Much Ado About Nothing

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Much Ado About Nothing

• Dr. Alan Haffa

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Act I

• Return from War
• Beatrice and Benedick
• Hero and her Father
• Claudio and Hero
• Don Pedro to woo Hero on Claudios behalf
• Counter Plot Sir John the Bastard seeks to foil
  the marriage

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Act II

• Three Deceits
• Don Pedro woos Hero for Claudio
• Don Pedros plan to trick B and B into falling in
  love
• Don John and his men agree on a plan to trick
  Claudio

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Act III

• Beatrice tricked by Hero and Ursula
• Don John tells Don Pedro that he can prove Hero
  is unfaithful
• The nightwatch overhear and capture the
  conspirators
• Hero and Benedick are in love
• The watch try to tell Leonato about Borachios
  arrest but he doesnt understand

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Act IV

• Wedding Fiasco
• Benedick and Beatrice confess love
• Benedick challenges Claudio
• Guards question Borachio and Conrade

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Act V

• Heros Death
• Benedick issues a challenge to duel
• Dogberry enters with prisoners and truth is
  revealed
• Claudio sings an epitaph at Heros tomb and is to
  marry her niece
• Hero arrives at wedding masked
• B and B to marry out of mutual pity
• Claudio is forgiven by all and a double marriage
  arranged

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Question 1

• Does the play present a true depiction of love?
  Compare and contrast the two loving couples, Hero
  and Claudio and Beatrice and Benedick.

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Question 2

• How has love and marriage changed from the era of
  the play to the present?
• Catholic ideas of chastity and marriage and women
• Reformation ideas of love and women
• Play reflects the tension of these two world
  views

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Question 3

• What choice or role do women have with respect to
  love? (Hero, Beatrice). Why do the mothers of
  the two heroines not appear in the play? How
  would it be different if they did?

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Question 4

• Is Don Johns deception for the purpose of
  dissolving love worse than the deception of the
  others to create love?
• 1) Prince woos falsely for Claudio
• 2) Claudio/Prince/Leonato trick Benedick
• 3) Hero/Ursula trick Beatrice
• 4) Borachio/Don John trick Claudio
• 5) Friar/Hero/Leonato pretend Hero is dead

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Question 5

• Why do fools (Doggberry et al) see truly what the
  nobles do not?
• Do education and culture make us more susceptible
  to deception in some ways?
• How do the various deceptions work? Dont they
  play upon peoples pre-conceptions?

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Question 6

• Why is the play Much Ado about Nothing? The
  plot almost leads to a family disgraced,
  political strife, friends ready to duel. It
  seems like serious business about Something!

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Question 7

• Like many Shakespeare comedies, the play includes
  abundant joking and punning surrounding female
  infidelity. For all the jokes about cuckoldry,
  the play seems to take this issue seriously as
  the suggestion that Hero was not faithful has
  severe consequences. How is it possible for
  something the culture takes so seriously to be
  such a common motif for humor in the play?

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Scenes of Infidelity and Misogyny

• 1.1.102-3 Leonato implies that the legitimacy of
  Hero is based on her mothers assertions
• 1.1.234-40 Benedick trusts no woman
• 5.4.126 Don Pedro tells B. to get thee a wife.
  There is no staff more reverend than one tipped
  with horn.

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Why the focus on Female Infideltity in a
Love/Marriage Comedy?

• Common motif in Shakespeare and the era
• Othello Winters Tale
• Male anxiety about wifely fidelity in an era when
  legitimate inheritance of lands, wealth,
  property, rank, and name are at stake.
• Society order requires a marriage as much as
  dramatic closure female infidelity is a natural
  dramatic tension to exploit.

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Summary

• Much Ado about Nothing is really much ado about
  something very importantmarriage and female
  fidelity the cornerstone of social stability.
  The contrasting couples shows two competing
  views one naïve and idealistic, the other
  experienced and realistic. Yet the theme of
  deception complicates this reading too. Beatrice
  and Benedick were tricked into lovingare they
  really so discerning? How can one deception be
  good and another bad? Is the theatre itself, a
  place where deception flourishes, compromised?
  In the end this play raises more questions than
  it answers.