Excerpt from Ten More Plays of Shakespeare

Aspeare was so well acquainted. No one, even now, can continuously read the host of tales from Boccaccio on wards, in which the novel-writers of Italy recorded the life of Italy, without a more profound knowledge of that life than history will ever teach him; or Without being so permeated with its spirit that to live in it would seem to him easy, and to write of it (if he had a touch of genius) equally easy. Shakespeare had done this. Like all those who read at all in London, he had read a host of translated Italian tales, and their Italian Spirit is in all the characters of Much Ado About Nothing. In sentiment, in morals, in evil and good passions, in its high honour and villainy, in its scenery, pageantry, and love of war, the play is Italian. When, then, Shakespeare, penetrated with this Italian atmosphere, created Benedick and Beatrice, they also became, in his moulding hands, as Italian as the rest, even more Italian. They have the Italian wit, wit for its own sake, rejoicing in itself Tuscan wit rather than Sicilian - with here and there a Fescennine touch. A seriousness emerging now and then in the midst of its brilliancy, and characteristically Italian, divides it from French wit; and when the events of the play turn towards tragedy, this seriousness gains the upper hand with both Beatrice and Benedick. Those deep sources of grave feeling (which in the Italian nature underlie its easy gaiety) rise to the surface in the dark and sorrowful hours of the play, and rule and dignify the action of Beatrice and Benedick. The dazzling lightness of their wit slips away from them for the time. With serious, with almost sombre steadfastness, they meet the heavy trial which tests their insight and their strength. Moreover, it is when these solemn passions rise in Bene dick and Beatrice, that their love, at first so lightly felt, is changed. In the atmosphere of the high emotions of pity and indignation which they feel for the fate of Hero.

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