Balthasar
Balthasar is a gentleman and musician in Don Pedro's retinue whose song in Act II, Scene 3 provides the atmosphere and the ironic backdrop for the gulling of Benedick — a minor figure whose entire dramatic purpose is discharged in a single scene.
Appears In
Biography
Balthasar arrives among Don Pedro's returning company in the play's opening scene, one of the unnamed mass of soldiers and gentlemen made briefly individual by a single skill: he sings. At the masked ball in Act II, Scene 1, he trades a few lines of flirtatious banter with Margaret while the company dances in disguise, a small comic aside that establishes him as an easy, well-liked presence in Don Pedro's household rather than a figure of any particular consequence in his own right.
His one substantial moment comes in Act II, Scene 3, when Don Pedro calls on him to sing again before Claudio and Leonato spring their trap on the eavesdropping Benedick. Balthasar demurs first — 'O, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice / To slander music any more than once' — a modesty that reads as genuine rather than performed, before obliging with 'Sigh No More, Ladies,' a song whose resigned wisdom about men's inconstancy ('men were deceivers ever') sits with quiet irony over a scene about to demonstrate exactly the opposite: a man about to be talked into constancy against his own declared intentions.
Once the song is sung, Balthasar disappears from the play as quietly as he entered it, his function entirely discharged. He is Shakespeare's clearest instance in this play of a character defined by a single accomplishment rather than a developed inner life — present because the gulling scene needs music to cover Benedick's approach and give the scene its texture, and dismissed the moment that need is met.
Motivation
Balthasar is motivated by simple willingness to serve and please Don Pedro and the assembled company, offering his singing modestly and without any larger ambition of his own within the play.
Personality
Balthasar's brief appearances reveal a genial, unassuming temperament — he undersells his own singing before performing it well, and moves easily through both the light flirtation of the masked ball and the more contrived business of the orchard scene without ever seeking attention beyond what his song requires.