How Has Benedick’s Language Changed in Much Ado About Nothing? How Does This Affect the Way the Audience Would Perceive His Outlook?

771 Words4 Pages
In Act 2 Scene 3, Don Pedro and Claudio are well aware that Benedick is hiding and listening to the conversation, so they speak poetic blank verse which is suitable for the love obsessed characters which they are pretending to be. The audience may find this funny, and Shakespeare has included this impersonation to create a comedic effect. Until Act 2 Scene 3, Benedick is presented to the audience as a man who is clearly in love, but very much in denial. His apparent misogyny and unwillingness to make a commitment to a woman are almost stereotypes near the beginning of the play. His use of language, especially in his "merry war" with Beatrice, prevents him from being the clichéd male who refuses to commit to a relationship. Benedick suggests constantly his views that he will not fall in love ‘I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster, but I’ll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool: one woman is fair, yet I am well’ suggests that he is being very stubborn and will not open up about love at all. Until he falls in love, he says, he’ll never be a fool, like the people who’ve already fallen in love. The audience will perceive Benedick as very fussy, and maybe a bit arrogant. He says that ‘till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not be in my grace,’ which the audience may perceive as Benedick being very particular about his choice of women. ‘Her hair shall be of what colour it please God’ suggesting that Benedick does not want to have anything to do with loving a woman, and therefore influencing her decisions. This could also be interpreted as Benedick being very indignant because he has been hurt by love before and there for is quite vulnerable in the sense he does not want to let his guard down. The audience perceive his outlook as slightly weary and nervous to fall into love again, and he

More about How Has Benedick’s Language Changed in Much Ado About Nothing? How Does This Affect the Way the Audience Would Perceive His Outlook?

Open Document