Scholars have often emphasized that Shakespeare deliberately introduces the sparring mockers, Beatrice and Benedick, before the pallid romantics, Hero and Claudio. Of the first pair, Beatrice appears first and sets the tone for what is to follow. She is any man's match ill a war of wit, but knows how to restrain her words in the presence of simple, harmless, and unimaginative men like Don Pedro's Messenger. (Wit, in comedies from the day of Shakespeare through the eighteenth century, means the ability of a person to discern similarities in meaning between like-sounding words and phrases, and then to craft a quick reply in which this connection is made evident.) The impression is given that Beatrice and Benedick have a history together of some sort; perhaps they were at one time interested in each other.....
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