The after-the-fact addition of two numbers is evidence of Berlioz’s desire to polish the structure of the whole by rendering it audibly symmetrical and arched, with the keystone being what has become the most celebrated number, the Duo-Nocturne, “Nuit paisible et sereine.” The arch rises, one might say, with a promise of peace, in the first chorus, “Le More est en fuite,” which is followed by the first jousting of the principals. And the arch falls, in the final duet, with the principals’ metaphorical promise of war, “Nous redeviendrons ennemis demain,” followed by the chorus’s promise of marital bliss. This text, as we know from a much marked-up copy of the libretto,
1 BnF, Musique, Macnutt Collection. A facsimile of the last page appears in NBE 3:295. was intended to be sung to the same music as the introductory chorus. Indeed, the syllable count of the first six lines of the later text (8 + 8 + 6 + 5 + 12 + 8) is identical to that of the first six lines of the earlier “Le More est en fuite.” In the revised version, the Scherzo-Duettino closes the opera in G major. Had Berlioz followed his initial plan of repeating the chorus, he would presumably have returned to its earlier key, B-flat major: like
Les Troyens, then,
Béatrice et Bénédict would have begun in G (Berlioz’s favorite key) and ended in B-flat.
The central Duo-Nocturne itself, seen from afar and setting aside the incidental numbers, is surrounded by two duets sung by the principals and two trios sung respectively by the three men and the three women. Such large-scale symmetries, as Hervé Lacombe has pointed out, are characteristic of the classic superstructure of the opéra-comique.
2 Lacombe, “Béatrice et Bénédict.” What do we know of the
translation of the play that Berlioz had before him as he constructed his drama? “I own three editions of Shakespeare,” he wrote in October 1856, “two in English,” which we have identified above, “and one in French: a
translation,”
3 Berlioz to his sister Adèle, October 26, 1856 (CG 5:379). which word, as I noted in chapter 11, he sets down in sarcastic capital letters. This was the work of Benjamin Laroche (1797–1852), a poet, journalist, abolitionist, professor of French and English, editor of the periodical
Le Bon Sens,
and translator of several major English writers, most prominently Lord Byron. The Laroche edition of the
Œuvres dramatiques de Shakespeare, despite the appearance in the eighteen-sixties of a new printing of the Letourneur translation as revised by Guizot, despite the appearance of a new translation by François-Victor Hugo, and despite the feelings of some critics that prose translations cannot possibly bring poetry to life,
4 “E.T.,” in the Gazette de France (October 24, 1840). saw at least ten subsequent printings before the century came to an end. Berlioz’s indebtedness to the Laroche translation, which, despite its shortcomings, he favored over the others, is noteworthy indeed.
It is at the outset of the play that we first savor the mockery of Beatrice and Benedict. “I pray you, is Signor Mountanto returned from the wars or no?” (1.1.23). How, I wonder, did Berlioz read this question? One must suppose that he was satisfied with the Laroche because he adopts it: “Veuillez me dire, je vous prie, si le seigneur Matamore est de retour, ou non, de la guerre?” A matamore in French would be a warrior proud of his exploits carried out against the Moors. But a mountanto, in English, or a montanto, as we find the word in the Stevens edition of 1802, is a fencing term for an upright thrust, a term that carried phallic implications and that was even spoken as “mount onto,” as a stallion would mount a mere. In his translation, François Guizot retained the word montanto and added an explanatory footnote: “an ancient fencing term applied to a ‘fier-à-bras’ [a ‘braggart’], to a ‘bravache’ [a ‘swaggerer’ or ‘wise-guy’].” In the more modern translation by François-Victor Hugo, we find the appellation “Tranche-Montagne,” a synonym for matamore and fanfaron, both meaning “show-off” or “egotist.” Only Guizot seems to have understood the sexual allusion: in his introduction to the play, Guizot admits to being struck by the sometimes “excessive liberty” of Beatrice’s speech. In the opening salvo of the play, I am not certain that Berlioz, who in these matters, I have always felt, was usually more straight-laced than lubricious, caught Beatrice’s clearly sexual drift.
Berlioz’s attitude toward the translators is well known. “I’ve corrected in my copy I don’t know how many silly errors of Monsieur Benjamin Laroche,” he wrote to his friend Humbert Ferrand, in a letter I quoted in chapter 2, “and yet it is he who is the most faithful and least ignorant of the lot.”
