ELH

Munro, Ian.
Shakespeare's Jestbook: Wit, Print, Performance
ELH - Volume 71, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp. 89-113

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Ian Munro - Shakespeare's Jestbook: Wit, Print, Performance - ELH 71:1 ELH 71.1 (2004) 89-113 Shakespeare's Jestbook: Wit, Print, Performance Ian Munro University of Alberta That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the "Hundred Merry Tales"--well, that was Signior Benedick that said so. In this complicated moment of performance at the masked ball in Much Ado about Nothing, Beatrice apparently repeats to a disguised Benedick his jibe against her imaginative wit. She returns the insult through a complementary slur: Why, he is the Prince's jester, a very dull fool; only his gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines delight in him, and the commendation is not in his wit, but in his villainy; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then they laugh at him and beat him. (2.1.127-32) Unpacking these jests reveals a range of counterpointed structures. If Beatrice has no wit, Benedick has too much; if Beatrice cannot move beyond the confines of repeating lines from a book of jokes, Benedick cannot confine himself at all, not even for the sake of decorum. On another level, the reference to the "Hundred Merry Tales" jestbook suggests an intimacy with popular culture designed to offend; in response, the reference to "the Prince's jester" suggests a degradation of court culture and courtly manners. Most striking, however, is the way that the jokes oppose print and performance. In this paradigmatic skirmish in the play's merry...