SOURCE: “From Double Words to Single Vision: Patriarchal Desire in Much Ado about Nothing and Othello,” in Anxious Pleasures: Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995, pp. 170-93.

In the essay that follows, Hall contends that both Much Ado about Nothing and Othello undermine—through their use and treatment of language—the establishment of any single interpretation of the texts.

The opening witty dialogue in Much Ado About Nothing between Beatrice and Benedick consists in a deadlocked rivalry, which seeks to deny that there is a relationship between them:

Beatrice. I wonder you will still be talking, Signor Benedick. Nobody marks you. Benedick. What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you still living? 

(1.1.107ff.)

This is a rivalry of indifferences. Now, real indifference is impossible in dialogue, since it would then not be a sign but a natural state unengaged with the other. Proclaimed “indifference” is a...