Fridge / Much Ado About Nothing

Fridge Brilliance

• The meaning behind the following exchange:
  Don Pedro: I believe this is your daughter?
  Leonato: Her mother hath many times told me so.
  Benedick: Were you in doubt sir, that you asked her?
  Leonato: No, Signor Benedick, for then you were a child.
  • Yes, Benedick is implying that Leonato was a cuckold and that his daughter Hero was born illegitimately, but he's also implying that he himself is the father. Leonato brushes him off by saying that he was too young to have dealt in those Country Matters.
  • It's Leonato's subtle way of answering the (affectionate?) insult. "So your wife cheated on you, you cuck?" "No, because you're the most shameless manwhore I know, and you were too young."
• It is subtle and just mentioned in passing, but it is suggested at one point that Beatrice and Benedick loved each other in the past, before something happened to them. What an interesting back story that would be...
  Don Pedro: Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.
  Beatrice: Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.
  • The "something that happened" was likely Beatrice wanting to get married and Benedick wishing to remain unwed.
  • The 2012 Joss Whedon version makes this point explicit: flashbacks show Benedick and Beatrice were lovers in the past.
  • Moreover, there are overtones that the double heart she gave him, and that which he won of her with "false dice" is her maidenhead. He got her to sleep with him, then dumped her. She's facing social ostracism as Hero did if the truth ever comes out, which suggests another reason why she doesn't seek to marry.
• Beatrice has good cause to be surprised that Benedick initially refuses to kill Claudio, because everything she was saying before their mutual Love Confession was all about how a man was the only person who could get justice for Hero—"it is a man's office", and how she wishes someone would "right" her cousin. That implies no mere murder, but a duel of honor, and only a man of equal standing^note note also the way Claudio dismisses the elderly Leonato and Antonio when they try to confront him could force Claudio to come to account. With Benedick's support of Hero and professions of love, she thought that he had caught her drift.

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