There are two lovely podcasts (This Shakespeare is Gay and Shakespeare Anyone? I listened to a while back, who had a lot to say about Much Ado. And especially This Shakespeare is Gay, the point of this podcast is to find queer topics in Shakespeare plays, makes a very good point I've been obsessing over ever since:
One of the big things in Much Ado is that there are essentially "male" and "female" scenes, where all characters in the scene are of one gender and the rarely mix, the important exceptions to this are 1. whenever the family is together 2. the soldier's meeting the ladies for the first time 3. the ball 4. the church scenes. So basically all scenes that are about family or lead up to founding a family. And even those mixed scenes are dominated by the men in the room. Well, and Beatrice too.
Beatrice is able to cross those (social/dramatic) boundaries, when she get's Benedict for dinner or when she interrupts her Uncle's decision making regarding her cousin's marriage. The one point where she wants to do that - enter a male (dominated) space - but can't, is when she wants to kill Claudio for Hero's honour. I'd argue that's because demanding a duel and wielding a weapon is either unimaginable for a woman from a Shakespearian pov (which makes me think of Caesario but that's another story) or that fighting a duel depends on the other party agreeing to it, and I don't think Claudio and Don Pedro would react much better to Beatrice demanding a duel than to Leonato. Maybe it's both.
One way or another, I love Beatrice for transgressing gender norms, knowing where she is limited and getting angry about it (look at Michelle Terry's rage).
This of course raises the question: What about Benedict? What about the man that wants no woman unless she is perfect in his eyes, but then takes the woman that acts out of the boundaries society places on her where ever she can and therefore it the opposite to perfect for everyone else?
I think Benedict is an early example of disaster bi, who found the love of his life in a woman that could be one of the boys (or military officers) if given the chance.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2025-01-31 02:57 pm (UTC)There are two lovely podcasts (This Shakespeare is Gay and Shakespeare Anyone? I listened to a while back, who had a lot to say about Much Ado. And especially This Shakespeare is Gay, the point of this podcast is to find queer topics in Shakespeare plays, makes a very good point I've been obsessing over ever since:
One of the big things in Much Ado is that there are essentially "male" and "female" scenes, where all characters in the scene are of one gender and the rarely mix, the important exceptions to this are 1. whenever the family is together 2. the soldier's meeting the ladies for the first time 3. the ball 4. the church scenes. So basically all scenes that are about family or lead up to founding a family. And even those mixed scenes are dominated by the men in the room. Well, and Beatrice too.
Beatrice is able to cross those (social/dramatic) boundaries, when she get's Benedict for dinner or when she interrupts her Uncle's decision making regarding her cousin's marriage. The one point where she wants to do that - enter a male (dominated) space - but can't, is when she wants to kill Claudio for Hero's honour. I'd argue that's because demanding a duel and wielding a weapon is either unimaginable for a woman from a Shakespearian pov (which makes me think of Caesario but that's another story) or that fighting a duel depends on the other party agreeing to it, and I don't think Claudio and Don Pedro would react much better to Beatrice demanding a duel than to Leonato. Maybe it's both.
One way or another, I love Beatrice for transgressing gender norms, knowing where she is limited and getting angry about it (look at Michelle Terry's rage).
This of course raises the question: What about Benedict? What about the man that wants no woman unless she is perfect in his eyes, but then takes the woman that acts out of the boundaries society places on her where ever she can and therefore it the opposite to perfect for everyone else?
I think Benedict is an early example of disaster bi, who found the love of his life in a woman that could be one of the boys (or military officers) if given the chance.