“Much Ado About Nothing”

Dr. Alan Haffa

Act I• Return from War• Beatrice and Benedick • Hero and her Father• Claudio and Hero• Don Pedro to woo Hero on

Claudio’s behalf• Counter Plot: Sir John the

Bastard seeks to foil the marriage

Act II

• Three Deceits• Don Pedro woos Hero

for Claudio• Don Pedro’s plan to

trick B and B into falling in love

• Don John and his men agree on a plan to trick Claudio

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 Borachio’s arrest but he doesn’t understand

Act IV

• Wedding Fiasco

• Benedick and Beatrice confess love

• Benedick challenges Claudio

• Guards question Borachio and Conrade

Act V

• Hero’s “Death”• Benedick issues a challenge to duel• Dogberry enters with prisoners and truth is

revealed• Claudio sings an epitaph at Hero’s 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

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.

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

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?

Question 4

• Is Don John’s 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

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? Don’t they play upon people’s pre-conceptions?

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!

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?

Scenes of Infidelity and Misogyny

• 1.1.102-3: Leonato implies that the legitimacy of Hero is based on her mother’s 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.”

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

• Common motif in Shakespeare and the era

• Othello; Winter’s 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.

Summary“Much Ado about Nothing” is really much ado about

something very important—marriage 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 loving—are 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.