I am not a Shakespearean scholar. I’ve only read four of his plays and watched them all as movies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing and The Merchant of Venice. Among these four masterpieces my favorite character is Dogberry, a dim-witted constable of Messina in Much Ado. Am I shallow? Mea culpa.
He delivers, in spades, hilarious comic relief through his frequent use of malapropisms, thinking himself much more erudite than he is in truth. My favorite Dogberry quote, while accusing two ne’er do wells, delivered in grandiloquent fashion by one of my favorite actors, Michael Keaton, follows. It comes on the heels of being called an ass by Conrade, one of the two accused men.
“Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost
thou not suspect my years? O, that he were here to
write me down an ass! But masters, remember that
I am an ass, though it be not written down, yet
forget not that I am an ass.”