SOURCE: Bate, Jonathan. “Dying to Live in Much Ado about Nothing.” In Surprised by Scenes: Essays in Honor of Professor Yasunari Takahashi, edited by Yasunari Takada, pp. 69-85. Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1994.

In the following essay, Bate focuses on Hero's passivity and her provisional dispatch to death—the ultimate silencing. Noting how frequently other characters speak of her or allude to her—thus demonstrating her centrality in the play—he compares Hero to sacrificial women in classical literature who die in order that their husbands may be transformed.

King Charles I knew what he liked in Shakespeare's comedies. He inscribed in his copy of the Second Folio alternative titles for some of the plays. Thus he called Twelfth Night ‘Malvolio’ and Much Ado about Nothing ‘Benedick and Beatrice’. There was a precedent for this: the Lord Treasurer's account for 1613 refers to a performance of ‘Benedicte and Betteris’. The sub-plot has...