Shakespeare\u2019s Much Ado About Nothing Commentary A. J. Drake<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"Much Ado About Nothing commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Benedick, Beatrice, Hero, Dogberry, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Comedies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-9ae5aeea wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/my-olli-courses-at-unlv\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">OLLI<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-2368e1c6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-questions\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">QUESTIONS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-040dd0bb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-commentaries\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">COMMENTARIES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-57f86fdb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-audio\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">AUDIO<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-1b812369 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-guides\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing.<\/em> (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 534-90).<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/much-ado-about-nothing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/Ado\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/muchadosources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">O-S Sources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeare-in-print\/first-folio\/bookreader-68\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1623 Folio 121-41 (Folger)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A21106.0001.001\/1:15?rgn=div1;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ariosto\u2019s Orlando Furioso, <\/em>Bk. 5<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A21106.0001.001\/1:15?rgn=div1;view=fulltext\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Harington\u2019s 1591\/1607 Eng.Translation<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/615\/pg615-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ariosto\u2019s Orlando Furioso,<\/em> Bk. 5 Italian<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/darkwing.uoregon.edu\/%7Erbear\/queene2.html#Cant.%20IIII.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spenser\u2019s Faerie Queene <\/em>Bk. 2, Canto 4.16-38<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitale-sammlungen.de\/en\/view\/bsb11726785?q=%28Fenicia+++Timbreo%29&page=104,105\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bandello Novelle <\/em>in Italian, Pt. 1.XXII (Timbreo e Fenicia)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/babel.hathitrust.org\/cgi\/pt?id=iau.31858004846303&seq=322&q1=Timbreo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bandello Novelle <\/em>(Timbreo and Fenicia, Story XX) in Mod. English, 1890, trans. by John Payne<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 1 (534-40, A messenger reports that Prince Don Pedro of Aragon is coming to Messina, where Leonato is governor; Claudio has won praise in battle; Beatrice asks mockingly about Benedick; Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick and Don John arrive, and Leonato greets them, introducing them to his daughter, Hero. \n\t\t\tBeatrice and Benedick trade barbs; Leonato invites the party to stay in Messina; Benedick and Claudio discuss Hero\u2019s qualities; Don Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick parry wits about Benedick\u2019s disclaiming any interest in love and marriage; Don Pedro promises to disguise himself at the coming masked ball and win Hero for the shy Claudio.)<\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-EWNDR' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis play is determined to make light of everything, as we can see from the outset. <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a> A messenger reports that Prince Don Pedro of Aragon is less than ten miles from Messina, on his way with his troops to visit the governor of that town, Leonato. No sooner does this party of elegant warriors arrive from a vaguely described battle than they must summon their skills in decorum and wit.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYoung Claudio has apparently impressed his commander Don Pedro, and has been showered with honors. Even before Benedick arrives with the party of warriors, his old flame Beatrice is busy mocking his valor in front of anyone who will listen: \u201cI pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these \/ wars? \u2026 For indeed, I promised \/ to eat all of his killing\u201d (535, 1.1.35-37).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs Leonato says, \u201cThere is a kind \/ of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her. They never \/ meet but there\u2019s a skirmish of wit between them\u201d (535, 1.1.49-51). Once Benedick arrives, Beatrice paints him as an object of ridicule: \u201cI wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Bene- \/ dick. Nobody marks you\u201d (536. 1.1.94-95). Benedick, in turn, claims that Beatrice is the only woman in the world who is not<\/em> in love with him. And on they go in their hilariously sarcastic way, trading witticisms to the delight of the assembled residents and guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe only sour or \u201coff\u201d note in this opening gathering is the laconic answer that Don Pedro\u2019s illegitimate half-brother Don John gives to Leonato\u2019s gracious welcome: \u201cI thank you. I am not of many words, but I thank you\u201d (537, 1.1.129). Don John seems to be the only person of note in Messina who is not given to witty verbal displays.