#shakespeare stuff

Tailor: Hmm. Try this, it goes around your neck. What do you think?

As someone who loves Shakespeare—and is forever having to explain to all the many, many people who loathe The Bard and strongly resent having to study him why I love his works—it’s difficult to choose a favorite character. Not because I have so many, but actually because I have so few…none of the primary male roles are characters I particularly love, and a lot of the female roles are less-dynamic and therefore less appealing to me.

The exception: Beatrice, aka, my dear lady Disdain.

By the time I first read Much Ado About Nothing (I think I was a junior in high school at the time), I’d already been through Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. Those are all great plays, with plenty to analyze, but I didn’t really love any of the ladies I came into contact with—Ophelia is a more subversively-layered character than most realize and I appreciate that, but she still meets a tragic end that’s annoyingly tied to stupid, melodramatic men (ditto for Juliet). Lady Macbeth is cool (yes, I like Lady Macbeth, and for the record, I argued my entire class down on why the disaster is Macbeth’s fault and not hers), but her nerves crack toward the end, and guilt is what takes her out. Katarina is a delightful pain in the neck, but she capitulates to a guy I would starve to death before letting win, and I just can’t respect that. The other ladies are all right and I enjoy them, but in a passive, “meh, not bad” kind of way.

And then, along came Beatrice.

 Why she’s my girl:

Quick-witted and almost irreverently humorous, Beatrice is spouting one-liners from the instant her character first speaks. Whereas the women in her circle, including, her cousin, tend to be sweet and shy and earnest and retiring, she is realistic, talkative, glib, and forceful in a way that’s usually not reserved for female characters. (Especially in Shakespeare.)

She teases everyone around her, including Don Pedro—technically her social superior—with equal lack of restraint, and pokes fun at the rather-dramatic little lovebirds even while she also wishes them well. She has decidedly unorthodox views on marriage, and both amuses and concerns those closest to her by casually announcing and making light of them whenever someone wonders why she is single.

She needles Benedick constantly and refuses to let him get the last word in at any given juncture, and when she finally accepts that she does like him, she’s so appalled at the idea that she actually plans to deny it to his face if he asks her because she refuses to appear ridiculous in front of him. She is outraged on her cousin’s behalf when said cousin’s honor is slandered, and (rightly!) places intense blame not just on those who spread the lies, but also on those who believed them and chose to vent their indignation via public humiliation (*coughcough* Claudio).

She is beloved and admired by her family even though they sort of explicitly despair of her antagonism toward the notion of love and marriage, and her pride is so thick that she essentially has to be tricked into admitting love. She is usually the cleverest character in any scene she’s in, and she makes no apologies for it/never tones her personality down for anyone.

 Favorite quotes:

Too many to count, but some of my absolute loves are:

[“I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.”] “No; an he were, I would burn my study.”

“I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you.”

[“Well, niece, I hope to one day see you fitted with a husband.”] “Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered by a piece of valiant dust?”

“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.”

“I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.”

 “But, I beseech your grace, pardon me: I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.” {This is the quote my cover photo currently references; that’s how much I <3 this one.}

“Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.”