Chapter 1 of 24 · 2'27"
Messina gets word that Don Pedro and his men arrive tonight, and that Claudio fought like a lion. Then Beatrice asks after Benedick, and the talk turns to the 'merry war' between them: 'there's a skirmish of wit' every time they meet.
The Messenger Praises Claudio
Beatrice and Benedick's Merry War
A messenger brings word to Leonato in Messina that Don Pedro of Aragon will arrive that night, and that the young Florentine Claudio has been honoured for his service. Beatrice immediately asks whether Benedick is back, and mocks him until Leonato explains the long-running 'merry war' between the two.
On the surface this is household business: a letter, a list of honours, and a famous guest arriving. Underneath, the scene establishes the pleasure and the danger of talk in Messina. The messenger's formal report — Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio — gives Leonato's house its news, but Beatrice turns the same event into a joke about Benedick. She asks how many men he has killed and eaten in these wars, then treats him as a contagious disease: 'He will hang upon him like a disease!' Leonato supplies the key description when he warns that there is 'a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her.' The wit is not decoration; it is how the play defines its central pair. Even before Benedick appears, Beatrice has him fixed in her sights, and the language of skirmish and disease shows affection and mockery running on the same current.
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“He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion!”
It praises a young soldier by pairing a lamb's look with a lion's deeds, so the compliment lands as an image.
literary
“There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her.”
Two words that should not go together name the relationship, turning constant arguing into a shared pleasure.
Neutral
“They never meet, but there's a skirmish of wit between them.”
The never-but frame ties every meeting to an argument, defining the pair in one move.
Neutral
“He will hang upon him like a disease!”
Calling attachment a disease makes clinginess sound like an illness you cannot shake.
Informal
“If he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him 1 ,000 pounds ere he be cured.”
It turns a friend's name into a disease and prices the cure, so the joke ends on a comic bill.
Informal
Much Ado About Nothing: your progress
Chapter 1 of 24 · about 69 min to go
Up next · 02turncoatThe scene: Beatrice and Benedick Trade InsultsHe brings a letter announcing that Don Pedro of Aragon will arrive in Messina that night, and reporting the honours won by the young Florentine Claudio.
She wants to know whether he has returned from the wars. Her questions sound mocking, but they show he is the first person she thinks of, and everyone present seems to know it.
He means the playful quarrelling between Beatrice and Benedick. They are not enemies; every meeting becomes a contest of wit, and the insults are all part of the game.
It is Beatrice's nickname for Benedick. When she asks whether Signior Mountanto has returned, Hero has to explain that she means Signior Benedick.
The scene suggests not. She talks about him more than anyone else and jokes about him as a disease, which reads as interest dressed up as scorn.
