Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews June 8, 2023 June 1, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been
If half thy outward graces had been placed
About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!
See Important Quotations Explained
Everyone gathers inside the church to celebrate the wedding of Claudio and Hero. But when Friar Francis asks Claudio whether he wishes to marry Hero, Claudio breaks into an outraged speech. He tells Leonato that he sends Hero back to Leonato again, for though she seems outwardly pure and blushes with innocence, her outward features belie her inward corruption and that she is, in fact, an unchaste, unfaithful whore. The happy wedding transforms itself into a chaotic uproar. Leonato and the shaken Hero ask what Claudio means. Claudio tells Leonato, in front of everyone in the church, that the night before Claudio, Don Pedro, and Don John watched Hero “tal[k]” with a vile man at her window (IV.i.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, the friar steps in. A quiet observer to the whole proceeding, he has wisely determined from the expressions of shock he has seen on Hero’s face that she is not guilty of unfaithfulness. Hero regains consciousness and insists that she is a virgin, that she has been entirely faithful to Claudio, and that she has no idea what her accusers are talking about. The intelligent Benedick realizes that if the accusation is a lie, it must originate with the troublemaking Don John, who would happily trick these two to spoil their happiness.
The friar comes up with an unexpected plan: he suggests that Hero’s existence be concealed, and that Leonato tell everyone she has died of shock and grief. When her accusers hear that an innocent woman has died, their anger will turn into regret, and they will start to remember what a virtuous lady Hero was. If the accusation really is a trick, then perhaps the treachery will expose itself, and Hero can return to the world. In the worst-case scenario, Hero can later be taken off quietly and placed in a convent to become a nun. The grieving, confused Leonato agrees to go along with the plan.
The others depart with Hero, leaving Benedick and Beatrice alone together. Benedick, trying to comfort Beatrice, asks if there is any way he can show his friendship to her. He suddenly confesses that he is in love with her, acknowledging how strange it is for his affections to reverse so suddenly, and she, equally startled and confused, replies in similar terms. But when Benedick says that he will do anything for Beatrice, she asks him to kill his friend Claudio. The shocked Benedick refuses. Angry, Beatrice denounces Claudio’s savagery, saying that if she were a man she would kill him herself for his slander of her cousin and the cruelty of his trick. After listening to her, Benedick changes his mind and soberly agrees to challenge Claudio—for the wrong that he has done to Hero and for Beatrice’s sake.
Read a translation of Act IV, scene i
Elsewhere, Dogberry, Verges, and the Watch interrogate Borachio and Conrad. Borachio confesses that he received money from Don John for pretending to make love to Hero and then lying about it to Claudio and Don Pedro. When they hear about what has happened at the wedding, the watchmen tie up the captives and take them to Leonato’s house.
Dost thou not suspect my place?
Dost thou not suspect my years?
O that he were here to write me down an ass!
But masters, remember that I am an ass.
See Important Quotations Explained
Read a translation of Act IV, scene ii
With the wedding scene—the climax of the play—the tone takes an abrupt turn, plunging from high comedy into tragedy. Claudio’s rejection of Hero is designed to inflict as much pain as possible, and Hero’s and Leonato’s reactions to it seem to make things even worse. Few accusations could cause a woman more harm in the Renaissance than that of being unchaste, and Claudio uses deliberately theatrical language to hurt Hero publicly, in front of friends and family. The rejection scene also throws other relationships in the play into question: Claudio and Don Pedro both suggest that it reflects badly on Leonato’s social manners to have tried to foist off a woman like Hero on Claudio, and Don Pedro implies that his own reputation has suffered by way of the apparent discovery that he and Claudio have made regarding Hero’s virginity. Claudio assaults Leonato by denigrating Hero: “Give not this rotten orange to your friend. / She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour” (IV.i.
Read more about social grace and standing as a theme.
Although the usually quiet Hero speaks up in her own defense, Claudio does not allow her even the possibility of defending herself. When she blushes in shock and humiliation, he cries:
. . . Would you not swear, All you that see her, that she were a maid, By these exterior shows? But she is none. She knows the heat of a luxurious bed. Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty. (V.i. 36–40 )
Hero’s reactions of horror become, in Claudio’s description of her face, evidence of her guilt, making it impossible for her to offer any defense. Claudio similarly discards Hero’s denial of the accusation when she says, “I talked with no man at that hour, my lord” (IV.i.
Following immediately upon these moments of betrayal and pain, however, seeds are sown for resolution and redemption. The trick that the friar plans is ingenious, and it seems to be a good one. It also plays cunningly upon a simple fact of human nature:
That what we have, we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but, being lacked and lost, . . . then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours. (IV.i. 217–221 )
As soon as Hero’s accusers think her dead, the friar realizes, much of the anger driving Claudio and the others will dissipate, and they will start to remember her good qualities and regret their poor treatment of her. The “greater birth” that the friar envisions will transform Hero from an object of scorn and slander into someone mourned and better beloved than when she was alive (IV.i.
The scene also marks a critical turning point in the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice. Benedick seems to make an important decision when he stays behind in the church with Beatrice and her family instead of leaving with Claudio, Don Pedro, and Don John. His loyalty, which lies with his soldier friends when he arrives in Messina, now draws him to stay with Beatrice. In their elliptical ways, Beatrice and Benedick confess their love to one another after everyone else has left the church. Beatrice’s confused answer to Benedick’s blurting out that he loves her reveals that she is hiding something. Indeed, when Benedick exultantly exclaims that she loves him, she finally admits it: “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest” (IV.i.
Read more about the quote "I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."
Lost in his newfound love, Benedick apparently converts himself to Beatrice’s way of thinking. Soberly he asks her whether she truly believes that Claudio has slandered Hero. When Beatrice answers yes, Benedick says, “Enough, I am engaged, I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so I leave you” (IV.i.
Read more about the differences in women's and men's honor as a theme.
Please wait while we process your payment