Key Quote
“"Beauty is a witch, against whose charms faith melteth into blood"”
Claudio · Act 2, Scene 1
Focus: “witch”
Claudio blames female beauty for eroding male loyalty — projecting his own jealousy and insecurity onto women, foreshadowing his readiness to condemn Hero.
Technique 1 — DEMONIC IMAGERY / MISOGYNISTIC TROPE
Claudio deploys a demonic image — beauty as a witch — drawing on the deeply misogynistic (woman-hating) Elizabethan association of female attractiveness with diabolical (devilish) power. The verb 'melteth' suggests dissolution of moral resolve, as though female beauty has an almost chemical power to corrupt male fidelity. This demonisation of women was a common cultural anxiety in Shakespeare's era.
The opposition of 'faith' (loyalty, religious devotion) and 'blood' (passion, lust, violence) creates a binary (two-sided opposition) in which women are responsible for men's moral failure. Claudio cannot conceive of male weakness as internally generated — it must be externally caused by a woman's dangerous allure.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
Claudio regresses from the confident suitor to a suspicious, jealous young man. His readiness to blame women for male weakness reveals deep insecurity — he cannot trust his own judgment or emotions. This psychological fragility makes him easy prey for Don John's manipulation.
Key Words
Technique 2 — SEMANTIC FIELD OF ENCHANTMENT
The words 'witch', 'charms', 'melteth' belong to a semantic field of enchantment — as though love is a spell rather than a choice. This relieves Claudio of moral responsibility: if he is bewitched, his actions are not his fault. Shakespeare uses this language to expose how patriarchal culture provides men with ready-made excuses for their own failings by blaming women.
The fluidity of 'melteth' contrasts with the sharp consonants of 'witch' — Shakespeare uses phonetic (sound-based) effects to create a sense of something solid dissolving, reinforcing the idea of moral structures being undermined by feminine power.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
WITCHCRAFT & WOMEN
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the witch trials were at their peak. The association of female sexuality with witchcraft reflected deep patriarchal anxieties about women's power. Claudio's language draws on this cultural fear — positioning beautiful women as dangerous forces that must be controlled or destroyed.
LOVE & JEALOUSY
Claudio speaks this line after briefly believing Don Pedro has stolen Hero for himself. His immediate leap to jealousy and blame reveals that his love is built on possession rather than trust. Shakespeare suggests that conventional courtship — based on appearance rather than knowledge — produces relationships that are inherently fragile and vulnerable to suspicion.
Key Words
WOW — THE MALE GAZE (Laura Mulvey)
Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze describes how visual media positions women as objects to be looked at by men. Claudio's language extends this: Hero's beauty is not merely observed but experienced as an active threat — a 'witch' whose 'charms' assault male reason. This is the male gaze's paranoid inverse: having constructed women as objects of visual pleasure, patriarchal culture then blames them for the very desire men feel. Shakespeare exposes this circular logic (reasoning that loops back to its own assumptions) — Claudio simultaneously desires Hero's beauty and fears it, revealing the fundamental contradiction at the centre of patriarchal attitudes to women.
Key Words