The real battle is between unthinking patriarchy and the apparently irrational, instinctive female loyalty embodied by Beatrice. The evidence of their own eyes seems to favor Claudio and Don Pedro. Leonato impulsively takes their side against his daughter. Beatrice’s instinctive refusal to believe them is based on something truer than the evidence: she has a genuine capacity to know—to note—those around her. She knows Hero. When Benedick joins her, it’s not so much a resolution of a battle between the sexes as a union between two people who, through allowing themselves to be genuinely and fully known by each other, have the capacity to know those around them.
There is clearly a history between Beatrice and Benedick that has taken place before the play starts. Is that something you explored in rehearsal?
Elliott: We were interested in all the characters wearing metaphorical masks and creating unrealistic images of themselves, but Beatrice and Benedick specifically seemed to exist under a very polished veneer. They live carefully guarded lives, which they have cultivated—always resorting to making people laugh rather than letting anyone in. Of course, this changes during the play through the power of their love and the shock of what happens to Hero. As for their history, we felt there would be no reason for them to hate each other unless they’ve been burnt by each other before. There would be no reason for them to keep touting their rather vain “joker” images of themselves if they weren’t trying to cover up something vulnerable inside—and/or trying to control everyone and everything around them.
Hytner: It’s essential to create a past for Beatrice and Benedick. We agreed on a very specific history—not something that we intended to be legible to the audience, but a foundation for the palpable pain that they cause each other by being in each other’s presence. Our assumption was that at some stage Beatrice read their deepening friendship as blossoming love; that she pushed too hard and that Benedick did a runner. Benedick, we assumed, was a greater coward than Beatrice. And the memory is still raw. These secret histories are essential actors’ tools. They played their first exchange in Act 1 Scene 1 (“nobody marks you”; “Are you yet living?”) not as a public performance but away from the crowd, a private acknowledgment of the disdain that masks deep hurt.
It’s a commonplace that Shakespeare’s marriages seem very often to be built on shaky foundations, and that Beatrice and Benedick make the marriage most likely to succeed in all of his plays. Essential, therefore, that both actors convey that they know the worst about each other and marry because of it, not in spite of it. Zoë Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale were in an established tradition of middle-aged Beatrices and Benedicks: people who have lived, failed, resigned themselves to loneliness and, through a genuine sense of each other in the round (prompted admittedly by a trick), become capable of the compromise that long-lasting relationships require.
Did you find there were some key shifts in the balance of power between them? The “Kill Claudio” moment’s a crucial one, isn’t it?
Elliott: Yes, it is a crucial moment. It’s difficult to do nowadays as it can engender a giggly, slightly embarrassed reaction in the audience because it is so surprising and so extreme. But Beatrice is very much a product of where she comes from. She’s an incredibly strong, strident woman, but she is living in a patriarchal, warlike world where the men are fighters and their enemies are very real and immediate. She wants Benedick to be a man of action, to stop all his talk and do something about the horrendous situation.
It’s also a test, of course, because although she really does believe that Claudio should be exterminated Mafia-style, she is pushing Benedick to the limit, to see how far and how deep this newly professed love for her is. She’s been hurt by him before, don’t forget. Of course, in this moment the lady takes all the power. Benedick has to perform a very difficult (nearly impossible) task to win her.
6. Simon Russell Beale as Benedick and Zoë Wanamaker as Beatrice argue as intellectual equals in Nicholas Hytner’s 2007 National Theatre production.
Generally, we found that Benedick and Beatrice were constantly looking for the upper hand. We explored that in our production by having them always playing to the crowd. Whichever of them had the joke that got the biggest reaction had the power and the control. That reinforced their image, their veneer of being the sophisticated, witty one who could bring the other down with a damning look or word. Beatrice won these subtle little wars quite a lot, we found! But this habit of theirs is a hard one to crack, even at the end of the play!
Hytner: We were less interested in shifts in the balance of power than in their uncovering of themselves to each other. Beatrice is plainly wittier than Benedick—she gets the better of him through most of the banter. But they share a way of looking at the world even before they declare themselves to each other. The banter is a way of avoiding the truth.
“Kill Claudio” is so shockingly truthful that it always gets a laugh—in recognition, I think, of how desperately helpless a man like Benedick is bound to be in the face of such raw hatred. It’s tricky (and critically de trop) to make these sorts of judgment about fictional characters, but it’s worth saying that Benedick is a man of unusual integrity, a good man. Beatrice is also good—a loyal cousin and a caring niece. Her murderousness is the consequence of her love for Hero—evidence, if any were needed, of how deeply she is capable of loving. Audiences laugh because they expect Benedick to be comically wrong-footed. (There’s a need to release tension too.) The play’s most striking reversal of expectation is Benedick’s agreement to challenge Claudio. He must know that he hasn’t got a chance. Claudio is set up from the start of the play as a demon soldier. Opinions vary about Benedick, but you’re inclined to believe Don Pedro when he accuses him of “Christian-like fear.” So, for love of Beatrice, and out of an altruistic dismay at the injustice done to Hero, Benedick embarks on a journey that could end in his death. Simon Russell Beale took this entirely seriously. Zoë Wanamaker slowly realized the magnitude of his sacrifice.
