Benedick and Speech in Much Ado
The Significance of Speaking Well in Much Ado About Nothing
Benedick's name suggests Shakespeare's concern in Much Ado About Nothing with "speaking well", and its moral, social and entertaining consequences.
Whilst reading, or watching, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, we rarely pause to examine the name of its male lead, Benedick. But the implications of his name suggest one of the play’s underlying themes. “Benedick” seems to be derived from the Latin words “bene” and “dicere”, meaning “well” and “to speak”. The word “benediction”, meaning a blessing, comes from the same root. Benedick’s name should be taken literally, I would suggest, as signalling the play’s concern with speaking well, and what good speech might involve.
The opening scene of Much Ado About Nothing shows Benedick as a witty, ironic and aggressive speaker, particularly in his first quarrel with Beatrice. Aside from this tour de force of verbal duelling, he quips about the fidelity of Leonato’s wife (“Were you in doubt, sir, that you ask’d her?” I.1) and Hero’s qualities as a woman (“she’s too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise”) Benedick can clearly use language skilfully, he “speaks well” in that sense, but the ends to which his words are directed give the name “Benedick” an ironic twist in this section of the play. His skill seems to be directed towards mocking and belittling others, though very entertainingly.
After Benedick has been tricked into thinking that Beatrice loves him, and decides to return her affection, we see him in V.2 struggling to produce appropriate words for a lover. He fails in his attempt at love poetry: “I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried;...I cannot woo in festival terms” The audience is now entertained by seeing Benedick’s situation reversed: he is attempting to “speak well” to advance his suit to Beatrice, but his skill at speaking seems to have deserted him. Possibly his most convincing expression of love is his bluntest, the advice at the end of the play to Don Pedro: “Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife; get thee a wife” (V.9)
The play’s concern with “speaking well” extends further than the Beatrice-Benedick love plot, however. Hero’s supposed death is attributed to those who very publicly “spoke ill” of her. The epitaph that Claudio recites as part of his penance declares that she was “done to death by slanderous tongues” and gives her “glorious fame” in recompense for the lies told about her. In fact the charge made against her, which is supposed to prove her guilty of acts so filthy that “there is not chastity enough in language/ To utter them without offence” is that she talked with a man “out at [her] window, betwixt twelve and one.” (IV.1) The whole play seems obsessed with question of power, skill, and virtue in speech, all swirling round Benedick’s name, and its suggestion of “speaking well.”
