Re: Silly--umm.

2004-07-21T09:55:55+00:00

Well, precisely. The fact is that I was made uncomfortable by the laugh, but not filled with righteous hatred as I was at the “Beatrice is Silly” production. On reflection, I decided it was okay, because it seemed very squarely to be laughing at Benedick (come to think of it, could the laugh have actually followed “Not for the wide world”? That would explain my lack of righteous rage.)

I wouldn’t want any laughter at that part of the scene if I were to produce it (of course laughter is permissible at the ridiculously convoluted and cautious pre-declarations of love), but then again I am the girl who frightened her acting partner and her high school Shakespeare class with her sheer venom in this scene. I find it a very serious scene, one of the more realistic treatments of the limitations and frustrations of Elizabethan womanhood in Shakespeare. Beatrice is, patently, the equal of a man. She meets or bests Benedick, wit for wit. She is a good friend, tactful when need arises (the Prince’s proposal) and able to reason even in her greatest emotional distress. However, because she is a woman, there are things - to her, and her family’s honor, vital things - which are denied her. Avenues of redress and public vindication which are open to men are closed to her, and her lack of a brother or male cousin cripples her. In a way, one might say that by enlisting Benedick, she is trying to use the coidentification of love to lodge her needs and passion in a male ‘self’ able to do the things her gender is denied.

Er, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, it’s a very important scene, and I agree that those lines shouldn’t get a laugh. But in this case I’m willing to allow its validity, as I often do with an interesting take that I don’t agree with.

I believe, basically, the way they were playing the scene is this: the play has just become, for lack of a better word, tragic. Beatrice is firmly in a tragic vein here. Benedick, who is not really much at home in a tragic anything, professes his love, either to comfort Beatrice, or moved by her sorrow and passion. He seems to expect the play to resume being a (romantic) comedy—but Beatrice is reluctant to go there, as her circumlocutions and resistance to professing the love we know she feels attest. He gets her to admit her love, and immediately, full of romantic comedy gushing, says, “Come, bid me do any thing for thee.” Beatrice, however, is still in a tragedy, and tells him to kill Claudio. The humor they decided to tap was in Benedick’s folly in A) believing himself to be back in a carefree lovemaking scene, and B) promising to do anything. We’ve all read fairy tales. You NEVER DO THAT! The portrayal of Beatrice’s feelings and passion was serious; the portrayal of Benedick’s folly, confusion, and mixed emotions was not.

So, as I said, I wouldn’t have done it, but it’s interesting.

Silly--umm.

2004-07-20T21:37:59+00:00

I don’t think that a laugh on “Kill Claudio” is ever acceptable in any semi-conventional version of Much Ado. That scene is probably the hardest scene in all of Shakespearean comedy. The old dynamic of the characters has to be mixed with their new language of romance and with their very, very different priorities. “Kill Claudio” is a very frightening and sad line, and if it draws laughs, something is wrong.

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Re: Silly--umm.

Silly--umm.