It’s Not Love, It’s Just Straight:
Marriage and Homosexual Anxieties in Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing has garnered a reputation as one of Shakespeare’s most lighthearted and romantic comedies; the spunky duo, Beatrice and Benedick, steal the show with their lovable bickering and tension, which is resolved by the closing curtain, as they are duped into marriage by their friends’ meddling hijinks. However, the dynamics between Beatrice and Benedick, as well as the circumstances leading up to their eventual marriage, leave a great deal of room for doubt as to the viability of their relationship and the motivation of the pairing, suggesting that this ending might not be as unproblematic as it may seem. This paper looks critically at the circumstances and motivation for the relationship, as well as the influence of social pressure and the opinions of Beatrice and Benedick’s friends on the ultimate pairing, to explore the ways in which this ending is not entirely happy. Ultimately, he pairing off of couples in Much Ado About Nothing is not about love and friendship, but about conformity, heteronormativity, and the enforcement of social norms in order to punish those who threaten the social order; The plots to pair up Beatrice and Benedick despite their firm protestations that they are not interested in marriage reflect an anxiety about homosexual bonds as a threat to the heteronormative social order, and the importance of the contract of marriage as a means to enforce the social order, revealing the possibility that the marriage in the end is not a celebration of love, but triumph of social pressure over the threats of homosexuality.
Marriage and Social Order
It is important to note that, rather than being framed in terms of love, the driving motivation in this play is marriage; the institution of marriage permeates the plot and structure of the play, so that it is ultimately not about any one relationship that the audience can root for, but about overcoming threats to the social order through enforced heterosexuality and marriage. This speaks to the anxieties in Europe at the time of the play’s original performance, in which marriage was seen as the crux of social order and harmony. In her political essay, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought,” Mary Lyndon Shanely outlines the political importance of marriage and family to social order around Shakespeare’s time, and even after. Harmony, it was thought, could only exist through adherence to strict social hierarchies, in which husbands ruled over wives as a king rules over his subjects (Shanely, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract” 79). In fact, popular opinion ruled that “most mischiefs that now infest or seize upon mankind” could be caused by the disruption of the hierarchical family unit produced by heterosexual marriage contract (Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory 514, quoted by Shanely 79).
This anxiety persists in Much Ado About Nothing, in which most of the characters conspire to overcome these anxieties about social order and conformity through the enforcement of heterosexuality and marriage bonds. This fear of existence outside of heterosexuality and adherence to the marriage contract is present, not only in the plot, but is built into the very structure of the play. It is interesting to note, for instance, the famously ill-motivated villain of the play, Don John the Bastard, who is committed to the breakup of a heterosexual pairing, with seemingly little motivation beyond his own evil. In his book Loveand Society in Shakespearean Comedy, Richard A. Levin aptly points out that Don John’s “self proclaimed dedication to virtue” leads to his lack of “roundness as a character; he is less likely to be seen as a product of society and a reflection of its faults” (86). The flatness of Don John’s character gives us, the audience, little information about him or his motivation, presenting the most important aspects of his character to be limited to two traits: he is evil, and he is a bastard. This implicitly leads us to infer causation between the two. Don John, in this reading, is more of a symbol than he is a truly rounded character. He is the structurally necessary evil, a symbol of the wickedness of that which exists outside the bonds of marriage and conformity. Although Don John’s antics, which do not interact much with Beatrice and Benedick’s plot line, will not be the subject of this paper, it is important to recognize the myriad ways in which the dichotomies of evil and virtue function in this play, as they hinge on the structures of marriage and heterosexuality. The anxieties about the possible queerness of Beatrice and Benedick as a threat to the social order are built into the very bones of this play, which tell us from the very beginning that transgressions outside of the heterosexual marriage contract can result in senseless evil and destruction.
Queering Beatrice and Benedick
With these anxieties in mind, Beatrice and Benedick are immediately presented as problem characters, because of their firm protestations that they do not want to get married, as well as the possibilities for queer readings of both characters. As Levin points out, at the opening of the play, all of the characters are preoccupied with the idea of marriage, recognizing that “the time to marry has arrived in Messina” (Levin 93). In response to this social pressure, which infects the mindsets of all of the characters, as marriage is presented as a community ritual, Beatrice and Benedick immediately pose a problem. Both adamantly proclaim their aversion to the boundaries and confines of marriage, quickly upon their introduction.
However, the problem here lies, not only in their aversion to marriage, but in the queer coding of the particular ways in which they object to marriage; for both Beatrice and Benedick, the desire to stay single is related to and dependent on the influence of gender, and aversion to the opposite sex, and their deep connections to same sex characters. For example, Benedick does not only object to his own potential marriage, but also to the marriage of his male companions, with whom he forms extremely strong bonds. Rather than having a steady group of friends, Benedick tends to cycle through intense relationships with male companions, as Beatrice observes when she says, “Who is his companion now? He / hath every month a new sworn brother” (Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing I.i.68-9). Playfully mocking him, Beatrice’s use of the term “companion” here shows recognition of the strength of these male bonds and the queer potential of the relationship. This reading is further underscored by Benedick’s devastated reaction to Claudio’s interest in marriage, as he says, “But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, do you?” (Much Ado I.i.187-88). Benedick is not only highly invested in his own bachelor status, but it is crucial to him that his male companion also scorn female commitment and companionship.
