Act 3 scene 4-
-The audience begin to notice a change in Beatrice's behaviour.
Her bawdy wit seems to be put aside. The girls make sexual jokes within the play as well as the men this may be surprising to the audience as most of the women were quiet and only had intentions of pleasing men.
Margret says to Hero, 'is there any harm in the heavier, for a husband'?, this is a sexual joke she also makes another sexual reference when she says 'twill be heavier soon, by the weight of a man'.
-'cardus Benedictus' is a thistle plant that grows in the wild.It can be used as a medical herbal remedy. Although Beatrice takes this as an insult to Benedict assuming it was made to be a double meaning to Benedict's name.
-The audience may be a little deceived by Margret's behaviour. Her character is bawdy which shows us that Shakespeare has used comic relief within her character to distract us from the tragedy of the wedding that is later foreshadowed.
Scarlett consider whether this scene is just comic relief.
ReplyDeleteWhy might Shakespeare want to deceive us? For so long we have viewed the action from a privileged position of knowing more than the character and derived humour from this. Now we are in the same position as them, why might he do this?