Could great men thunder

You could break a jackhammer on her chastity belt.

You know how every so often a town in America prosecutes some old lady for some obscure colonial-era law that was still on the books even though no one's enforced it for decades? Yeah, well, this is the story of how Vienna's Duke was so distracted "studying" that he realizes his town has gone to pot. To save face, he puts Angelo--the total Tool--in charge while the Duke roams the city in disguise to see how Angelo does re-enforcing the rules. 

Claudio gets arrested and sentenced to death for knocking up his betrothed before marriage--a punishment that hasn't been carried out in a while--and his sister, the uber-virgin nun-in-training Isabella, pleads to Angelo to spare her brother's life. Upon seeing Isabella, the Tool can only think with his three-inch fool and offers to release Claudio if she surrenders her chaste treasure. 

Isabella is appalled, obviously, and much is poetically debated by Claudio as to whether her integrity is worth more than his life. She is horrified by Claudio's suggestion that she take Angelo's offer, but the undercover Duke, whose own bauble is doing all his cogitating for him, decides to conjure up a plan to help Isabella that will keep her intact... hopefully for his own deflowering ambitions. 

Throughout Shakespeare's work, especially in the Sonnets, much argument is made over the desired increase from fairest creatures. It's a constant theme involved with boys and men wooing their lady loves into a bed-pressing session, and here, it's thrown into sharp relief due to Isabella's ultra-devout convent life choices and the relative and literal lawlessness of the men in Vienna. 
It's the classic dichotomy of the male gaze--woman as virgin or whore. Either way, it's plain to see how men see their own chastity--as nothing to get in a twist over. At least it's not worth their lives, because if Claudio valued his chastity as much as Isabella valued hers (assuming he knew of the law on the books in Vienna), he wouldn't have tumbled with his fiancee in the first place.

So here's Isabella, raging at Angelo about his bluster and abuse of authority (which of course, turns him on something awful):


Measure for Measure, Act II, Sc. II
Isabella: Could great men thunder 
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal. 

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more

A sight that has many ladies sighing.

I won't promise this won't melt into an infatuative drivel about Sir Ken, because my heart did just that when I first saw his film version of Much Ado About Nothing. I had always adored the antics of Benedick and Beatrice on the page, so imagine the ovarian explosions that occurred when I heard that he had, of course, taken the best male role in the play. Indeed, the film is Sir Ken in fine form, at the top of his game, as a most dashing mofo riding horses and getting baths and wearing tight pants...*ahem*... and this film represents perhaps his most successful achievement in making Shakespeare accessible to modern audiences. 

Much Ado being the original romantic comedy, and a quintessential one at that, it was a perfect choice for adaptation to the screen. And even considering Sir Ken's often... eccentric... casting decisions, this film's actors and actresses actually turned out more or less perfect for their roles. It's a grand delight and I don't believe I have to heap on any more praise than it already has to convince any lover of Shakespeare (or beautifully executed romcoms, which I usually distrust) to watch it for themselves. 

The song featured within the text has a naturally lilting quality that makes it so easy to memorize that I actually made myself memorize a second passage in a week. I chose one of Beatrice's shrewd rants against marriage, which suits my personal tongue-in-cheek position quite nicely. She and her antagonizing lover Benedick spend the entire play railing about love and the differences between men and women. Their war-like wooing is immediately a more passionate and emotional foreplay than the sweet, kind, and honest couple--Hero and Claudio--could ever muster. Their spiteful, witty, verbal thrusts and parries represent the most satisfying love story in all of Shakespeare, IMHO. They are the most intelligent individuals in the story, and the surface tension of their cynycism breaks with the catalyst of dishonor laid upon Hero and Claudio at their doomed wedding. Some things are sacred to these two, and as they eventually find out, they find each other more sacred than anything else.

As Benedick says, "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably." In that small statement, using the formal "thou" instead of "you," he betrays the deep respect he has always had for Beatrice. They may ride off into the proverbial sunset knocking each other's heads with frying pans, but when they join forces, all is well... and fantastically entertaining.

Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Sc. III

Balthasar: Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey, nonny nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo

Of dumps so dull and heavy.

The fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leavy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey, nonny nonny.


Act II, Sc. I
Beatrice: 
Just, if he send me no husband, for the which blessing I am

at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I

could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had

rather lie in the woollen...

What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and

make him my waiting gentlewoman? 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. Therefore I will

even take sixpence in earnest of the bearherd, and lead his

apes into hell...

No, but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an

old cuckold with horns on his head, and say, “Get you to

heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here’s no place for you

maids.” So deliver I up my apes and away to Saint Peter. For

the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there

live we as merry as the day is long.