By looking closely at scenes which include particularly baffling banter to the modern ear, Asquith claims to be able to prove her case. In the first scene of Much Ado About Nothing, for example, bemusing references to July 6 are used to tease the hero, Benedick.
"Mock not, mock not," he replies, "ere you flout old ends any further, examine your consciences.'
To Elizabethan Catholics, Asquith argues, this was a highly significant date. On July 6 Henry VIII executed Sir Thomas More, his Chancellor, for refusing to acknowledge the monarch as the supreme head of the Church in England. More had become a role model for "recusants" or dissident English Catholics.
The significance of the date was deepened for Catholics when the young Edward VI, Henry VIII's fervently Protestant son, also died on July 6 -- a coincidence that was viewed as a judgment on his heretic father. "This is why Benedick puts a stop to the banter," says Asquith. "His friends have gone too far. Mock not old ends, he says -- the deaths of Thomas More and Edward are not a laughing matter."
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