The Hero–Claudio story line is often overshadowed by the Beatrice–Benedick one, isn’t it? Berlioz left it out of his operatic version altogether! Did you find ways of keeping it whole, giving due weight to the “romantic” lovers? Especially tough with Hero, maybe, since she has so few lines?
Elliott: It’s crucial to the story that Hero is a virginal, pure, straightforward, obedient girl but, of course, this does not have the same meaning for a modern audience. It’s also crucial that Claudio’s character undergoes a massive turnaround on just a couple of lines. His sense of “honor” (a very important theme in the whole play) is upturned. His cruel and shocking behavior toward Hero in the church when he tries to protect his “honor” is finally seen as the most dishonorable thing of all. Again, a man’s honor and reputation doesn’t mean the same thing now. Hence the importance of setting the production in a place and period where all this is still very much alive.
We tried to serve the through-lines of Hero and Claudio honestly. While Hero does have quite a wicked sense of humor—because Beatrice is her mate she can have moments where her sense of humor is quite sharp—she also has to truly believe that being a virgin and being a young, pure, inexperienced woman who obeys her father and then her husband is what you should aspire to. I think Beatrice has slightly different opinions about that! Beatrice was older than Hero in our production. As Hero was very young we tried to show how she starts to learn about men as things happen to her. Claudio’s repentance is a genuine one, or so we tried to convey; it is so deeply felt that, in a play where the gift of articulacy is rewarded, he simply can’t find the words to express his shame.
The main characters are definitely Beatrice and Benedick; they’re the most complex characters. Claudio and Hero are much more straightforward because they haven’t had the experience of life that the other two have had. Shakespeare has less fun with them!
Hytner: But isn’t that the point? Hero and Claudio are barely allowed by the playwright to talk to each other. They plainly don�
��t get to know each other. Claudio gets an unfairly bad rap for making sure that Hero is Leonato’s heir before he proposes. But he’s making a conventional, sensible marriage. The problem is that although they’re clearly attracted to each other, neither he nor Hero bother to note each other.
I’m very taken by the puns in the title of the play. “Nothing”—no thing (slang for “vagina”). “Noting”—the Elizabethan pronunciation of “nothing.” The third is the most important. The failure to note properly, to look properly, to listen properly is what the play’s about. It’s there from the start: Antonio, Borachio, Leonato, Benedick, Beatrice, Don Pedro and, most disastrously, Claudio (at Hero’s window) are among those who get it wrong. The main plot (Hero–Claudio) is about the terrible consequences of not looking, not engaging. It’s about the folly of an attraction that is conventional and skin-deep. The Beatrice–Benedick plot is about two people who love, warts and all. The great heart-stopper (“I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?”) is moving because it acknowledges both an evident truth and the genuine strangeness not of a coup de foudre (happens all the time, rarely meaningful, not particularly strange) but of their capacity to love without narcissism. They have discovered how to look, to know, to note the other and love the other, not as a projection of romantic perfection, but for who the other actually is. And how strange for Benedick to find himself not ambushed by passion but overwhelmed by the gradual realization that he’s found the courage to love, and to say it. Hero and Claudio are age-appropriate, class-appropriate, and good-looking. It’s not enough. Beatrice and Benedick are more than intellectual equals. They become capable of being truly vulnerable to each other (Benedick: “And how do you?” Beatrice: “Very ill too.” Benedick: “Serve God, love me and mend”). Claudio and Hero never get beyond conventional pleasantries (“Lady, as you are mine, I am yours”).
Their relative callowness is the point. That doesn’t mean that the actors playing them should patronize them. Nor is it good enough to write Claudio off as irredeemable. He falls for a stupid trick and he behaves with naked aggression at the wedding. But so do all the other men on stage apart from Benedick. Claudio isn’t alone in his failure to note properly, and although it’s Hero who suffers the worst consequences of an arrogant impulsiveness that seems to be the hallmark of masculinity, Claudio is at least given an opening to grow up.
Berlioz wasn’t the first (or last) great artist to love Shakespeare to death. He wrote about Shakespeare better than he set him to music. Béatrice et Bénédict isn’t the worst Shakespeare opera (far too much competition), but he blundered badly by cutting the main plot. There is terrific satisfaction in watching an unsatisfactory relationship fall apart, and it’s tantalizing to sniff the possibility that they may be able to start again on a firmer footing.
Your actresses must have particularly enjoyed the women-only scenes, such as the one with Margaret and Ursula before the wedding?
Elliott: No, they found them really difficult! Particularly the gulling scene that comes after the men’s and has so much pressure on it to be funny. The scene before the wedding is quite fun, though, as the women get a chance to shine a little because they’re alone and Beatrice is ill. But there aren’t long and interesting through-lines for Margaret and Ursula in the play. They generally have very little to say.
Hytner: You’re right. They did.
