Beatrice and Benedick ‘never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them’ (1.1.60–1), we are warned, and their encounter a few lines later does not disappoint:

This greeting brilliantly captures the ceremonial idiom central to the social politics of Much Ado About Nothing. Both characters overplay deferential formality in their use of titles, ‘Lady Disdain’ and ‘Signor Benedick’, while simultaneously flouting the code of politeness in their insults. The satirical effect would be increased by appropriate courteous gestures of greeting: a formal bow from Benedick and an answering curtsey from Beatrice traverse the space between their bodies. Their ‘skirmish of wit’ immediately establishes Messina as a high-risk environment for face-to-face interactions, something that the tragi-comic extremes of the plot go on to demonstrate.

In the public, courtly environment of Leonato's household, identity is highly dependent on superficial signifiers and interactions. Benedick draws attention to both verbal and non-verbal surfaces in the play, pointedly warning his friends ‘The body of your discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards [decorations] are but slightly basted on, neither’ (1.1.268–70).