5 CG 7:139. It is more than a shame that we do not possess Berlioz’s copy of the Laroche Shakespeare, because it would give us an object lesson in Berlioz’s understanding of Shakespeare’s English. With only a few exceptions, the books that were on his shelves at the end of his life disappeared with the rest of his mostly dilapidated possessions. But in this letter to Ferrand, from October 28, 1864, what is in question is not
Much Ado, although Berlioz does mention a potential performance, in Stuttgart, of
Béatrice et Bénédict, but rather
Othello. Indeed, unlike his practice with
Hamlet and
Othello, among others, Berlioz seems never to quote from
Much Ado in English.
To weigh Berlioz’s dependence on the Laroche translation, let us look closely at several excerpts from the composer’s libretto. First, the dialogue found in act 1, scene 3 of the opera, where Berlioz’s text is nearly but not absolutely identical to Laroche’s. This dialogue marks the opening of the play. In the opera, it is “scene 3” because scene 1 comprises the opening chorus, “Le More est en fuite,” and scene 2, a brief discussion among Héro, Béatrice, and Léonato (the governor of Messina, the scene of the play), whose text, of Berlioz’s invention, announces the arrival of the illustrious general don Pedro. Laroche spells the name with an accent; Berlioz does not.
Shakespeare | Laroche | Berlioz |
Leonato: I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina. | Léonato: Cette lettre m’annonce que don Pédro d’Aragon arrive ce soir à Messine. | The conversation in scene 2 carries out the fonction of Leonato’s remark. At the end of scene 2, Berlioz has Leonato exclaim: Au reste, nous allons avoir des détails, on m’annonce un message. |
Messenger: He is very near by this, he was not three leagues off when I left him. | Le Messager: Il doit être bien près de cette ville au moment où je parle; quand je l’ai quitté, il n’en était qu’à trois lieues. | Le Messager: Monseigneur, je vous annonce l’arrivée du général. Quand je l’ai quitté, il n’était qu’à trois lieues de Messine. |
Berlioz has here altered Laroche in order to speak aloud “Messine,” the site of the action. Berlioz’s next several interventions are identical to those of Laroche. Then:
Leonato: I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on a young Florentine called Claudio. | Léonato: Je vois par cette lettre que don Pédro a conféré d’éclatants témoignages de satisfaction à un jeune Florentin nommé Claudio. | Léonato: Je vois par cette lettre que Don Pedro a conféré d’éclatants témoignages de satisfaction au jeune Claudio. |
Berlioz has already introduced Claudio, in scene 2, as Don Pedro’s “right-hand man”; he thus removes the identifying tag of “young Florentine.” At the mention of Claudio, Berlioz has Hero exclaim “Dieu!”—“Thank God!” Shakespeare gives her no reaction. Then, of the honor Don Pedro has bestowed upon him:
Shakespeare | Laroche |
Messenger: Much deserved on his part, and equally remembered by Don Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion: he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how. | Le Messager: Il les a mérités par une conduite à laquelle Don Pédro a rendu justice, et il a été au-delà de ce que promettait son âge. C’est un agneau qui s’est conduit comme un lion. Il a dépassé toutes les espérances à un point que je ne saurais vous exprimer. |
Laroche well rendered the meaning of the comment; Berlioz followed him with exactitude, but removed the final sentence, with its sonorous “better bettered,” perhaps because he recognized the impossibility of finding an alliterative equivalent. (In the anthologies, because of that alliteration, the Messenger’s remark is usually reduced to only: “he hath indeed better bettered expectation.”) More likely, Berlioz was simply reducing the dialogue to its essentials: he now leaves out several further lines and jumps to Beatrice’s question, which we have discussed, regarding the return of “seigneur Matamore.” Berlioz echoes Laroche to the point of the Messenger’s comment on Benedict’s military service:
Messenger: And a good soldier too, lady. | Le Messager: C’est un vaillant guerrier, madame. | Le Messager: C’est encore un vaillant. |
Beatrice: And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a lord? | Béatrice: Vaillant auprès d’une dame, mais qu’est-il en face d’un guerrier? | Béatrice: Vaillant auprès d’une dame; mais qu’est-il en face d’un guerrier? |
Messenger: A lord to a lord, a man to a man, stuffed with all honourable virtues. | Le Messager: Brave devant un brave, et homme en face d’un homme; il est rempli de qualités honorables. | Le Messager: Brave devant un brave, et homme en face d’un homme. Lui aussi a, dans cette guerre, rendu d’importants services. |
Beatrice: It is so indeed, he is no less than a stuffed man; but for the stuffing—well, we are all mortal. | Béatrice: Il en est rembourré; si on lui ôtait la bourre factice dont il est plein; mais nous sommes tous mortels. | Béatrice: Vous aviez des vivres avariés, et il vous a aidés à les consommer. C’est un intrépide gastronome, il a un excellent estomac. |
Here Berlioz has rearranged Beatrice’s remarks to include what she had said, in Shakespeare, moments before: “You had a musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it: he is a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an excellent stomach.” Berlioz has followed the Laroche translation, as he does for the next few lines, until Beatrice asks the identity of “his companion now,” because Benedick “hath every month a new sworn brother.”
