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BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214)
2500 East
Fourth Avenue,
80206-4214
(Columbine Street at East Fourth Avenue)
Telephone:
(303) 388-5969
Fax: (720) 424-9355
E-mail: Bromwell@dpsk12.org
Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal
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Much Ado... about Beatrice
Introduction: A few years back, one of my students was heartbroken when I didn't choose her to play Beatrice in our scene from "Much Ado About Nothing." I didn't know it, but this girl lived and breathed Kenneth Branagh's filmed version of the play. Heck, she had seen that movie almost as many times as I had! And she positively worshipped Emma Thompson. I felt so guilty, but I couldn't change the parts around. I also didn't want to duplicate anything I had done before (I know, I know, such an artiste!) and I had run through just about all of Beatrice's scenes already in previous festivals. So I went home and fretted about, trying to think of what I could do. By the next day, I had this experimental piece, in which many of Beatrice's best lines are shared by four actresses, in a setting somewhat modeled after the last sene in the play.
[Four veiled women come onstage, followed by Benedick.]
BENEDICK
Soft and fair. Which is Beatrice?
BEATRICE #1 [Unmasking]
I answer to that name. God sends me no husband; for which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in the woollen!
BEATRICE #2 [Unmasking]
I may light on a husband that hath no beard. What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. And he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him:
BEATRICE #3 [Unmasking]
Therefore, I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell. There will the devil meet me, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven! Here's no place for you maids!' So deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens. He shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.
BEATRICE #4 [Unmasking]
Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let your husband be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.'
BEATRICE #3
I have lost the heart of Signior Benedick? 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. Have I put him down? So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools.
[Benedick retreats to the shadows at the rear of the stage. Music cue as the mood changes from playful to angry]
BEATRICE #1
You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy! Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man!
BEATRICE #2
What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands? And then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour? O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.
BEATRICE #4
Talk with a man out at a window! A proper saying! Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.
BEATRICE #3
O that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.
[Music cue as the mood changes from angry to romantic]
BEATRICE #4
It were possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing.
BEATRICE #1
Alas, poor heart! If you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours; for I will never love that which my friend hates.
BEATRICE #4
Born in a merry hour? No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.
BEATRICE #2
I was about to protest I loved you. I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
BENEDICK [coming forward again]
Soft and fair. Which is Beatrice?
BEATRICES [all]
I answer to that name.
[The four woman cover their faces with their veils again and exit, followed by Benedick]
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