09/15/05

Analysis #1

Violent Imagery

            Throughout William Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing, complex metaphors using violent language are often used. This type of language is used to accentuate conflicts between characters and reminds us that war was a part of life not only for the characters of the play, but also for the seventeenth century audience that first saw it.

            Images of battle are frequently used to accentuate confrontations between characters in the play. Right from the start it is clear there is battle between Beatrice and Benedick. Leonato verbalizes this by explaining that “There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her [Beatrice]. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (I.i.57). Beatrice and Benedick’s first couple of encounters in the play are undeniably executed blow for blow much like that of a well planned fist fight. In fact Beatrice gives insight to their “… last conflict, [in which] four of his five wits went halting off ” (I.i.61). Benedick latter on refers to Beatrice “…huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs” (II.i.234).

            Having this well planned battle of words is in the interest of both the audiences’ entertainment and accentuating through visual imagery that there is a painful confrontation between these two characters. Through this violent exchange Shakespeare achieves the effect that these two characters are in fact inflicting physical wounds on each other as in war or in battle without them literally coming to blows.

            Another example of this type of language serving a better illustration than actual violence would is when Beatrice wish’s that she were a man so she could kill Claudio and screams to Benedick that “…Oh, God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace” (IV.i.304). Shakespeare has achieved the effect of a woman in battle inflicting wounds without the consequences of a physical confrontation. 

            This type of violent imagery in the play also signifies and serves as a reminder to the audience that these men have recently returned from war. When Don Pedro asks Claudio “Runs not this speech like iron through your blood” (V.i.239). He is in fact saying that hearing this news is like being run through with a sword. Language involving battle wounds is familiar to these men and it seems in character that soldiers would use war metaphors as they have returned home from war at the beginning of the play.

            Violent metaphors in Much Ado About Nothing signify the fact that the world these characters lived in was a violent one. The world of the Englishmen who first saw it was also filled with war, as very close to home England was involved in bloody war with Ireland and in many conquests over seas. These war metaphors serve chiefly to heighten and accentuate conflicts, in a familiar way, between the characters of the play.