Dogberry and Verges

Dogberry might have looked like the more aggressive Jack Cade.
Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson (1853).
University of Victoria Library.
Original in the Chatsworth Collection.

Although they do not appear until the play is almost half over, the actors in the sub-plot have some fine scenes of bumbling comedy. Dogberry is a parody of the inefficient officer of the law. He loves words, but continually misuses them, and is so convinced of his own importance that no-one listens to him -- with the ironical result that Leonato misses the vital information they could have provided before the near-tragedy of the scene where Claudio violently rejects Hero.

• The tradition of the comic sub-plot.
• More about the language that Dogberry mangles.
• What was the justice system supposed to be like?