MAAN quotations

‘Signor Montanto’

Beatrice has met Benedick before and mocks him with a crude joke/fencing term

‘nobody marks you’

ironic as she is noticing him

‘I would rather hear a dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loves me’

annoying sounds are preferable than being courted and wooed

‘can the world buy such a jewel?’

Claudio fixates on Hero’s beauty, commodification and objectification of women link in your essays to ‘rotten orange’ He is playing the part of ‘courtly lover’ but is he really so chivalrous

‘I’d rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace’

Don John the bastard, family relationships and importance of chastity for the family line, he is bitter; an archetypal villain but he is at least a ‘plain dealing villain’

‘I cannot endure my Lady Tongue’

Benedick mocks Beatrice; unladylike and unconventional behaviour, endure implies extreme suffering

‘Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks; / Note, notes, forsooth, and nothing.'

Just before Balthasar’s song – comedy, masque and dancing. Balthasar and Don Pedro about courting and wooing: sometimes it’s false and insincere. Don Pedro is also looking forward to ‘noting’ Benedick’s reaction to the trick

‘masters I am an ass…forget not that I am an ass’

Dogberry is a fool and tries to speak like a noble malapropisms, class - if Leonato was able to understand Dogberry, he would have known about Don John’s plot

‘O villain! Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.’

Dogberry’s malapropisms generate comedy redemption/damnation. He is posturing as a more refined, noble character – power and class

‘give not this rotten orange to your friend’

Claudio critical of Leonato as he thinks his friend is trying to ‘pass off’ a dishonourable Hero for a chaste one. Importance of male friendships, Claudio is irrational and quick to judge, rotten orange a metaphor for an unchaste woman

‘refuse me, hate me, torture me to death’

Hero thinks her fate is sealed, emotive and dramatic triple, she dies and everyone believes it

‘Count Comfit’

Beatrice criticises Benedick’s inaction and the fashion for courtly love. Men are not men anymore, they are made of sugar.

‘kill Claudio!’

extreme anger, Beatrice cannot avenge her cousin herself – gender roles, a test of Benedick’s loyalty

‘I am engaged’

after deliberating, Benedick agrees to duel with Claudio. Double meaning of ‘engaged’ he is loyal now to Beatrice and not his friends/the soldiers.

‘Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.’

Benedick to Beatrice, referring to what Leonato called their ‘skirmish of wit’, and ‘merry war’

‘Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, everyman’s Hero’

Don John when he shows Claudio that Hero has been unfaithful. Attitudes to women and chastity.

What words can we use and what topics to we cover?

1) fashion as a motif for pretence, putting on an outward show

2) war and weaponry as a motif for wit and clever use of language (witty repartee)

3) noting, noticing, or characters think they know something - but have it wrong - the ‘dark side’ of this comedy