Favorite Characters: Beatrice (Much Ado about Nothing)

Let's face it:  no one reads Much Ado about Nothing for Claudio and Hero.  It's all about Benedick and Beatrice, and really, it's about Beatrice.  This Shakespearean lady is cooler, funnier, and fiercer than most female leads you see in today's romcoms.

Hero, undoubtedly, is the prototypical fairy tale princess.  Men fall in love with her at a glimpse, and, to borrow from another Shakespeare play, she's the one teaching the torches to burn bright.  She reminds me of one of Dickens's "angels of the house," but this ain't the Victorian age.  It's the Elizabethan era, where the Rosalinds and Portias take center stage in the happy endings.

Enter Beatrice.  Older and sharper than Hero, less rich and sweet, she's not the automatic prize her young cousin is, and while she knows this, she doesn't mind.  She has no plans to secure a husband, and she takes pleasure in mocking her uncle's expectations of what a young lady ought to do.  But right from the start, Beatrice explodes off the page.  While Hero can literally go hundreds of lines without speaking in mixed company, Beatrice dominates every scene she's in.  Men fall in love when they see Hero, but with Beatrice, they fall in love when they know her.

In the play, Benedick and his pals Don Pedro and Claudio are "wits," privileged young men-about-town who spar verbally as a recreational sport.  They can wile away hours spinning puns, slights, and innuendos, with bragging rights going to the man with the quickest tongue.  Not only, however, does Beatrice have the nerve to play with the big boys (demure she is not) - she also has more than enough brains and bite to wipe the floor with them.  She and Benedick go head-to-head numerous times, and she always gets the last word.

Where love is concerned, Beatrice is cynical without being bitter.  Her heart's bee toyed with lightly before, and that makes her keep romance at arm's length, but she's not some man-hating ball-buster.  She's playfully combative with Benedick, and when Don Pedro takes their mutual flirting a bit too sincerely for her comfort, she lets him down gently.  And when she does eventually find herself in love, she as usual has to outdo her beau; while Benedick gives his soliloquy o' love in blank verse, Beatrice's is a sonnet.

She's careful in romantic matters of the heart, but she's very free with her affections to her cousin.  She's forever advising Hero to go after what she, rather than her father, wants, as well as encouraging Hero to speak up for herself.  When Hero's happiness is threatened, Beatrice is the only one whose support never wavers.  She rages on her cousin's behalf, and her own potential happy ending takes a back seat to repairing Hero's.

Is it any wonder she's been played variously by the likes of Emma Thompson, Catherine Tate, and Amy Acker?  I can't imagine too many roles that must be more universally coveted by actresses.