Beatrice’s aversion to marriage is similar queer coded, dependent on gender dynamics and underscored by the queerness of her character, which chafes against the connections of the heterosexual, cis-normative social order. Beatrice’s aversion to married life hinges on her rejection of men. One of her first announcements of her independence proclaims, “I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow / than a man swear he loves me” (Much Ado I.i.129-30). She does not scorn love in general, but specifically the love of any man. This harsh denouncement of men in general is repeated several times throughout the first two acts, during which she consistently and unwaveringly affirms that there is no man who could suit her in response to the other characters persistently pressuring her into marriage, and suggesting that she may eventually meet a man she will want as a husband. One such instance is when Beatrice says:
He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he
That hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is
More than a youth is not for me, and he that is less
Than a man, I am not for him (Much Ado II.i.36-39)
In this riddle-like quotation, Beatrice deftly counters any suggestion that she may have just not found the right man yet through her rejection of all men based on their relationship to their male-ness. The easy translation of this proclamation is simply that all men fall into one category of the other, both of which are displeasing to her, and so there is no man that would satisfy her. However, the choice to define these categories by their relationship to beards, a distinctly make trait, suggests that it is not intimacy, love or partnership that she rejects, but specifically, the heterosexual affection of men through marriage.
Additionally, Beatrice’s character is further problematized by the queerness of her place within gender dynamics, in which she refuses to conform to the heterosexual, cis-normative sexism that the community seems to champion by comparing herself to men, emphasizing her most “male” traits, and inserting herself into male-dominated spaces. For example, she defends her choice not to marry by asserting that if she dies, and goes to Hell, as unmarried maidens are said to do, the devil will redirect her up to Heaven “where the bachelors sit / and there [they] will live merry all day long” ((Much Ado II.i.48-49) By counting herself among the bachelors, Beatrice is not only pointing out the sexism of this double standard, but also threatening the strict identity categories of the male/female binary. This disruption of gender roles, and therefore, of the structure of heterosexual hierarchy, drives most of Beatrice’s dialogue, as she uses her wit to perform characteristically masculine traits and invade typically male dominated social and intellectual spaces in what Carol Cook, in her paper “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor’: Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado About Nothing,” calls her “phallic wit.” Cook points out the ways in which Beatrice rejects the stereotypically feminine qualities of silence and politeness and instead adopts a manner which infringes on the territory of male dominance. This transgression further queers her character in terms of both gender and sexual agency, thus making her even more of a threat to the social order, motivating the community desire to put her in her place through marriage.
Manipulation and Conformity in Compulsive Heterosexuality
The eventual union of Beatrice and Benedick, therefore, is not as good natured and lighthearted as it may originally seem, but is instead, an attempt to use social pressure to rectify the threats that their queerness sets to the social order. Ann Pellegrini picks up on the controlling nature of this scheme when she remarks that “Benedick and Beatrice find themselves ensnared in the marriage plottings of a larger social world that would teach them the value of the marriage bed. This is ultimately no sporting matter” (Pelligrini “Closing Ranks, Keeping Company: Marriage Plots and the Will to be Single in Much Ado About Nothing 251). Although the choice to try to get Beatrice and Benedick together is presented by Don Pedro as an innocent way to pass the time, and make the two realize their love for one another, the pernicious role of gossip, and the threat of intense social pressure and judgement reveal this plan to be much higher stakes.
While the plan does seem to work on the surface level, with both Beatrice and Benedick agreeing to take on the role that their friends laid out for them by proclaiming their love for the other, both characters, significantly, frame their declarations of love in terms of social pressure, emphasizing the fact that this shift in dynamics is in direct response to the pressure being placed on them, and not internally motivated. Benedick, upon hearing the Prince saying that Beatrice is heartbroken as a result of her love for Benedick, says that her love “must be requited” (Much Ado II.iii.227), framing his love for her in terms of a duty needing to be fulfilled, rather that love freely felt, and worries about how he appears socially: “They / say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her...I must not seem proud” (Much Ado II.iii.227-231). This soliloquy, in which we see Benedick come to terms with his inevitable marriage, a great deal more emphasis is given to the thoughts and feelings of the gossipers laying the plot, and to his own social appearance, than to Benedick and Beatrice’s actual existing relationship, illustrating the role of conformity and social pressure on the relationship.
In a parallel scene, Beatrice concedes to requite Benedick’s love after hearing a condemnation of her own subversive nature, with a monologue which is similarly preoccupied with image and social pressure. Knowing that she is overhearing, Hero does not only describe Benedick’s love for Beatrice, but berates Beatrice for the ways in which she defies the social order, saying
Nature never framed a woman’s heart
of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice...
She cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared (Much Ado III.i.51-58)
This assessment in itself is enough to suggest that this plot is more sinister than it is well meaning. Claiming to be working for her friend’s best interest, Hero is unnecessarily vitriolic in her accusations against Beatrice’s character, suggesting that she is taking this as an opportunity, not only to rectify Beatrice’s independence by pushing her towards marriage, but also to punish her for her other transgressions against the social order. The focus of Beatrice’s soliloquy at the end of this scene suggests that it is this harsh condemnation from her beloved Hero, which motivates Beatrice to change her demeanor and submit to marriage, rather than any love for Benedick, as she says,
Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand (Much Ado III.i.113-117)
As in Benedick’s soliloquy, the focus is less on the subject and more on the self and the spectators. Beatrice is shocked and distressed to learn that her trusted friend sees her in such a negative light, and condemns her for her pride and scorn. Rather than declaring her love for Benedick in this scene, she focuses more on rejecting these aspects of her herself. Thus, the beginning of this relationship is framed in terms of sacrifice and loss. It is this negative judgement from Hero which seems to prompt Beatrice to change her ways and conform to heterosexual expectations, to which Benedick is simply an accessory, rather than a catalyst.
An Unsustainable Dynamic and an Unhappy Bond
This hesitance and artifice of this relationship, manufactured by outsiders in order to maintain social order, results in a relationship that is ultimately unsustainable, as evidenced by the tumultuous nature of Beatrice and Benedick’s interactions even after they are supposedly at peace with one another and have conceded to the inevitability of marriage. For example, the very first conversation they have after declaring their love for one another, the interaction almost immediately devolves into conflict once again, disrupted, significantly, by the strength of each person’s intense commitment to their same sex companions. Upon assuming the positions of the heterosexual couple, Benedick tells Beatrice, “Come, bid me do any thing for thee” (Much Ado IV.i.302), but refuses when the one thing that Beatrice wants is for him to kill Claudio.
Beatrice, who, throughout the play has coveted the social position of men, responds to the love of a man by immediately attempting to harness his power for herself, as a way to speak up for and protect the woman she loves. She asks this of Benedick, not out of a desire for him to prove himself to her, but out of her love for Hero; she wants him to act where she cannot, saying, “[Claudio] hath slandered, scorned, dishonored my kinswoman? O / that I were a man...I would eat his heart / in the market-place” (Much Ado IV.i.316-320).
Benedick however, immediately nullifies his promise that he would do anything for her by refusing the first things she asks of him; he cannot prove his love to her by fulfilling her request because of his love for Claudio. While it is true that this may be an unreasonably violent request, in the context of this fairly disturbing comedy, with Hero’s life on the line, it would not be outside the realm of possibility were it not for Benedick’s intense love for Claudio. Although Benedick tries to play the role of the straight husband, who will do anything for his wife, he cannot sacrifice his same-sex bonds for Beatrice. Thus, the relationship is then disrupted by their conflicting commitments to their same-sex companions, the intensity of which outweighs their commitment to each other.
Although they find a compromise to circumvent this issue, they are still not able to settle into a healthy relationship with one another; the tenuousness of their bond is revealed once again in the very last scene. In this scene, in which Benedick has already declared his intentions to marry Beatrice, their uncertainty is revealed once again, as each is not willing to admit that they love the other. They each reveal that they heard through the orchestrators of this trick that the other was “sick” or “well nigh dead” with love for the other (Much Ado V.iv.84-85), emphasizing again, the feelings of social pressure and personal sacrifice which characterize their relationship. This uncertainty is left largely unresolved: Claudio and Hero step in to combat this threat to harmony once again, saying that each had written letters about the other, although little detail or attention is afforded to this development. However, they continue to fight against it until the very last minute, in which Benedick “stop[s] [Beatrice’s] mouth” with a kiss (Much Ado V.iv.102). This ending, while potentially humorous, also leaves much of the issues of the relationship unaddressed and unresolved with a performative act of heterosexuality.
Thus, while harmony is restored through the enactment of the marriage, the abruptness of this solution, and the lingering conflict suggest that marriage is used to temporarily silence these issues, rather than resolve them, pointing toward the probability that a toxic and tumultuous marriage await Beatrice and Benedick after the curtain call. This uncertainty, seen with an understanding of the social pressure and queer punishment which lead to the relationship in the first place, illuminates a much darker reading of this play, driven, not by love and good natured meddling, but by compulsive heterosexuality, social punishment, and a fear of social and sexual transgression.
Works Cited
Cook, Carol. “‘The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor’: Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado about Nothing.” Pmla, vol. 101, no. 2, 1986, p. 186., doi:10.2307/462403.
Levin, Richard. Love and Society in Shakespearean Comedy: a Study of Dramatic Form and Content. Newark: Delaware U.P., 1986.
Pellegrini, Ann. “Closing Ranks, Keeping Company: Marriage Plots and the Will to Be Single in Much Ado About Nothing.” In Shakesqueer: a Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon, 244–55. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A Mowat, and Paul Werstine. Much Ado About Nothing. Washington Square Press new Folger Library trade pbk. ed. New York: Washington Square Press, 2005. Print.
Shanley, M. L. “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1979, pp. 79–91., doi:10.1177/106591297903200108.