is irresistible. She does not mean to inflict pain, though others besides Benedick must at times have felt that "every word stabs." She simply rejoices in the keen sword-play of her wit as she would in any other exercise of her intellect or sport of her fancy. In very gaiety of heart she flashes around her the playful lightning of sarcasm and repartee, thinking of them only as something to make the time pass brightly by. "I was born," she says of herself, "to speak all mirth and no matter." Again, when Don Pedro tells her she has "a merry heart," she answers, "Yea, my lord, I thank it; poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care." And what does her uncle Leonato say of her? –
"There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing." – (Act ii. sc. 1.)
Wooers she has had, of course, not a few; but, she has "mocked them all out of suit." Very dear to her is the independence of her maidenhood, – for the moment has not come when to surrender that independence into a lover's hands is more delightful than to maintain it. But though in the early scenes of the play she makes a mock of wooers and of marriage, with obvious zest and with a brilliancy of fancy and pungency of sarcasm that might well appal any ordinary wooer, it is my conviction that, though her heart has not as yet been touched, she has at any rate begun to see in "Signor Benedick of Padua" qualities which have caught her fancy. She has noted him closely, and his image recurs unbidden to her mind with a frequency which suggests that he is at least more to her than any other man. The train is laid, and only requires a spark to kindle it into flame. How this is done by Shakespeare, and with what exquisite skill, will be more and more felt the more closely the structure of the play and the distinctive qualities of the actors in it are studied.
I think, indeed, this play should rank, in point of dramatic construction and development of character, with the best of Shakespeare's works. It has the further distinction, that whatever is most valuable in the plot is due solely to his own invention. In this respect it differs signally from "As You Like It." In "The Tale of Gamelyn," and more particularly in Lodge's "Rosalynde," Shakespeare found ready to his hand the main plot of that play, and suggestions for several of the characters. With his usual wonderful aptitude, he assimilated everything that could be turned to dramatic account. Yet his debt was, after all, of no great amount. He had to discard far more than he adopted. The story with the actors in it became a new creation; and by infusing into a pretty but tedious pastoral and some very unreal characters a purpose and a life which were exclusively his own, he transmuted mere pebbles into gems. But neither for plot nor character was he indebted to any one in "Much Ado About Nothing." It is, no doubt, true that in Ariosto and Bandello, and in our own Spenser, he found the incident of an innocent lady brought under cruellest suspicion by the base device of which Hero is the victim. Here, however, his obligation ends; and but for the skill with which this incident is interwoven with others, and a number of characters brought upon the scene, which are wholly of his own creating, it would be of little value for dramatic purposes.
