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Scene Study prepares you to perform key scenes for your theater class or audition. We've got all the information you need for a great performance.
Excerpt from Act 4, Scene 1 Dialogue: Benedick, Beatrice
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Understanding the Given Circumstances
- This scene marks the moment when Benedick and Beatrice declare their love for each other.
- They began the play with a longstanding relationship of mockery and mutual disdain, but their characters are similar, and their disdain initially masked an underlying attraction that they could not acknowledge, even to themselves.
- Through a practical joke, they overheard one another declare their love for each other, and now they have come to acknowledge their love.
- A tragedy overshadows this moving scene between them, however. Hero, Beatrice’s cousin, has just been slandered, disgraced, and abandoned by her fiancé Claudio on her wedding day.
- Benedick and Beatrice remain alone on stage after all this has happened.
Blocking and Movement
In theater, blocking is the process of planning the actors’ physical movements and positions. Be sure to show respect and establish trust when working with scene partners. As you prepare to block this scene, ask yourself the following questions:
- What scenic elements do you imagine are present in this scene? The beginning of Act 4, Scene 1 involved a wedding. That means elements of scenery such as benches, pillars, or archways may be available. Do you imagine using some of this wedding scenery, or would you prefer to imagine most of the scene taking place downstage (toward the audience)?
- Because the last action featured many characters on stage, this two-person scene should seem particularly private and quiet (though intense). Think about scenic elements, such as a bench, which offer opportunities to sit down. You might use sitting to signal privacy. How might you use sitting and standing to pace the emotional movements of the scene?
- How can you use the distance between Benedick and Beatrice to signal their feelings throughout the scene? They alternate between intimacy and disagreement. Can you signal intimacy by bringing them together and disagreement by making them pull away? When are they closest to each other, and when are they farthest apart? What is the reason for these changing distances, and how does the distance reflect how they feel about each other?
- Some performances stage a kiss at the moment of greatest intimacy, after Beatrice’s line “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest,” but the scene can work perfectly without one. Before you add a kiss, ask yourself whether you and your scene partner are equally comfortable with it and whether you think it will add something important to your performance.
Character Relationships
This scene hinges on the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice. Understanding this relationship is the key to developing an engaging performance. At the beginning of the play, their relationship appears to be one of mutual mockery and disdain, but it’s also clear that they are interested in each other. Beatrice’s first line in the play is to inquire (disdainfully) about Benedick. There are also some hints that there was once something between them. The tension persists throughout the practical jokes that make them realize they love each other.
The audience naturally comes to this scene in Act 4 looking forward to the moment of truth when Benedick and Beatrice admit their love to each other. This scene delivers that moment, but then it immediately complicates it. First, Benedick and Beatrice get a quiet, intimate moment in which they finally speak to each other honestly, dropping all of the mockery that has served as a defense and allowing themselves to be vulnerable. But Beatrice almost immediately uses their new relationship to demand that Benedick kill Claudio. Not only is this a serious crime, but Claudio is Benedick’s friend. He must immediately decide whether his love is stronger than his friendship.
As for Beatrice, she comes to this scene with more complicated emotions. She grieves for Hero and feels frustrated that her role as a woman prevents her from seeking justice. Before she and Benedick declare their love, she says that what she wants is a “man’s office, but not yours.” Once their relationship changes, she believes the “office” now belongs to Benedick. And when it appears, briefly, that he may decline, she wishes, “O God, that I were a man.” At this moment, Beatrice’s grief and anger may be more powerful than love, but she is not simply using Benedick. Rather, she assumes that their changed relationship should mean that Benedick understands and shares her anger. She demands that he feel what she feels and act accordingly.
