The Globe’s current production is possibly the first time I’ve actually seen this role performed: Antonio, Leonato’s brother in Much Ado About Nothing (though in that production she’s turned into a sister). Much Ado is striking (at least to me) for being cut almost identically every time you see it— the same bits excised, the same characters merged (usually Antonio into Leonato and Ursula into Margaret). But what do we lose when we remove this apparently easily cuttable character?
titles
I had a brief moment of panic when I was drafting this newsletter, went to search for Antonio’s lines… and didn’t find any in the online edition I was using. That’s because, it turns out, he isn’t consistently identified as Antonio. Shakespeare only uses that speech prefix in one scene, and the rest of the time he is ‘Old Man’ or ‘Brother.’ As I said, brief panic: had editors just conflated two characters into one, and in fact, Antonio wasn’t who I assumed?!
Well, he is. Leonato helpfully refers to his brother by name in a later scene, leaving me confident that we can assume Antonio, Brother, and Old Man are all the same character. Crisis averted (though I’d argue a confusing editing choice for a modern edition).
noting
Antonio’s most narratively important intervention comes early on in the play, as he is the center of a scene that frankly, the play is a lot more confusing without. I’m honestly startled more directors haven’t noticed how important this scene is to the story, and continue to be content to cut it (presumably) just because it’s what everyone always does.
Antonio’s servant overhears the very end of the scene between Claudio and Don Pedro— though apparently, only the part where Don Pedro comes up with his scheme to woo Hero on Claudio’s behalf. Antonio thus reports to Leonato that the Prince loves Hero, Leonato’s daughter, and intends to woo her. This makes sense of Leonato’s otherwise inexplicable reminders to Hero in an upcoming scene that she should accept the Prince’s advances when he makes them. It also foreshadows Claudio’s confusion that the Prince has apparently wooed Hero for himself, not for Claudio.
It also establishes the play’s themes of observation (or ‘noting,’ the pun of the title), misunderstanding, and misrepresentation. Without Antonio, we’re introduced to these ideas via our villains, where the mistakes are willful and malicious. Antonio doesn’t mean any harm—in fact, he means well. So aside from providing a crucial plot stepping stone, Antonio is an important introduction to our key themes as well— to the idea, so important to the play’s ending, that making mistakes and acting on them is not evil. Everyone is just doing their best to interpret the things they see and hear, to look out for themselves and their family and friends—and sometimes, in trying to lend a hand, send things badly awry.
alliance
Antonio is a member of the play’s central family—he even has a son, apparently, who has no name and who we possibly see a single time, entering with some musicians. He’s part of the private family chat before the party early in the play, contributing to the discussion of Hero’s impending wooing by the Prince and to banter about Beatrice’s marriage prospects. While he doesn’t say all that much in this group scene, his presence expands the sense of a wider family network beyond the trio of Hero, Beatrice, and Leonato— of Messina as a community, not just a single family and a small group of visitors.
This comes into even sharper focus in Antonio’s biggest scene, when he and Leonato confront Claudio and the Prince after the two have them have publicly shamed Hero at what should have been her wedding. It’s a rather strange scene, to me— Leonato is grieving Hero, but it’s really not clear from his speech whether he’s upset about what happened to her, or if he’s playing along with the idea that she’s dead. Certainly he and Antonio commit fully to the fiction of Hero’s death once the younger men arrive, and lament in extremely heartfelt terms that are, again, a bit strange when you as audience or reader know that they’re lying.
Antonio is the more bellicose of the brothers, and urges Leonato to think instead about revenge. When the Prince and Claudio enter, both brothers jump to berate them— but Antonio gets a bit over-excited and has to be restrained by Leonato as he rants. His language echoes that of Beatrice earlier in the play, disdaining the shallow and empty state of manhood these days:
I know them, yea,
And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple—
Scambling, outfacing, fashionmonging boys,
That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander,
Go anticly and show outward hideousness,
And speak off half a dozen dang’rous words
How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst,
And this is all.
It’s another opportunity, in other words, to reflect on another of the play’s preoccupations: the meaning of manhood, and how it is demonstrated in words and actions. Leonato’s language is more directed and personal, but like Beatrice, Antonio expands his critique to make the objects of his derision symbols of a larger deficit in honor and gentility amongst young men. Beatrice rants at Benedick when he refuses to fight on her behalf; Antonio rants at Pedro and Claudio when they refuse to fight him on Hero’s behalf.
I find the place of violence in this place very vexed: the main male characters are mostly all soldiers, and the play begins the with the conclusion of a war and ends with the promise of future violence and punishment for Don John, the villain. As I’ve written before, the choice between love and violence is a key coming of age question for the men in the play… but both Antonio and Beatrice seem to reflect that an unwillingness to fight for a just cause, or to face up to one’s wrongs at the end of the sword, is a weakness, a failing. How does a man demonstrate his manhood if not through some form of violence? When only Beatrice speaks this way, it’s easy to dismiss it as the passion of the moment, but when two characters do it, it becomes a more pressing question—one that is lost along with Antonio in most productions.
Finally, it’s a very small note, but when Hero pretends to be “my brother’s daughter” at the end of the play, the brother in question is, of course, Antonio. It’s a much less random idea when there’s actually a brother we’ve met, and perhaps spares the audience the confusion I experienced the first time I encountered the play of wondering whether they’re suggesting she’s somehow Beatrice’s never-before-seen sister.
brother anthony
This Antonio seems different from our previous examples in almost every respect: well-integrated into a family and social unit, easily contained by the play’s happy ending. He’s also one half of a pair, but it’s a fraternal duo rather than a political or homoerotic one. In the end, though, he does also have a commentary to make about masculine bonds— but from the outside, not really as a participant in a pair.
If I’m honest, I’m tempted to point to it as an indication that the whole idea of the name ‘Antonio’ carrying meaning requires ignoring some of the characters who have that name, and thus is just and imagined pattern… but let’s see where we land!