Context

We learn about Benedick before he’s even appeared on stage from what the other characters say about him – we know that he’s a soldier returning from a successful war and we know that he and Beatrice have met before. From her we learn that he’s argumentative and fickle. And once Benedick enters the scene we quickly learn that he’s a notorious flirt, a lothario and resolutely anti-marriage. Upon his arrival Benedick and Beatrice begin a verbal spar almost immediately. They can’t seem to help themselves. The fireworks between them is the stuff dramatic tension is made of. Their competitive one-upping sets us up perfectly for the dramatic irony of the play: they’re perfect for each other but can’t – or won’t – see it. What a feast for the audience. Just prior to this speech, Benedick and Beatrice have danced with each other at the masked ball, however it’s only the men wearing masks. Beatrice speaks candidly to Benedick about not liking him and he is irate.

Original Text

O, she misused me past the endurance of a block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her. My very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She told me – not thinking I had been myself – that I was the prince’s jester, and that I was duller than a great thaw, 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. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her, she would infect to the North Star. I would not marry her, though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed. 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. I would to God some scholar would conjure her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary, and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither: so indeed all disquiet, horror and perturbation follows her.

Unfamiliar Language

Misused – abused
Block – an unsensible thing i.e. something that cannot feel
Visor – mask, he was wearing a mask because they were at a masked ball
Scold – argue with her
Great thaw – the spring, when winter melts away leaving boring wet weather and muddy puddles
Huddling – piling
Poniards – daggers
Terminations – descriptive terms (a Shakespeare-coined word, maybe with the sense of her
terms being very determined because she is opinionated and vocal with her opinions?)
Have turned spit – Beatrice is so overbearing she would even have made Hercules do such a
menial and effeminate task as turning the roasting spit over the fire
Cleft – split
Ate (pronounced ah-tay) – Greek Goddess of discord
Perturbation – great disturbance

Modern Translation

Urgh, she abused me to the point even an inanimate object would have protested. A young oak tree, having been violently attacked like I was, would have found its voice and yelled out. Even the mask I was wearing came to life and was compelled to answer back. She told me, not realising it was me behind the mask, that I was even more boring than wet weather, hurling joke
after joke about me at such speed and volume that it was as if I were a man standing in front of an armed battalion with a target on my head. Her speech stabs like daggers. If her breath were as bad as her language, nothing with a pulse could bear to be near her, she would poison every living thing from pole to pole. I wouldn’t marry her, even if she was as perfect as Adam was before he fell from grace. She could even emasculate a man like Hercules by forcing him into the kitchen and making him chop up his club for firewood. Give it a rest, stop going on about her, she’s nothing but the Goddess of Discord in a disguise of nice clothes. I wish a scholar could exorcise her back to hell, because while she’s here on earth a man may as well go live in hell, a comparative sanctuary, with people sinning on purpose in order to get into hell and away from her: so really she’s turned the world upside down with how disagreeable she is and how much she disturbs everything around her.

Notes on Performance

– Tendency with Benedick to approach it…
– To only know the things you know when you know it – Benedick doesn’t know he’s
secretly in love with Beatrice, he discovers it along with you

Benedick is a funny guy. But it’s always funnier to an audience when he doesn’t know it. There can be a tendency to play Benedick with a knowing smile – as if he already knows how the play’s going to end. But remember the all important dramatic irony. The audience need to know Benedick is head over heels for Beatrice (as she is with him) long before he does. The way he goes on in this speech, after a seemingly throwaway comment from Don Pedro, is delightfully funny for an audience who can see where the play is heading. Enjoy the challenge of finding a new provocation for each line. A new reason to keep talking about her. Make sure you colour the text with images of imagined moments where Beatrice has driven you mad. Make your map through the text as complex as a maze, and then you lessen the risk that you’ll be playing the speech for gags. Audiences are clever and they want to see you really go through it – and that’s a far more enjoyable thing to watch (and perform) than simply clowning.

The post Benedick Monologue (Act 2 Scene 1) appeared first on StageMilk.

Context

The play places Christian righteousness and judicial righteousness on a scale and weights one against the other. But Shakespeare is less interested in determining what’s right and wrong, rather he wants to open a dialogue about judgement, mercy, hypocrisy and morality. It asks if there is a right kind of justice and a wrong kind, and whether seeking justice is always…just (see what I did there). Isabella appeals to Angelo for a second time to retract the harsh sentence on her brother, Claudio. Angelo agrees but only, shockingly, if Isabella agrees to give him her love.

Original Text

To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the self-same tongue
Either of condemnation or approof,
Bidding the law make curtsey to their will,
Hooking both right and wrong to th’appetite,
To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother.
Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour,
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorr’d pollution.
Then, Isabel live chaste, and brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.

