Dogberry

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Dogberry, the bumbling constable of Messina, is one of William Shakespeare's most enduring comic creations. He arrives on stage armed with an inflated sense of authority and a spectacular gift for saying exactly the wrong word. A self-satisfied night constable with a pretentious flair for language he cannot quite command, Dogberry has given the English language its own term: the dogberryism. How did a character so supremely unqualified for his job end up solving the central crime of Much Ado About Nothing? And who was the real man Shakespeare wrote him for?

• 2. The Man on the Beat

  ›

  Dogberry's first act on stage is to instruct his constables to feel free to sleep on duty. He also advises them that if they spot a thief, they should leave him alone, to avoid being contaminated by association with crime. This is the chief of Messina's citizen-police at work. His absurdist logic is not a cartoon invention. According to historian John W. Draper, sleeping on the night-watch was genuinely common in the period, and real watchmen regularly avoided confronting criminals. Shakespeare was holding a mirror up to a system that many in his audience would have recognized from their own neighbourhoods. The office of constable rotated among ordinary citizens, who fulfilled a fixed number of nights per year protecting the public peace. Draper points out that almost everyone in the audience would have understood both what the job was supposed to involve and how consistently it fell short. Even the Queen's own jester, Tarleton, was twice arrested for being on the streets after ten o'clock, and had to rely on his wit to avoid jail.

• 3. Words Gone Wrong

  ›

  Dogberry's name itself carries a quiet joke from Shakespeare. In Elizabethan England, the dogberry was the common name for the fruit of the dogwood shrub, Cornus sanguinea, a berry considered lowly and inferior to other edible varieties. The name signals his station before he opens his mouth. When he does speak, the malapropisms tumble out in a steady stream. The character's pretentiousness drives him to reach for sophisticated legal and official terminology, and the gap between the word he wants and the word he produces is the engine of his comedy. His list of charges against Boraccio and Conrade runs: "Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves." The list begins at one, skips to "secondarily," then leaps to "sixth and lastly," then doubles back to "thirdly." The charges are also almost entirely redundant with each other. And throughout the examination, Dogberry keeps insisting that the record show the criminals called him an ass, apparently unaware that pressing for this admission does nothing to help his case.

• 4. Accident and Providence

  ›

  During their watch, Dogberry's constables overhear a conversation between Boraccio and Conrade, one of whom is tangled in Don John's scheme to ruin Hero's reputation. The watchmen misunderstand what they hear. They arrest the pair not for the conspiracy, but because the men called Don John a villain, which the constables take as an act of treason. Dogberry then attempts to present the case before the governor Leonato, whose confusion deepens with every sentence Dogberry produces. Yet the arrested man eventually confesses, the Prince learns the truth about Don John's plot, and the play's central injustice begins to unwind. Shakespeare gives Dogberry's incompetence a thematic weight: the constable and his crew function, however accidentally, as an instrument of what the play frames as providential restoration. The comedy of errors loops back into something meaningful. Dogberry is rewarded for his diligence when it is done.

• 5. Written for Kempe

  ›

  William Kempe was the leading comic performer in Shakespeare's theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and Dogberry was built specifically around his talents. The evidence is unusually direct: in the published text of Much Ado About Nothing, the names "Kemp" and "Kem" appear accidentally in place of "Dogberry" at several points, ghostly traces of the rehearsal room preserved in print. Kempe played comic roles, and a character who butchers every word he means to use while remaining entirely confident in his authority was exactly the kind of showcase his style required.

• 6. On Stage and Screen

  ›

  Samuel Johnson, noted as the acknowledged Shakespearean clown of his day, played Dogberry during the 1880s and 1890s for Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in London. John Martin-Harvey singled out his 1882 and 1893 portrayals as exemplary. A 1976 Royal Shakespeare Company production set the play in India during the British Raj; John Woodvine played Dogberry as a member of the local constabulary speaking, as one account put it, with a Peter Sellers Indian accent. Terry Hands' 1982 RSC production had Christopher Benjamin and Terry Woods alternating in the role. The RSC's 2014 production, titled Love's Labour's Won and set during the First World War, had Nick Haverson playing Dogberry. His interpretation drew both praise and criticism for reading Dogberry's language errors and eccentricities as possible signs of PTSD or shell shock, given that in this version Don Pedro's soldiers, including Dogberry's world, had just returned from the trenches. On screen, Michael Keaton played the role in Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film. Nathan Fillion took it in Joss Whedon's 2012 version. Television productions have brought in Michael Elphick, Frank Finlay, and Barnard Hughes. Each generation of actors has found something new to press on in a character Shakespeare left deliberately open.