Key Quote
“"Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu! No glory lives behind the back of such"”
Beatrice · Act 3, Scene 1
Focus: “maiden pride”
After overhearing Hero describe Benedick's supposed love, Beatrice abandons her defensive wit and opens herself to emotional vulnerability for the first time.
Technique 1 — APOSTROPHE & PERSONIFICATION
Beatrice addresses abstract concepts — Contempt and maiden pride — as though they are departing companions, using the rhetorical device of apostrophe (addressing an absent person or abstract idea). By personifying (giving human qualities to) these qualities, she dramatises the act of shedding them — it becomes a conscious, decisive farewell rather than a gradual change.
The valedictory (farewell) tone — 'farewell', 'adieu' — uses both English and French synonyms for goodbye, creating a sense of ceremonial finality. She is performing a ritual of emotional transformation, formally ending one phase of her identity and beginning another.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
This soliloquy marks Beatrice's most significant emotional progression — she consciously chooses to abandon the defensive wit that has shielded her from vulnerability. The phrase 'maiden pride' acknowledges that her resistance to love was partly pride — the same flaw the play associates with male honour. Her willingness to recognise and discard it shows self-awareness that most characters in the play never achieve.
Key Words
Technique 2 — VERSE SHIFT — PROSE TO VERSE
Crucially, this soliloquy is in verse (rhyming couplets), whereas Beatrice's normal mode of speech is prose. Shakespeare signals her emotional transformation through a register shift — moving from the informal, combative prose of her wit into the formal, elevated language of genuine feeling. The rhyme scheme ('such' / 'much') creates a sense of resolution absent from her earlier, deliberately unresolved verbal battles.
This mirrors Benedick's own verse shift in his post-gulling soliloquy. Shakespeare uses identical structural techniques for both characters, reinforcing their symmetry — they are emotional equals who undergo parallel transformations, distinguishing them from the play's other couples.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
DECEPTION & TRUTH
Beatrice, like Benedick, has been gulled — Hero and Ursula staged a conversation about Benedick's love for her to overhear. Ironically, the deception produces authentic feeling: being lied to about Benedick's love forces Beatrice to confront her own suppressed emotions. Shakespeare suggests that sometimes truth can only be accessed through indirect means.
FEMALE AGENCY
Beatrice's soliloquy is a rare moment of autonomous (self-directed) decision in the play. Unlike Hero, whose romantic fate is arranged by men, Beatrice actively chooses to love. Even though she's been manipulated, the decision to abandon 'maiden pride' is presented as her own — Shakespeare grants her agency even within a patriarchal framework that restricts women's choices.
Key Words
WOW — PERFORMATIVITY OF GENDER (Butler)
Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity argues that gender identity is not innate but created through repeated actions and performances. Beatrice's farewell to 'maiden pride' can be read as a conscious decision to stop performing the role of the resistant woman and begin performing a different version of femininity — one that includes vulnerability. Crucially, this is not a surrender to patriarchal expectations but a strategic renegotiation of her identity. She does not become the silent, obedient woman that Elizabethan society prescribes; she simply adds emotional openness to her existing repertoire of wit and intelligence.
Key Words