Are Don John and Borachio simply Machiavellian characters, or did you find a different explanation for their actions?
Elliott: I thought Don John was understandably bereaved. For me he was a Che Guevara–type figure, which fitted with our setting the play in 1950s Cuba. He was absolutely antiestablishment and therefore unfairly treated. I did feel very passionately that in our production Don John and Borachio should have reasons for doing the things that they were doing. On a larger level, this society needs to change, and if it weren’t for characters like Don John and Borachio then there would be nothing to unsettle the status quo. We had Borachio be in love with Hero. When he sees Claudio, the new young celebrity of the war, suddenly win Hero, with everyone’s vocal approval, then he wants to exact revenge on him. He takes his plan to Don John, who would do anything to hurt his brother’s regime.
Hytner: It’s not unusual for Shakespeare to be compact in his writing of a character and to leave the actors to fill in the gaps. Imagine a draft of the play that fleshed out Don John, explored his inner life, and spent valuable stage time providing him with a history that motivated his malevolence. A decent director would reach immediately for the blue pencil. Shakespeare always knows where his plays give off heat and where they don’t, where it’s worth hanging around and where it’s best to move on. There’s too much else of interest in Much Ado to make more space for Don John.
So he gives the actors the responsibility to ground Don John and Borachio in emotional reality. A convincing performance gives an impression of psychological truth that may be missing in the text. Don John is plainly jealous of Claudio, resentful of his relationship with Don Pedro, and as Iago hates Cassio for the daily beauty in his life, so Don John hates Claudio for being the most popular officer in the mess. Andrew Woodall decided that Don John had once made a pass at Claudio, and that Claudio had brusquely rejected it. That appealed to me: it felt right that Don John was eaten up with self-loathing and fury that he’d allowed Claudio to note him. There’s no particular textual evidence for this—but it allowed the actor to give emotional flesh where the playwright has provided a functional theatrical skeleton.
Dogberry: a difficult balancing act between, on the one hand, the plodding mind and the mixed-up words, and, on the other hand, the goodness of heart and the part played in exposing the plot?
Elliott: He’s meant to be a funny character and funny characters in Shakespeare have their pressures, because there are often a lot of colloquialisms or period references that don’t mean anything today. He’s muddled and probably uneducated but trying to create an important image of himself. Because he gets it wrong, it’s recognizably comical—hopefully. But in other ways he’s the play’s true hero. His actions again subvert the idea of what is “honorable.” He has a clear sense of right and wrong.
Hytner: So find a good actor.
Seventy percent prose and only 30 percent verse: unusual proportions for Shakespeare. Did that make a difference to your language work with the actors?
Elliott: Shakespeare chooses such amazing words and creates such extraordinary images that unless you get behind exactly what they are, it can seem senseless. He does, however, give you little clues all the time; in the alliteration, in the sound of a word when spoken, in the meter, in the visualization of the image—all things that take a bit of time to really understand. Each word is like its own delectable sweet! But you can’t stress everything. Working at the RSC, you have a lot of experts on hand to help you. We had about two weeks at the beginning of rehearsal just exploring Shakespeare’s writing before we even started on the play.
Hytner: Not really. The rhetorical patterns of Shakespeare’s prose are often tricky. Prose is generally longer-winded than verse, and sometimes knotted and obscure. But the intellectual, emotional, and imaginative challenges are the same.
Hero’s return: a neat trick for which we’re well prepared, and yet isn’t there some element of magical resurrection about it—one thinks back to the Alcestis of Euripides and forward to the revival of Hermione’s statue in The Winter’s Tale? The problem, though, is Claudio’s rather grudging participation?
Elliott: We didn’t treat it as particularly magical because the audience are told beforehand that it’s going to happen. Because they are better informed than Claudio, you don’t see it as a piece of magic but more as a trick on him. What I was interested in doing was subverting what the society was about. Claudio started to understand that women weren’t necessarily either icons or whores; he started to understand that there was much more complexity to it, and that what he had done was a horrific crime that
had led to somebody’s death. When Hero returned, I brought out all the girls wearing Virgin Mary masks, so that every time he saw one of them appear he was literally confronted with the Virgin Mary iconography, and had to question quite fundamentally a few things in his culture and religion. He should be grudging at the idea of taking a new wife—if he truly loves his dead Hero. When he discovered that it was Hero resurrected to him, then we tried to make his reaction very celebratory. He picked her up and swung her round. But he’s still learnt a very salutary lesson.
7. Adam Rayner as Claudio confronted by “all the girls wearing Virgin Mary masks” in Marianne Elliott’s 2006 Cuban Much Ado for the RSC.
Hytner: The question rather overlooks the scene at Hero’s fake tomb. Nobody could deny that Claudio’s repentance is underwritten. But whenever Shakespeare calls for music, you know that he recognizes its insidious communicative power. The theatrical potential of the tomb scene is less in its text than in ritual and music. It’s possible to create an event that gives Claudio space for genuine repentance. If Hero witnesses an act of true contrition (Leonato can bring her to watch surreptitiously), the resolution comes more easily.
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