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs we find out when Benedick responds to Claudio\u2019s earnest questions about Hero\u2019s wonderful attributes, he is aware that he is of two minds concerning women. He can offer \u201csimple true judgment\u201d (537, 1.1.137), or play the tyrant to all womankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf course, Benedick\u2019s simple judgment about women turns out to be tyrannical enough: he is absurdly perfectionist about them. To both Claudio and Don Pedro, Benedick explains that he will not enter the fray when it comes to love, neither trusting nor mistrusting women but refusing to have any serious dealings with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDon Pedro is not impressed with this line of reasoning, and insists to Benedick, \u201cI shall see thee, ere, I die, look pale with love\u201d (539, 1.1.210). The Prince sounds as if he shares Shakespeare\u2019s sense of love\u2019s power as something that cannot be denied except at great cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat we will see in this play is mostly the light-hearted side of the truth Shakespeare states darkly in Sonnet 129: \u201cnone knows well \/ To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.\u201d This wilder, more irrational dimension of love is brought home to us not by the clever barbs of Beatrice and Benedick but by the extreme anger of the inexperienced lover Claudio when faced with what he falsely believes to be the sordid truth about his beloved Hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnce Benedick is out of the way, Claudio opens up to Don Pedro about his passion for Hero, which is a little less sudden than what\u2019s implied in Christopher Marlowe\u2019s famous line in Hero and Leander,<\/em> \u201cWhoever lov\u2019d, that lov\u2019d not at first sight?\u201d <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a> Claudio says that before setting off on the recent military expedition, he \u201clooked upon \u2026 [Hero] with a soldier\u2019s eye (540, 1.1.254) rather than that of a lover, but now that the campaign is finished, he looks upon her in quite another way.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe young man seems a bit shy and intimidated by the fact that Hero is the daughter of Messina\u2019s governor, so Don Pedro gamely steps up and offers to disguise himself at the upcoming masked ball and woo Hero in Claudio\u2019s name. He will then speak with Leonato, and the way will be smoothed for Claudio.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe need not make too much of this indirectness, except perhaps to say that Claudio isn\u2019t fighting his own love-battle here, which may in part account for the ease with which the melancholy Don John\u2019s villainy will fool him in the next act: he really doesn\u2019t know <\/em>Hero in the deepest sense; he is in love with a romantic ideal through the lovely presence of Hero. Claudio is one of Shakespeare\u2019s practitioners of that old and almost unavoidable trick, \u201cidealizing eroticism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 2 (541, Leonato\u2019s brother Anthony tells him that one of his people overheard Don Pedro telling Claudio that he loves Hero and means to woo her at the masked ball. Leonato says he\u2019ll pass along this news to Hero so that she may have an answer ready for Don Pedro.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeonato\u2019s brother Antonio seems to have heard a garbled account from one of his workers of the previous scene\u2019s conversation between Claudio and Don Pedro; he tells Leonato that Don Pedro means to woo Hero in his own interest rather than that he is going to do Claudio\u2019s wooing for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 3 (541-42, Conrad asks Don Pedro\u2019s illegitimate brother Don John why he is sad, and Don John can provide no sufficient answer: he has no desire to fit into the cheerful set that reigns in Messina; Borachio relates the news that the Prince plans to woo Hero in disguise for the sake of Claudio; Don John is pleased with this intelligence because he thinks he may frustrate anything good that might come of this plan.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDon John is the \u201cillegitimate\u201d brother of Don Pedro, and he appears to be an unhappy, superfluous man within the felicitous social order of Messina. He had lately been in rebellion against or severe disagreement with Don Pedro, who promptly forgave him. But Don John needs <\/em>enemies. He really has nothing much to do except to make trouble for everyone else. He seems to be constitutionally depressed, and paradoxically revels in his own unhappiness: \u201cThere is no measure in the occasion that breeds, there- \/ fore the sadness is without limit\u201d (541, 1.3.3-4).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is a man whose grief has little trace of what T. S. Eliot would call an \u201cobjective correlative.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> Don John\u2019s basic complaint is surely that his legitimate brother has all the power merely due to his being born to wedded parents, but that hardly seems to be a sufficient reason for his unsociable, fundamentally selfish, non-Messina state of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRevealingly, Don John\u2019s watchword, as uttered to his attendant Conrad, is \u201clet me be that I am, and seek not to alter me\u201d (542, 1.3.30). Nobody with that attitude could possibly fare well in a comedy\u2014selfishness is the primary trait of characters such as Countess Olivia\u2019s pompous and hypocritical steward Malvolio in Twelfth Night. <\/em><a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> Immovability or obstinacy is another key trait, and we see that manifested in, among others, Shylock the moneylender in The Merchant of Venice.<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a> Don John combines these traits.