Messenger: Is’t possible? | Le Messager: Est-il possible? | Le Messager: Est-il possible? |
Beatrice: Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat, it ever changes with the next block. | Béatrice: Très aisément possible; ses affections changent comme la forme de son chapeau à chaque mode nouvelle. | Béatrice: Très possible. Ses affections changent, comme la forme de sa toque, à chaque mode nouvelle. |
Why, for hat, did Berlioz choose toque rather than chapeau? Did he wish to imitate the sound of the English word block? Did toque better render the true meaning of block—the mold upon which the hat is shaped? A moment later, Beatrice jokes that if Claudio has “caught the Benedick,” by which she seems to mean a fever of madness, then, for a cure, it will cost him “a thousand pound.” Laroche translated “mille livres sterling”; Berlioz, tuning his words to the sound of Messina, set down “six mille ducats.” I do not know what conversion table he was using, but the sum in any currency is enormous.
The remaining lines of the scene, until the arrival of Don Pédro, are identical in Berlioz and Laroche. Berlioz avoids “Voici don Pédro” (“Don Pedro is approached”) because, desirous of musical symmetry, he rather introduces the return of the opening chorus, and thus has the messenger say: “Je vais au-devant du general” (“I shall go meet the general”). Here, Berlioz has reduced the text, altered a few words, but changed nothing of substance.
Now let us look elsewhere, at the text of a part of the trio found in act 1, scene 9 of the opera, which is based on lines from act 1, scene 1 of the play.
Shakespeare | Laroche | Berlioz |
Benedick: | Bénédict: | Bénédict: |
That a woman conceived me, I thank her: that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none: and the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor. | Qu’une femme m’ait conçu, je l’en remercie; qu’elle m’ait élevé, je lui en suis pareillement on ne peut plus reconnaissant; mais que je ne me soucie pas d’avoir des cornes au front, ou de suspendre mon cor de chasse à un baudrier invisible, c’est ce que toutes les femmes me pardonneront. Ne voulant pas leur faire l’injure de me défier de toutes, je prends la liberté de ne me fier à aucune: la conclusion de tout ceci, et je ne m’en porterai que mieux, c’est que je veux vivre garçon. | D’une femme il est vrai que je reçus la vie; Elle m’éleva, je l’en remercie; Mais si, malgré tout, je ne me soucie Que fort peu de porter de hauts bois sur le front, Les femmes me pardonneront. Par ma défiance, de toutes les blesser, je n’ai pas le vouloir, Je ne saurais pourtant avoir En l’une d’elles confiance, Et ma conclusion, C’est que je veux mourir garçon! |
The meaning of the Shakespeare’s prose is accurately rendered in Laroche’s. Indeed, Laroche is less obscure than Shakespeare: “have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick” is hilarious but by no means straightforward. Convinced as he is that no woman can remain faithful—the unlikeliness of female fidelity being one of the themes of the play (cuckoldry being another)—Benedick does not wish to risk the sounding from his forehead of a “recheat” (a call for hunting dogs who have lost the scent of their prey), that is, the wearing of the horns of a cuckold, which, ipso facto, is the garb of the married man.
For his musical setting, Berlioz turns the lines into poetry, well rhythmicized, well rhymed, but hardly conventional. In the bit we have quoted (the central section of the trio), he distributes three alexandrines (lines 1, 4, and 7) among lines of 10, 10, 8, 5, 8, 8, 5, and 8 syllables. The rhyme scheme, too (aaabbcddcbb), is original. The vocabulary, however, fully depends on Laroche, from whom Berlioz borrows the words remercie, éleva, soucie, pardonneront, defiance, conclusion, and garçon. For Shakespeare’s notion of freedom, “I will live a bachelor” (“je veux vivre garçon”), Berlioz substitutes an intensifier: “je veux mourir garcon” (“I will die a bachelor”). But the composer’s nicest invention is the replacement of the ill-mannered expression porter des cornes, that is, “wear horns,” or “be victimized by infidelity,” with porter des hauts bois—literally “wear high woods,” but figuratively “wear oboes”! A lesser composer would have had the oboes quack at this moment of the proceedings.
