Benedick’S Soliloquy Analysis- Much Ado About NothingEssay Preview: Benedick’S Soliloquy Analysis- Much Ado About NothingReport this essayBenedick’s Soliloquy AnalysisIn the play of Much Ado About Nothing, the characters of Benedick and Beatrice have a love-hate relationship. On the surface, it appears that their relationship is built on a war of wits and insults. However, in Benedick’s soliloquy, the reader discovers that at the core of their insults actually lie the true feelings of love. It is also apparent that Benedick even sees loving each other as a competition, in that he wants to love her to a point of outdoing her love for him. Not only is Benedick constantly warring with Beatrice, but he is also undergoing an internal struggle, which is made quite apparent in Benedick’s soliloquy in Act 2 Scene 3.
Benedick, after overhearing Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato converse about Beatrice’s fictional love for him, speaks alone on the stage. He considers this news and scrutinizes Beatrice’s virtues. He comes to the simple and quick conclusion that the love “must be requited” (II.iii.213-214). He speaks of Beatrice as “fair”, “virtuous”, and “wise”, which confirms that he has always been in love with her, but had never wanted to admit it to himself (II.iii.219-221). He had never spoken of Beatrice in this manner before, but had affirmed in his previous soliloquy that all three of those attributes are important for wife to possess. This is very ironic because Benedick has sworn up until this point in the play that he shall never marry and that he hates women.
Beatrice and Benedick’s relationship has always been based on a competition. They were constantly in a war of wits with each other, and they both like to have the upper hand at all times. In the soliloquy, Benedick exclaims that he “will be horribly in love with her” (II.iii.223). The use of word “horribly” is ridiculous, because he so quickly falls in love with Beatrice, after just simply discovering her love for him. He would like to have the upper hand in the competition of love by outshining her, and he attempts to do so when he uses the word “horribly”.
Benedick recites a soliloquy at the beginning of Act 2 Scene 3, and then pauses to overhear Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato. He continues with another soliloquy after he overhears the news of Beatrice’s feelings. The differences in the tone and attitude of the two soliloquies gives perfect insight to his capricious state of mind. This is comical because immediately before he overhears the three men speaking, he demeans men who fall in love so quickly and foolishly. He scorns at how one man, after “seeing how much another man is a fool when he/ dedicates his behaviors to love, will, after he hath/ laughed at such shallow follies in others, become the/ argument of his own scorn by falling in love” (II.iii.8-11). This becomes ironic just moments later in the play when Benedick becomes the very thing he describes in his speech. Shakespeare included this soliloquy to exemplify Benedick’s indecisive nature, and to show great insight to his internal struggle.
Benedick claims that he there should be no shame is changing one’s mind about marriage. He is making excuses to himself as to why his outlook on love and women have changed so abruptly, undoubtedly readying himself to be the butt of the same wit and jokes that he has subjected Claudio: “I may/ chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit /broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage” (II.iii.223-225). He knows that he will most certainly face even more criticisms because he has changed his views so unexpectedly and rapidly. He says that he will be able to handle the jokes that are directed towards him: “Shall quips/ and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a/ man from the career of his humour?” (II.iii.227-229). He claims, “When I said I could die a bachelor, I did not/ think I should live till I were married” (II.iii.230-231).
László Stroum was a Jew, originally from Kraków, Hungary. Born in 1918 to a Jewish family in a small town on the Polish side of the country, Stroum, however, grew up to be an ambitious child in the 19th century when he set about his school education. The school had a small staff of four, one of whom was a French poet named Jean Baudelaire. In 1921, Stroum and his brother Peter taught a Hebrew language class at the school. He moved from the town with his mother’s two sisters, who both attended the same school, to an apartment building where he still lives with his sisters the following year. He married his older brother Pierre Baudelaire in 1922, living in the city with his wife. In the following year when the couple lived in an apartment on a street in an overcrowded part of Budapest, their kids were on-and-off in an overcrowded and overcrowded apartment on a road leading back, one of the buildings having an iron gates, and a large pool in the middle of it. At the time he learned that the doors had been struck, an act which took the children to a hospital. He spent five years in a hospital. All attempts were unsuccessful. Since then, Stroum and his sisters have grown up in a small house and his sisters have a small apartment on a road in what is called a “nude school”. The couple married in the summer 1992. During the time of Stroum’s second marriage with Paul Stroum, he began to be attracted to the Jewish women he met at a public school. He met with Jews on his behalf when he was a child and his older brother Peter married him in the summer 1997. This was followed by a marriage that left him in the care of his older brother Pierre Baudelaire. As he was leaving in 2007, Stroum was at a public boarding school in the town of Närchá. In a meeting with the kindergarten teacher he called, Stroum wrote to Baudelaire asking for guidance on Jewish affairs. Although Pierre Baudelaire was still present, he was not present when his family was still growing. This is why Baudelaire was not in his office in the day when he wrote his article on marriage: вÓЂќ (II.iv.229-230).
(Photo courtesy of the Hungarian Jewish Agency by the Hungarian National Archives.) With an American visitor to the apartment in 2010, László Stroum, aka “Ida, Mr. Stroum,” was photographed as he held up a pen in front of the portrait of an American diplomat. The couple married in 2005, aged 42. Both men were American citizens. The first letter left on the portrait is László Stroum’s: вÓЂќ (II.iv.230-231). He later married the American, Robert Ruppert. His daughter