her favors on anyone

This vile plot is carried through offstage and works, but almost at once the nemesis of the plotters appears in the shape of coe with every sentence

Their chief is Dogberry, epito to make an arrest only if there is no risk in it Thus, when asked by a watchberry prudently says:

Truly, by your office you may;

but I think they that touch pitch will be defiled

- Act III, scene iii, lines 57-58

The proverb is biblical; at least it occurs in the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (13:1), where it is written: "He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith," an analogy that warns against evil companionship

a true drunkard

Torn watchmen remain behind and al successfully carried through the plot, is bubbling over with glee because he has earned a thousand ducats from Don John as a result Borachio says to Conrade:

Stand thee close then under this penthouse

for it drizzles rain, and I will,

like a true drunkard, utter all to thee

- Act III, scene iii, lines 104-6

It is to be presuonese and speak Spanish Shakespeare makes no point of it in the play but Bora-chio's reference to hi, since the Spanish word borracho means just that

god Bel's priests

Borachio is triumphant over the ease hich appearance was h hiets-changing fashion Borachio denounces fashion formankind ridiculous:

So them

like Pharaoh's soldiers in the reechy [grimy]

painting, sood Bel's priests in the old church ,

sometimes like the shaven Hercules in the smirched worm-eaten tapestry

- Act III, scene iii, lines 134-38

The new fashions only succeed, in other words, in ures so that those fashions don't even have the virtue of being really new

The reference to "Bel's priests" brings in another apocryphal book of the Bible In this case it is Bel and the Dragon, in which the prophet Daniel proved to King Cyrus of Persia that the idol Bel was merely an inanimate object The priests of Bel pretended that the idol consuht to it by the faithful each day, and Daniel showed that it was the priests themselves who ate and drank

Count Comfect

The watchberry's caution and, like valiant berry and his chief assistant, the aged Verges, go to Leonato to acquaint hihter Between their wordiness and Leonato's haste to be on with the wedding preparations, coht to have been scotched, is not

At the wedding ceremony, Claudio, in the most brutalher of immorality Sadly, Don Pedro confirms this

Leonato is half convinced, Benedick is puzzled and confused, and Hero faints Beatrice, of course, is instantly and entirely on the side of Hero

The Friar, who had been perforests (very much in the manner of Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet) that the fahtened out Her supposed death will produce remorse in Claudio and Don Pedro and make them the readier to accept her innocence if the evidence points to it; while if she turns out to be really guilty, her supposed death would hide her shame and make it easier to have her quietly put in a nunnery

Beatrice, furious, is in no ations She wants direct action Poor Benedick, confessing his love for her, can scarcely get tords out at a ties her contempt for Don Pedro and Claudio She says:

Princes and counties!

Surely, a princely testioodly count

Count Coallant surely!

- Act IV, scene i, lines 313-15

"Comfect" is candy (as in ourat the fault irl so cruelly

Beatrice has only one small demand of Benedict; that he kill Claudio Benedick doesn't want to, but he cannot stand against Beatrice's ie Claudio

a calf's head and a capon

Quietly Benedick challenges Claudio to a duel, out of the hearing of Don Pedro Claudio, however, can scarcely take his old, bantering friend seriously He insists on thinking it is some sort of joke and says to Don Pedro (who has overheard the conversation i invited to dinner):

he hath bid me to a calf's head and a capon;

the which if I do not carve most curiously,

say ht

Shall I not find a woodcock, too?

- Act V, scene i, lines 153-56

They are all items of food; but calves, capons, and woodcocks are all co if Benedick is advancing sori Claudio un the service of Don Pedro

The plot is breaking down, however Not only does Benedick inform Don Pedro that his brother, Don John, has fled Messina (a suspicious act made necessary, presumably, by the arrest of Conrade and Borachio), but the foolish Dogberry has ed to extract a confession from the villains

When the truth is out, Don Pedro and Claudio are prostrate with reuilt Leonato demands a simple recompense; that Claudio marry a niece of his that looks very much like the supposedly dead Hero In deep contrition, Claudio agrees at once, and, of course, the "niece" turns out to be Hero herself All are reconciled, right down to Claudio and Benedick

all Europa

Now it is Benedick's turn He will ers of the horns of cuckoldry after all Claudio laughingly says:

Tush, fear not, old,

And all Europa shall rejoice at thee,

As once Europa did at lusty Jove

When he would play the noble beast in love

- Act V, scene iv, lines 44-47

There is a play on words here between Europa,the continent of Europe, and Europa, the princess whoe I-44)

in a consumption

It comes out now that both Beatrice and Benedick had fallen in love because each had been told the other was lovesick, but it no longer :

Coht,

I take thee for pity

- Act V, scene iv, lines 92-93

And Beatrice answers (as usual) with interest:

by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion,

and partly to save your life, for

I was told you were in a consumption

- Act V, scene iv, lines 94-96

With that, they kiss and are clearly blissfully happy And we e will stay happy too No doubt the "ue will continue to have the better of it, but what of that?

After all, "Beatrice" means "she who makes happy" and "Benedick" means "blessed," and Shakespeare could not have chosen those names accidentally Beatrice will make Benedick happy and he will be blessed in her

The play ends with the news that Don John has been caught, but punish will interfere with the gaiety of the end