In which Shakespeare play does Dogberry, a constable, manage to uncover Don John’s plot to discredit Hero?
Dogberry Dogberry Dogberry is a character created by William Shakespeare for his play, "Much Ado About Nothing". He is described by The Nuttall Encyclopædia as a "self-satisfied night constable" with an inflated view of his own importance as the leader of a group of comically bumbling police watchmen. Dogberry is notable for his numerous malapropisms, which sometimes are referred to as "dogberryisms" after him. The Dogberry character was created for William Kempe, who played comic roles in Shakespeare's theatre company the Lord Chamberlain's Men. In the play, Dogberry is the chief of the citizen-police in Messina. He is first seen instructing
Dogberry the Elizabethan common name for the fruit of the Common Dogwood ("Cornus sanguinea"), considered lowly and inferior to other edible berries. Shakespeare appears to be poking mild fun at the amateur police forces of his day, in which respectable citizens spent a fixed number of nights per year fulfilling an obligation to protect the public peace, a job for which they were, by and large, unqualified. Dogberry and his crew, however, are also given a thematic function, for it is they who (accidentally) uncover the plot of Don John and begin the process of restoration that leads to the play’s