Let us look, finally, at scenes 11, 12, and 13 of act 1, in which Berlioz introduces the asinine character of Somarone, loosely based upon Shakespeare’s Dogberry, who will introduce diagetic music into the action, and who will assert later in the play (act 4, scene 1): “remember that I am an ass”! Somarone’s name, derived by Berlioz from the Italian word
somaro (“ass”), is also based on Shakespeare’s Balthasar, a singer in Don Pedro’s entourage. While Dogberry exaggerates his own talents as an officer and wise man, Balthasar rather modestly claims, in act 2, scene 3 (as we have seen), that “there’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.” Shakespeare’s Balthasar would thus not say, of his new composition, as Berlioz’s Somarone does: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the work you are about to have the honor to perform is a masterpiece!” In fact, this self-aggrandizing spoof is yet another Berliozian quotation: in his letter to Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein of March 10, 1859, Berlioz repeats what he had been told that Spontini said at the final rehearsal of his opera of 1819: “Messieurs,
Olympie est un chef’d’œuvre! Commençons!”—“Gentleman,
Olympie is a masterpiece! Let us begin!”
6 CG 5:668.The true model for Somarone, however, as Joël-Marie Fauquet has discovered,
7 Fauquet, “Somarone ou l’ivresse de soi,” 60–63. is the chapel master found in an obscure opéra-comique by Ferdinando Paër,
Le Maître de chapelle,
first performed in 1821, seen by Berlioz in a shortened version on July 23, 1834, and reviewed by him in
Le Rénovateur: “In our opinion, the role of the chapel master is, like others of its kind, extremely silly. A musician who comes on stage in order to share with us the intimate secrets of his compositional talent—saying, for example, ‘here I desire the sound of the fluuuute’ (and the flute in the orchestra will toot a tune), ‘then I desire a solo for the bassoon’ (and the bassoon will groan in its turn), ‘and a canon’ (ra-ta-tat-tat), as in [Stanislas Champein’s]
La Mélomanie [1781]—such a person may amuse the folks in the rue Charlot, relatives of those in [Alexis Wafflard and Fulgence de Bury’s]
Le Voyageur à Dieppe [1821], but for everyone else he is nothing but a ridiculous
Pasquin [a zany and ridiculous servant], dramatically untrue, and irritatingly inane to the point of giving you a headache.”
8 Le Rénovateur, July 27, 1834; CM 1:309.“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,” the poem sung by Balthasar, in act 2, scene 3, when Shakespeare uses music to press upon women the inevitability of male matrimonial deception, has, in the setting by R. J. S. Stevens, become something of a hit tune. Not so the two couplets of Somarone’s nuptial serenade, the Épithalame grotesque, in scene 11 of the opera, which encourage the youthful fiancés to forget the drudgery of daily existence and to indulge in the “infinite ecstasy” of love. “Mourez, tendres époux” (“Die, young lovers”) makes obvious use of the erotic cliché. More subtle is Berlioz’s reuse of the phrase “extase infinie,” extracted from the sublime love duet in act 4 of Les Troyens, “Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie,” a borrowing not unlike Wagner’s, of the Tristan motif, in act 3, scene 3 of Die Meistersinger, but unlikely to be noticed by Berlioz’s listeners of 1862 in as much as Les Troyens, completed for some time, would not be performed until the following year.
