THE CHARACTERS
Does this Play succeed in giving so extremely definite and varied an impression of the characters that it is chiefly notable for that? To bring out this idea of the plot as successful less in itself than because it illuminates the quality and humor of the characters, compare with the "Comedie of Errors" or any of the Plays where events figure more prominently. Show how the events of this Play may be said to be created by the Characters. The Prince and his Brother (and their tools on each side who lend themselves to their plans with Dogberry, the highly unconscious, and the Friar, the highly conscious character) by being what they are constitute the diverse means of influencing the whole turn of events. These persons may all be considered with reference to what they are themselves, in character, and through that, in relation to the other characters of the Comedy.
BENEDICKE AND BEATRICE, CLAUDIO AND HERO
These two loving couples reveal their special characters most vividly by means of their contrasting and supplementary relations to each other. Show how Benedicke and Beatrice do not throw Claudio and Hero too much in the shade by their superior brilliancy, because through the love of the minor couple their own love is enabled to ripen. Is their character heightened or lessened in wit and individual interest by love?
The minor characters: Show how the adversity of the family brings out the heroic element lying unobserved in Brother Anthony of the "dry hand," and kindles his philosophy into something martial.
The merry maids, Ursula and Margaret and their light-hearted parts in the plot.
QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION
Beatrice "is a tarter,—and, if a natural woman, is not a pleasing representative of her sex." She "will provoke her Benedicke to give her much and just conjugal castigation," says Campbell. Is he right, and will Benedicke feel so?—or is Swinburne right, who says she is "a decidedly more perfect woman than could properly or permissibly have trod the stage of Congreve or Molière" and who speaks of her "light true heart"?
Is the superficial Claudio worthy of Hero?
Are the faults in the plot of the Play, such as are necessitated by the design of using the characters themselves and their "noting" of one another as the source of events, and, therefore, in the last analysis not faults, a study of their relation to the design leading us, as Hartley Coleridge puts it, never to censure Shakespeare without finding reason to eat our words?