The Gulling Scenes & Don John's Plot
The Gulling of Benedick (Act 2, Scene 3)
The word gulling means to trick or deceive. In two of the play’s most celebrated scenes, Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato conspire to make Benedick believe that Beatrice is secretly, desperately in love with him — and then Hero and Ursula do the same to Beatrice. These are acts of benign deception: lies told for a good purpose, which ultimately reveal a deeper truth.
In Act 2, Scene 3, Benedick hides in the garden while Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato stage a conversation for him to overhear. They describe Beatrice’s supposed love in extravagant terms. Leonato calls it “an enraged affection” that is “past the infinite of thought”, and Claudio says she “falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses.” The description is deliberately over the top, yet Benedick swallows every word. Shakespeare creates dramatic irony: the audience watches Benedick being manipulated and sees him convince himself that what he hears must be true.
The gulling scenes use deception to reveal truth. Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into admitting feelings they already had but refused to acknowledge. Shakespeare suggests that sometimes a lie can uncover what honesty cannot — a central paradox of the play.
Benedick’s soliloquy after the gulling is a comic masterpiece of self-deception. He immediately reinterprets every past interaction with Beatrice as evidence of her love: “I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud. Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending.” He convinces himself that marriage is actually a good idea — something he has spent the entire play mocking. The speed of his reversal is comic, but it also reveals that his resistance to love was always a performance. The gulling does not create feelings; it removes the armour Benedick built around them.
The Gulling of Beatrice (Act 3, Scene 1)
Hero and Ursula perform the same trick on Beatrice, but Shakespeare gives this scene a noticeably different tone. Where Benedick’s gulling was boisterous and comic, Beatrice’s is quieter and more poetic. Hero speaks in verse, describing how Benedick “is the only man of Italy, / Always excepted my dear Claudio.” The use of verse signals emotional sincerity — or at least the performance of it.
Beatrice’s response, delivered as a soliloquy after the others leave, is striking in its brevity and directness: “Contempt, farewell; and maiden pride, adieu! / No glory lives behind the back of such.” She abandons her defences in just ten lines of verse. The shift from her usual prose to verse marks a genuine emotional transformation. Where Benedick needed comic self-justification, Beatrice simply drops her guard. Shakespeare gives her a dignity in surrender that Benedick’s comic flailing lacks.
Benedick’s gulling uses prose, is performed by men, and provokes a long, comic soliloquy of self-justification. Beatrice’s gulling uses verse, is performed by women, and provokes a short, dignified soliloquy of acceptance. This structural contrast is important for AO2: Shakespeare uses form (prose vs verse) to distinguish between comic bluster and genuine emotional change. Both characters are transformed, but in different ways — Benedick through comedy, Beatrice through poetry.
The parallel structure also reinforces the theme of mirroring: the two gulling scenes are designed to be compared. One involves men tricking a man; the other, women tricking a woman. The deceptions are identical in method but different in tone, reflecting the gendered expectations placed on each character.
Don John’s Plot (Act 2, Scene 2)
While the gulling scenes unfold, Don John is planning a far more dangerous deception. His follower Borachio devises a scheme: Margaret, Hero’s gentlewoman, will be persuaded to appear at Hero’s window at night, dressed in Hero’s clothes. Claudio and Don Pedro will be brought to watch, believing they are seeing Hero with another man. The plan exploits Claudio’s visual, surface-level love — if he sees something that looks like infidelity, he will believe it without question.
Don John is a stock villain — his motives are never fully explored. He tells Conrade: “I am a plain-dealing villain”, almost proudly declaring his own wickedness. Unlike Shakespeare’s later villains (Iago in Othello, Edmund in King Lear), Don John has no soliloquies that reveal psychological depth. His villainy appears to stem from resentment: he is illegitimate, socially marginalised, and recently defeated in war by his own brother. He destroys others’ happiness because he has none of his own.
Don John’s plot works by exploiting Claudio’s reliance on visual evidence. The window scene is essentially a piece of theatre — Margaret plays the role of Hero, and Claudio is the audience who cannot tell fiction from reality. Shakespeare uses this to show that a love built on appearances can be destroyed by appearances.
Dramatic Irony and the Audience’s Position
Shakespeare places the audience in a position of superior knowledge throughout Acts 2–3. We know the gulling scenes are tricks designed to unite Beatrice and Benedick. We know Don John’s plot is a malicious fabrication. We know that Hero is innocent. This dramatic irony creates two very different emotional responses: comic pleasure in the gulling scenes (we enjoy watching Benedick and Beatrice fall for the trick) and growing dread as Don John’s scheme takes shape (we watch helplessly as innocent people are about to be destroyed).
The structural juxtaposition of benign and malicious deception is one of Shakespeare’s most effective techniques in this play. Acts 2 and 3 alternate between scenes of joyful trickery and scenes of sinister plotting, creating a rhythm that keeps the audience oscillating between laughter and anxiety. This is important for AO2: Shakespeare uses parallel structure to explore the theme of deception from two opposing angles.
Borachio, Don John’s follower, is the architect of the window deception. He is a more pragmatic villain than Don John — motivated by money rather than abstract resentment. Margaret’s role is ambiguous: she appears at the window with Borachio, but it is unclear whether she knows she is participating in a plot to destroy Hero. Shakespeare never fully explains her involvement, and she is never punished. This ambiguity may reflect the play’s broader theme: in Messina, people are constantly used as instruments of deception without fully understanding their role.
Margaret’s position also highlights the vulnerability of women in the play. She is a servant who can be manipulated by men of higher status. Even if she is innocent of intent, she is still used — just as Hero is used as a pawn in the male honour game.
The Watch: Accidental Heroes (Act 3, Scene 3)
Shakespeare introduces the Watch — Messina’s bumbling night patrol — in Act 3, Scene 3. Led by the magnificently incompetent Dogberry, the Watch are instructed to keep the peace. Dogberry’s opening question, “Are you good men and true?”, is both comic and thematically significant: in a play obsessed with deception, the question of who is “good” and “true” is the central one.
The Watch overhear Borachio drunkenly boasting about the successful deception of Claudio. They arrest Borachio and Conrade. The audience knows the truth has been discovered — but Shakespeare delays the revelation, creating agonising suspense. The Watch have the evidence to save Hero, but their incompetence means the information reaches Leonato too late to prevent the public shaming. This structural delay is crucial: the comedy of the Watch exists in painful tension with the tragedy unfolding in the church.