Between the couplets of the Épithalame, as Somarone makes changes to his score, Bénédict and Claudio engage in a lively conversation, whose text is yet again beholden to Laroche. Somarone’s interjections, however, are Berlioz’s own:
Shakespeare | Laroche | Berlioz |
Benedick: I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shall follies in others, become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love: | Bénédict: Je ne conçois pas qu’un homme qui voit combien est insensé celui qui se soumet à l’empire de l’amour, puisse en devenant amoureux, tomber dans l’insigne folie qu’il a ridiculisée dans autrui, et s’offrir en butte à ses propres sarcasmes: | Bénédict: Je ne conçois pas qu’un homme qui voit combien est insensé celui qui se soumet à l’empire de l’amour, puisse en devenant amoureux, tomber dans l’insigne folie qu’il a ridiculisée dans autrui, et s’offrir en butte à ses propres sarcasmes: |
| [Somarone: Wait a moment! I must make a change in the second ritornello.] | Somarone: Un instant! je veux changer quelque chose à la seconde ritournelle. |
and such a man is Claudio. I have known when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe. I have known when he would have walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour, and now will he lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet. | et cependant tel est Claudio. J’ai vu un temps où l’harmonie la plus délicieuse à son oreille, c’était le son du fifre et du tambour; et maintenant il leur préfère le tambourin et le chalumeau; j’ai vu un temps où il aurait fait dix lieues à pied pour voir une bonne armure; et à présent, il passera dix nuits à combiner la coupe d’un nouveau pourpoint. | et cependant tel est Claudio! J’ai vu un temps où l’harmonie la plus délicieuse à son oreille, c’était le son du fifre et du tambour, et maintenant il leur préfère de langoureuses mélodies! J’ai vu un temps où il eût fait dix lieues à pied pour voir une bonne armure; à présent, il passera dix nuits à combiner la coupe d’un nouveau pourpoint. |
[Berlioz removes seven or eight lines.] | | |
But I’ll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. | Mais ce que je puis affirmer, c’est que jusqu’à ce qu’il ait fait de moi une huitre, il ne fera pas de moi un sot de ce calibre. | Du diable si l’amour fait jamais de moi un sot de ce calibre! |
[Berlioz removes several lines.] | | |
| [Somarone: Try this out!] | Somarone: Essai-moi cela! |
| [Bénédict: Ah, the musicians! A rehearsal! Let us listen!] | Bénédict: Ah! Des musiciens! Une répétition! Écoutons ! |
| [Somarone: Very good. Amazing! And at sight! Oh, you’re quite a fellow! I’ll be sure to include a pretty saltarello for you in my new mass.] | Somarone: Très bien ! Peste ! à première vue ! Oh ! tu es un gaillard ! J’écrirai pour toi un joli saltarello dans ma nouvelle messe. |
We see that Berlioz preserves as much of the original as possible, but that Somarone’s intrusions necessarily lead him away from Shakespeare. The substitution of “langorous melodies” for “the tabor and the pipe” represents Berlioz’s escalation of Bénédict’s mockery of Claudio for surrendering his military bearing and succumbing to the wiles of femininity. Shakespeare includes musical jokes (“By my troth, a good song,” notes Don Pedro; “And an ill singer, my lord,” replies Balthasar), but nothing as patently absurd as Berlioz’s notion of a saltarello (a lively medieval dance of Tuscan, not Sicilian, origin) inserted into a solemn mass!
These several examples suggest that while sketching the libretto of
Béatrice et Bénédict, Berlioz had on his desk, not only the volume prepared by Benjamin Laroche, but also a version of the English text. Offering advice to the Berlin publishers Bote & Bock, who would bring out a German edition of the piano-vocal score, Berlioz wrote: “I shall send to you the French dialogues so that, in Berlin, you can personally supervise the translation into German. With the assistance of the Schlegel translation of the Shakespeare play,
Much Ado About Nothing, the translator will in many places be able simply to copy out the words; that should take no more than three days.”
9 CG 7:129.Julian Rushton, in an earlier more comprehensive study of the work, has taken account of the differences between the texts of Laroche and Berlioz and has in one instance praised the latter for having avoided the former’s “translationese”:
10 Rushton, “Berlioz’s Swan-Song,” 112. “Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signor Benedick?” asks Beatrice in act 1, scene 1. Writes Laroche: “Comment le dédain pourrait-il mourir, lorsqu’il trouve un aliment aussi inépuisable que le seigneur Bénédict?” In Shakespeare,
disdain is feminine—the word is the literal personification of Beatrice—and
food and
feed are amusingly alliterative. But Laroche’s
aliment aussi inépuisable, with three successive vowels, is not without its charm. That particular formulation—is it “translationese”?—is found in the original Le Tourneur version of the seventeen-eighties and in François Guizot’s reedition of Le Tourneur of the eighteen-twenties, both of which rather spoil the matter of personification: “Et comment la Dédiagneuse mourrait-elle, lorsqu’elle trouve à ses dédains un aliment aussi inépuisable que le seigneur Bénédick.” In his later, widely admired translation, François-Victor Hugo employed a capital letter to underline the personification—but kept the original alimentary articulation: “Est-il possible que Dédain meure, ayant pour se nourrir
un aliment aussi inépuisable que le signor Bénédict?”
