Sigh Not So – A Random Walk

This week’s poem comes from my favourite Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing, which I have loved ever since I first watched the 1993 film; another film with a more contemporary setting but retaining the Shakespearean text was made in 2011. I saw the play in 2015 at Stafford Castle as part of the Stafford Festival.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.
William Shakespeare (1564—1616)

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
    Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
    To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
    And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
    Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no more
    Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
    Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
    And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
    Into hey, nonny, nonny.

I feel that this is very much Beatrice’s poem—it accurately presents her opinion of men in general and of Benedick in particular. In conversation with Don Pedro she says, “marry, once before he won it of me with false dice”.

Beatrice begins the play tired of the duplicity of men and is prepared to treat them lightly and please herself—all through the play she is a feisty, independent woman and even when she and Benedick sink their differences at the end of the play and admit their feelings for one another, she does not come across as subservient.

The 1993 film features Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson as the warring pair with Keanu Reeves as the villainous Don John and Denzel Washington as Don Pedro; Richard Briers, Brian Blessed, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard also appear but the bantering relationship between Branagh and Thompson is at the heart of the film.

The poem appears three times in the film: it is read at the beginning by Beatrice and as a song prior to the scene where Don Pedro and his co-conspirators lay the bait to fool Benedick, and the cast sing and dance it at the end of the film.

Joss Whedon’s version also includes a musical setting of the poem. His film is remarkable for having been shot at Whedon’s home (designed by his wife Kai Cole) in only twelve days while Whedon was working on Avengers Assemble. It stars Amy Acker as Beatrice and Alexis Denisoff as Benedick with Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, and Ashley Johnson.

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