As you’ll know if you’ve seen my Twitter updates, I spent the last week at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. My friend and fellow writer Penny Williamson and I have been going to OSF together for years. We spend a lot of time discussing and analyzing the plays. Over dinner the last night of our trip, we found ourselves discussing the plays we’d seen and, in particular, the heroes of two of them and the transformations they undergo.
Benedick begins Much Ado About Nothing tossing off clever repartee and exchanging witty insults with Beatrice. Then, in the midst of the play, after Benedick has been tricked into admitting to himself his love for Beatrice and she hers for him, the story takes a dark turn. Beatrice’s cousin Hero is falsely accused of infidelity on her wedding day. Benedick’s friends, Claudio (Hero’s fiancé) and the Prince, Don Pedro, believe the story without question, turning Hero and Claudio’s wedding into tragedy. Even Hero’s father condemns her at first. Of the major male characters, only Benedick questions the truth of what has happened. Eventually, he trusts Beatrice’s faith in Hero’s innocence enough that he challenges Claudio to a duel and discontinues his service to the Prince. When Claudio and the Prince try to joke with him later in the play, it’s Benedick who reminds them of the gravity of the situation. Benedick shows his mettle and the strength of his commitment in the second half of the play. In the end, when he and Beatrice—still bantering—are betrothed, you truly believe the marriage will work.
Harold Hill in The Music Man also undergoes a transformation. He beings to woo librarian Marian Paroo under the mistaken impression that she’s a “sadder’ but wiser girl,” planning to skip town before the residents of River City can discover that he’s incapable of leading the boys’ band he’s sold them on. But even as Harold transforms starchy River City (wonderful evoked on the OSF production by the costumes changing from shades of gray to vibrant color), he is also transformed. When he realizes Marian has fallen in love with him, knowing full well that he is an impostor, he becomes the man she believes him to be. Watching the OSF production Saturday, I was struck by the amazing emotional shifts Harold undergoes in the latter part of the story. From realizing Marian loves him but thinking she’ll hate him when she knows the truth, to his wonder at the reveatlion she loves him for who he really is, to his realization that with this he loves her and can’t run. In the end Harold stays in River City to face the music (which at that point looks as though it will be decidedly unpleasant), a moment beautifully captured in the OSF production when Harold holds out his hands to be handcuffed. And then there’s his stunned amazement when Marian hands him a baton to lead the boys—and girls in the OSF production-band and the young musicians manage to scrape together enough notes to delight their parents.
Beneidick’s and Harold’s emotional arcs were brilliantly catpured in the OSF productions by David E. Kelly (as Benedick) and Michael Ellich (as Harold). The audience saw both men grow and change over the course of the play, and in that growth made the endings to both plays ring with heart-warming truth. Do you have favorite characters, in plays or books or movies, who change and earn a hard-won happy ending? What makes the change particularly believable?
This week’s Fraser Correspondence addition is a letter from David to Charles, giving David’s take on the events Simon wrote about last week.
Tracy Grant - Novelist 
August 5, 2009 at 5:24 am
Oh, I LOVED Benedick and Beatrice. SO much better than that idiot Claudio and doormat Hero.
I mean, whose to say Claudio won’t make an ass out of himself again and again?
Did anyone else see the Branagh/Thompson version?
August 5, 2009 at 5:43 am
I’ve loved “Much Ado” since I saw a television version set in the late 1800s/early 1900s (Joseph Papp, I think) when I was quite young. I got to do the Beatrice/Benedick church scene in acting class in high school.
I adore the Branagh/Thompson version. I saw the premiere at the SF Film Festival with Branagh there to speak afterwards and subsequently saw the movie about ten times in the theater (dragging pretty much everyone I knew). I’ve practically worn out my video and need to get a dvd. I realized watching the play in Ashland last week that I pretty much know the movie script by heart because it was very obvious to me what lines were different :-).
I totally agree that Beatrice & Benedick are much more interesting that Hero & Claudio, and I too wonder about Claudio’s behavior in the future. But that’s part of the point. Benedick proves much more insightful, compassionate, and heroic than Claudio in the course of the play.
August 8, 2009 at 3:22 am
For me, Benedick is far and away the best of Shakespeare’s comic heroes. The two to whom he’s most often compared–Petruchio and Berowne–are each less satisfactorily developed; it takes a canny director and actor to keep Petruchio’s “taming” of Kate from coming across as misogynistic or abusive. And while Berowne is witty, even Rosaline finds that wit lacking in heart and compassion, to the point where she consigns him to a year of nursing the sick and suffering before she’ll accept his suit.
Benedick, by contrast, turns out to have the heart to match his cleverness. I’ve always liked the fact that his discernment extends not only to Beatrice but to Hero, with whom he isn’t in love. Yet he is insightful enough not to believe her a trollop and to suspect Don John at once after the wedding falls apart. (Makes me wonder a little how well he knows the whole family or used to know them, before he and Beatrice had their falling-out.) And he’s loyal, but not to the point where he’ll go against his deepest conviction of what’s right. He challenges Claudio on Hero and Beatrice’s behalf, but he doesn’t kill him outright just because Beatrice is livid over her cousin’s wrongs. And since Much Ado is a comedy, that turns out to be the right decision. 😉 I think it’s significant that Beatrice doesn’t impose the kind of sentence on Benedick that Rosaline does on Berowne: she’s clearly pleased with him as he is, despite her protests to the contrary.
I very much enjoy watching characters evolve over the course of a book or even a series. Look at how much Lymond and Niccolo change over time, not only in knowledge and sophistication but emotion too. And the ties they form, whether good or ill, make them the men they are by the end of their stories. Interesting conundrum: most, though not all, of Lymond’s influences are female, starting with Sybilla, including the Dame de Doubtance, Oonagh, Kate, Guzel, and ending with Philippa.
August 8, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Good point about Benedick; he’s not just on Hero’s side because of Beatrice but because he’s smart enough to realize “there has to be more to this”.
August 8, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Stephanie, I agree that’s it’s very significant Beatrice doesn’t impose a sentence on Benedick as Rosaline does on Berowne. Benedick grows and proves himself within the play. Berowne, I like to think, does so after “Love’s Labour.”
And I think both you and JMM make a great point about Benedick being able to see the whole situation from the point of view of the female characters. It’s not just that he’s in love with Beatrice. He’s the only major male character who steps back and doesn’t take the accusations of infidelity at face value (which even Hero’s father does at first).
And, Stephanie, I too have noticed that most of Lymond’s major influences are women. In contrast, while Niccolò is influenced by some very strong women–Marian, Violante, Katelina, Gelis, Kathi, there are more men in the mix–Adorne, Acciajouli, Tobie, Goro, etc…
August 8, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I think Niccolo goes through much of his life looking for a father, because his birth father has essentially disowned him. Lymond, by contrast, did have at least a putative father in Gavin Crawford but the relationship was so toxic, he learned to look to his mother (and maybe other female figures) for love and comfort. A therapist would probably have a field day with both of Dunnett’s heroes.
August 8, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Great point, Stephanie. I do think Nicholas is definitely looking for a father (although he thinks he knows who is father is from book 1 and as it turns out he’s right). I can just imagine scenes of a therapist with both heroes!
November 1, 2009 at 9:44 pm
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