I never cared much for Romeo and Juliet. As an awkward teenager, with whom no one ever fell headlong, prose-spouting in love, I developed (in addition to intimacy issues) specific theories about models of love: which are good, which are bad, and which are profoundly obnoxious. It’s possible my predisposition against the main characters came from my inability to relate to them—my fifteenth year was spent in combat boots and black eyeliner, not sighing on balconies (not that I didn’t want to, mind you). I found the angst tedious—I had enough of that on my own. I wanted something with a little more punch, because to me, the truest part of love is the fighting for it. In the R&J model, when the going gets tough, the tough… drink poison. Where the hell is the romance in that? Melodrama by any other name would annoy as thoroughly.
Fortunately for me and my fledgling theories, there was a great deal more Shakespeare to be had, and I found the satisfying model I was looking for in Much Ado About Nothing.
Admittedly, Much Ado has the sappy, tortured romance between Hero and Claudio, but the Benedick/Beatrice interaction was really what took me. It had, after all, a very auspicious start: Beatrice is whip smart and doesn’t give a flying iamb about what others think. The smart I could do. The confidence… well, I could work on it, but the relatable potential was there.
In addition, the proceeding banter, the “merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her,” appealed to me enormously compared to all of the kissy pilgrim talk betwixt (er… between) R&J. After all, the sex is in the banter. The chemistry and the crackle in a “skirmish of wit” are, let’s be honest, intellectual foreplay. If a man ever said to me “I would my horse the speed of your tongue,” I make no promises about my resulting actions.
So you’ve got the strong, smart woman. You’ve got the banter (and, by extrapolation, the promise of rockin’ sex). And then, when the going gets tough, the tough don’t spout poetry: they just lay it on the line. In her worst hour, when Beatrice is broken-hearted and mad as hell that dumbshit Claudio has slandered her cousin, Benedick says to her: “I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?” In that worst hour, he doesn’t know how to fix it, but damn can he love her.
Granted, much drama ensues (he’s not so thrilled when she wants him to kill his best friend), but in the end, he stands with her, she’s right, Hero is vindicated, and everybody’s happy.
Vastly simplified, my devotion to Much Ado foreshadowed my love for most of Austen: how could I not love a plot where a smart, strong woman gets to keep being smart and strong, maintains her principles, AND gets the guy? Juliet just ends up dead.
There’s a catch, though, as there always is. Regarding the choosing of a mate based on facial hair (I’ve chosen for worse reasons), the Lady Beatrice has the following to offer: “He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.” Sort through all of the more and less thans, and the math works out to precisely zero men. She didn’t seem to have any problems with dying single, then partying it up with the bachelors in heaven. My outlook on that particular scenario is not so rosy. Like I said, I’m working on the confidence thing.
I was walking towards a first date recently (that relationship was good, then fantastic, then not, in short order) when a few neural impulses collided and I thought to myself that I should send a hopeful prayer out to Meg Ryan, patron saint of romantic comedies, to bless this date. Something like “forgive me Meg, for I am single: it has been two years since my last real relationship.” I think it’s safe to say that this sentiment is regrettable, flawed, and a troubling indicator of how I’m looking at my love life. In their day, Shakespeare’s plays were popular entertainment. As I was formulating all of my romantic theories with Shakespeare, my own popular culture was more or less reinforcing my ideas; many romantic comedies are, to a greater or lesser extent, based on the Much Ado template of how a smart (albeit neurotic) woman banters, battles, and is betrothed.
Beatrice, in her speech on beards, is generalizing, and I, in my theories of relationships, am doing the same. Sometimes, when I’m being perfectly honest with myself, it seems like I’m looking for someone to play the Benedick role. I have set the parameters and am waiting for someone of the correct dimensions to fill the part, as if that would help me know love when I see it. It seems so much easier and more logical to line up all of the things you would like in a mate (or even a date), as if you were handing the universe a Christmas wish list, but at the end of the day, what are the odds that any one person will meet every criterion on that list? Or even that the criteria on the list are what should be on the list in the first place? (I’ve always been pretty good at specifying what I want, but whether what I want is good for me or not is an entirely different matter.) In trying to make it easier for myself I have actually made it much more difficult.
Maybe the truth is that no matter how you spin it, or set up models, or pray to mid ’90s romantic comedy patron saints, it’s just not easy to find someone who fits. That seems like such a self-evident statement to make, but sometimes I’m so wrapped up in theories and fiction (because Much Ado and Meg Ryan have at least that much in common) that I miss the most obvious truths.
I seek my own Benedick insofar as I want someone who will be able to bait me, banter with me, and love me even when I’m spitting flames at him. I leave the rest to the grace of the universe— the beard is negotiable.
“For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”
No comments:
Post a Comment