Unfamiliar Language

Perilous: Dangerous
Condemnation: Judgement, disapproval
Approof: Approval
Prompture: Prompting, encouragement
Hath: Has
He’ld: He would
Abhorr’d: Abbhorent, disgusting,

Modern Translation

Who can I plead my case to? Who could I explain this to who would believe me?
Urgh, how dangerous are these mouths, like Angelo’s,
That have not one but two tongues in them,
Switching between judgement and approval,
Making the law serve them, rather than the other way around,

And changing their minds on what’s right and wrong depending on what they’re
hungry for on that particular day. I must go to my brother.
Despite him giving in to the temptation of lust and desire,
He’s still a man of unwavering morals,
So much so that if he had the fates of twenty such people hanging in the balance,
that he had to bring judgement upon, he’d sooner give them all up
Rather than allow his sister to lower herself,
By offering her body up to such disgusting filth.
So, I’ll live a virgin, and Claudio, my brother, must die:
I must value my own celibacy more than my brother’s life.
I’ll tell him the bargain Angelo offered me,
And prepare him for the choice we must make – his death, so he can accept his fate.

Notes on Performance

Could there be a more Me Too moment in all of Shakespeare’s cannon than this scene? We now see plainly the hypocrisy in Angelo’s words and ideals, compared with his actions. In the early 1600s, when this play would’ve first been performed at the Globe, the theatre and the sex trades were situated alongside each other on the south side of the Thames. It’s interesting to reflect on, especially in light of the way women have historically been treated in the performing arts (also, alas, just in life). Think
Hollywood’s licentious producers wielding their power and coercing women into believing that their success hinges on a sexual or at the least, a very uncomfortable and disempowering encounter. The line that really rings in my ears is one Angelo delivers just before exiting: ‘Say what you can; my false o’erweighs your true.’ How does this make you feel? Furious? Terrified? Sad? Hysterical? Let those feelings topple you over into the speech.

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Context

The Duke of Vienna fears he’s allowed an epidemic of immorality and undisciplined behaviour to infect Vienna and decides he must crack down – more like Measure for Pleasure, amiright? Forgive me for that sinful pun. The Duke, uncertain of the backlash of his electorate, feigns a leave of absence, disguising himself as a friar, and leaving his protégé, Angelo, in his stead. In his first order of business Angelo sentences a young man, Claudio, to death for the crime of impregnating his fiancé out of wedlock. It’s worth noting here that this is one of the only plays in which Shakespeare discusses Christian morality this overtly. His sister, Isabella, a novice nun, is sent for to plead with Angelo for her brother’s life. She tries to reason with him, asking him to weigh this judicially ‘right’ decision with what might be considered morally ‘right’ in the eyes of God – a god said to embody the qualities of forgiveness and mercy.

Original Text

So you must be the first that gives this sentence,
And he, that suffers. O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,
For every pelting petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.
Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assure’d—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

We cannot weigh our brother with ourself.
Great men may jest with saints: ’tis wit in them,
But in the less, foul profanation.

Go to your bosom,
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That’s like my brother’s fault. If it confess
A natural guiltiness, such as is his,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother’s life.

Unfamiliar Language

Tyrannous: One who exercises their power in a cruel way, or for the sake of it
Jove: King of the Gods; ancient Roman God of the sky and lightning
Ne’er: Never
Pelting: Petty, worthless
Sulphurous: Bad tempered, angry
Unwedgeable: Unable to be split in half
Gnarled: Rough, old, knotty
Myrtle: An evergreen shrub with flowers
Spleens: An organ said to be the seat of anger, temper; bad tempered
Profanation: Rudeness, blaspheming, disrespect
Doth: Does

Modern Translation

So, you’ve decided to reassert these
harsh laws,
And Claudio must suffer the resulting
sentence. Well, it’s all very well to have
such extraordinary power, but it is the
mark of great cruelty to exercise that
power in this way.

If our chosen rulers recklessly stomped
about
Like the god of thunder and lightning,
the thunder and lightning would never
stop,
Because every demi-god, drunk on his
own power,
Would use the sky for storms, so
there’d be nothing but thunder and
lightning!
The fair, forgiving heaven,
Would much rather use its sharp
lightning to reprimand the tough,
stubborn tree, rather than the soft flower
which merely symbolises love: but
egotistical man,
Even with his tiny amount of power,
He thinks he’s so righteous but in reality
he’s completely ignorant of what true
goodness is – he is nothing more than
reflected power – merely mimicing the
power of a real god like a bad actor,
undermining heaven and terrorising the
angels, until they laughed themselves to
death at man’s stupidity.

We simply cannot judge another person
in the same way we judge ourselves.
Sure, there are some people of such
greatness that the can talk of saints as
if they know them and it proves their
intelligence,
But for mere mortals, it’s blasphemous
to think you know the will of saints.
Look inwards,
Really look inside yourself and ask your
heart whether you’ve ever known a
mistake like the one my brother has
made.

If your heart admits it too has made
such a natural mistake as this,
Then prevent your tongue from uttering
another word in condemnation of my
brother’s life.

Notes on Performance

At this point you’d be forgiven for forgetting that this play is a comedy – it’s so Shakespearean to write a ‘comedy’ which hinges on an act of capital punishment. Isabella is able to match Angelo intellectually in this first verbal spar and it’s part of the reason he’s tempted by her. She is intelligent and virtuous, is able to argue dynamically and hold her own. She tests Angelo and he is left giddy. Let yourself go with this speech. Consider the circumstances, work on personalisation and let Isabella’s sense of injustice guide you through.

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