"You learn me Noble Thankfulness": Restoring a Graceful Cycle of Giving and Receiving in Much Ado About Nothing

Abstract:While it is well known that the names of Beatrice and Benedick mean "the one who blesses" and "the one who is blessed," their exchange of blessing has a richer significance than is usually recognized. Blessing represents not only the dynamics of a happy marriage, but a model of exchange that shores up the stability of the whole community. Shakespeare's vision draws on two sources especially influential for thinking about community in early modern England—Seneca's On Benefits and The Book of Common Prayer. Both of these works define social stability as derived from the working of a kind of grace which resides in exchanges that are freed from calculation, commodification, and vengeance. In Much Ado about Nothing Shakespeare synthesizes Seneca's paradigm for graceful exchange with The Book of Common Prayer's depiction of how God's graceful gift of salvation inspires blessings of for-giveness and charity that should circulate among a congregation. The play chronicles the collapse of community when its members engage instead in the payback of revenge and when they commodify priceless benefits of love, friendship, and grace. The union of Beatrice and Benedick represents the possible transformation of these marred kinds of exchange, replacing them with a healing cycle of blessing, which revitalizes the relationship between givers and thankers, revises repressive gender roles, and repudiates harmful patterns of score-keeping and vengeful payback.