Berlioz had felt free to cut the play in half, to take over the sentences and the structures provided by Laroche, and to modify the words as he saw fit, because he knew, it is perhaps too obvious to say, that the essence of his reincarnation of the Shakespearean comedy was in the music—which had come to him, as he told his son, in an outpouring of inspiration. The quality of the jolly war between Béatrice et Bénédict, and here I conclude with only a single example, is manifest most charmingly in the number that gave rise to the overture and that best exemplifies the “pointe d’une aiguille,” the sparkling clarity with which he set down the score. I speak of the Scherzo-Duettino that closes the opera, whose character, as Berlioz himself wrote to the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, “encapsulates that of the two principals, and whose effect is quite special.”
11 CG 6:319. Berlioz then quotes the full text, of which we give the first four lines:
Bénédict: L’amour est un flambeau.
Béatrice: L’amour est une flamme,
Bénédict: Un feu follet, qui vient on ne sait d’où,
Béatrice: Qui brille et disparaît pour égarer notre âme,
Bénédict: Attire à lui le sot et le rend fou.
(Love is a torch / Love is a flame / A will-o’-the-wisp that comes from one knows not where / Which sparkles and disappears and troubles our senses / Which draws to it the dupe and renders him daft.)
The words are of Berlioz’s own invention, they are not to be found in the Laroche translation. In act 2, scene 1, Beatrice does cynically compare love and marriage to a Scotch jig that leads to wobbly legs and exhaustion, but mockery of marriage here is of course the point of the play. It is conceivable, however, because “l’amour est un flambeau” is a rarely found phrase, that rattling round in Berlioz’s remarkable memory was a satirical epigram that he might have seen in a Sunday magazine published in Lyon: “L’amour est un flambeau qui éclaire une partie de la vie de l’homme. Quand il a assez vu, il se marie. L’hymen est l’éteignoir de l’amour”—“Love is a torch that illuminates a part of a man’s life. When he has seen enough, he gets married. Marriage is the asphyxiator of love.”
12 L’Argus et le Vert-vert réunis (January 21, 1855). The epigram is anonymous, but it could have come from Benedick.
The first phrase of the Scherzo-Duettino consists of four bars of which the fourth is “empty” (it is “nothing”!). That is to say, the fourth bar is present because of the traditional expectation, as it were, that phrases be constructed in bar-groupings of two and four. These four bars, functioning as “antecedent,” lead us to expect a subsequent phrase of four bars, functioning as “consequent.” Berlioz does indeed give us a second four-bar phrase of which the fourth, again, is “empty.” However, this phrase confounds our rhythmic expectations by the imitation in the winds of the principal melody (in the strings)—an imitation that removes the strong accent of the three-beat melody from the first beat, where it generally lies in ternary meter, to the second. The confusion results, to belabor the point, from the uncertain meaning of the first beat of the tune: is it in fact a downbeat, or is it perhaps an upbeat? Think of the word harassment—appropriate to the play in question!—which is sometimes accented on the first syllable (making “ha-” a downbeat), sometimes accented on the second (making “ha-” an upbeat). Berlioz continues the fun over the next eighteen bars, delightfully suggesting that the downbeat is now the first beat of the bar, now the second, now (on one occasion) the third. When Bénédict first sings “l’amour est,” the downbeat falls on the -mour of l’a-mour. When Béatrice first sings “l’amour est,” the downbeat falls on est. The musical bantering between the lines—ambiguous, changing, barbed—is what a literary scholar might call the “objective correlative” of the verbal bantering between the principals. From the music, and from the text, we feel something of the fabric of the characters’ emotions.
In the post-scriptum of the
Mémoires, Berlioz enumerates the four preeminent qualities of his music: “passionate expression, inner fire, rhythmic momentum, unexpectedness.” Passionate expression and inner fire are of course among the preeminent qualities of the Shakespearean canon. But Shakespeare’s language, like ours, is attached to its time and place of origin. That it does not fully and faithfully carry over in translation—French or other—is self-evident. But the rhythmic momentum and unexpectedness of Berlioz’s
score, in particular the score of the Scherzo-Duettino, seems to me to be convincing evidence of his expert understanding of the discernment, deception, and distrust manifested by Shakespeare’s principals, Beatrice and Benedick, the most extraordinary characters in the play: “More than any characters in high comedy, they rise above verbal wit and pit mind against mind in dialogue that
surprises in sense, image, and
cadence.”
13 Wilson, Shakespearean and Other Studies, 86 (my emphasis).