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis being the case, when Borachio enters with the alleged news that \u201cthe Prince should woo \/ Hero for himself, and having obtained her, give her to \/ Count Claudio\u201d (542, 1.3.50-52), Don John sees potential for mischief. He evidently feels that the young man has been given honors lately beyond his deserving, and has even replaced him in his brother Don Pedro\u2019s affections.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll in all, jealousy of others\u2019 success in love, society, and politics appears to be the law of Don John\u2019s being. In him, Messina has its \u201cplain-dealing villain\u201d (542, 1.3.26). Off he goes with Conrad and Borachio, then, to hash out what sort of evil they may work with Borachio\u2019s piece of intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1 (543-50, Leonato and Anthony tease Beatrice for having a \u201cshrewish\u201d tongue, and she replies with an impossible male standard for her approval; Beatrice and Leonato clash over his advice to her and Hero about submitting to men; the masked revelers enter: Don Pedro takes Hero aside; Ursula banters with Balthasar and Antonio; Beatrice and Benedick trade insults; Don John convinces Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself; Benedick takes Claudio aside and mistakenly confirms this rumor. \n\t\t\tBenedick reveals to Don Pedro that he\u2019s wounded by Beatrice\u2019s \u201cjester\u201d quip and tells him that he suspects he has stolen Hero for himself; Don Pedro denies any such trickery, and reports that Beatrice is annoyed with Benedick; Beatrice spars with Benedick again; Claudio accuses Don Pedro of betraying him, but this error is quickly cleared up; Don Pedro asks if Beatrice will accept him, but she will not; Don Pedro declares that with Hero, Claudio, and Leonato\u2019s help, he will bring Beatrice and Benedick together in time for a double wedding.)<\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-PmDhq' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nBeatrice itemizes her perfect man in an anatomically impossible way, and then offers Leonato and Anthony a comically exclusive explanation of why she still has no husband: \u201cHe that \/ hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no \/ beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is \/ not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him\u201d (543, 2.1.29-32). Beatrice is playing the goddess Diana in her lighthearted way\u2014following this advice would rule out any man whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\nApparently, there is no man-porridge that is just right <\/em>for this grown-up Goldilocks. We sense that she fears being dominated by a mature man, but that she would hold a mere stripling in contempt. Beatrice also makes a light reference to cuckolding in this passage, and it\u2019s interesting to note the irony of such references when the very prospect of such betrayal (even a false prospect) sends the nascent love between Claudio and Hero into a near-lethal tailspin.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is also something poignant about Beatrice\u2019s musings on her unmarried state: she dutifully serves up the proverb about the fate of old maids being to deliver apes to hell, <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a> but then she offers a more imaginative take on her fate: after her death she will be invited by Saint Peter to sit with the \u201cbachelors\u201d (of either sex), and \u201cthere live we, as merry as the day is long\u201d (543, 2.1.41). This sounds more like an eternal self-help session than a happily-ever-after scenario.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnthony and Leonato do their best to keep up with Beatrice\u2019s defensive wit, which she puts in service of Hero. Offering something akin to a shorter, dancing-themed version of Jaques\u2019s \u201cSeven Ages of Man\u201d speech in As You Like It, <\/em><a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a> she says that the cycle of courtship, marriage, and regret is \u201cas a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace\u201d (544, 2.1.62).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe first stage, Beatrice explains, is \u201chot and hasty \u2026 and fantas- \/ tical,\u201d while the wedding itself is all decorous \u201cstate and ancientry.\u201d In the end, all that\u2019s left is an allegorized figure Repentance, who \u201cfalls into the cinquepace, faster and faster, till \/ he sink into his grave\u201d (544, 2.1.63-67). That is not exactly a heartwarming prospect to lay out before a young lady about to enter married life, but Beatrice describes her gloss as clarity: \u201cI can see a church by \/ daylight\u201d (544, 2.1.69-70), she tells Leonato.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe revelers enter for the masked ball, and Don Pedro goes right to work wooing Hero in disguise, claiming to be Claudio. Ursula, Balthasar, and Anthony exchange repartee, and then we\u2019re on to the heavyweight match of the night between Beatrice and Benedick. These two have been publicly raking each other over the coals for some time, but as Oscar Wilde would say, give someone a mask and you will get the truth. <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBeatrice, true to form, characterizes Benedick sharply to his masked face as \u201cthe Prince\u2019s jester\u201d and says that he is \u201cA very dull fool, only \/ his gift is in devising impossible slanders\u201d (545, 2.1.122-23). She can\u2019t know it yet, but as we shall see, these barbs have struck Benedick to the quick: he is rather vain about his wittiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs the reveling continues, Don John and Borachio industriously make their way to Claudio, and Don John, deliberately misaddressing Claudio as \u201cBenedick,\u201d plants the falsehood that Don Pedro is actually wooing Hero for his own selfish interest. Claudio, being the inexperienced, jealous young fool that he is, promptly falls for this device, and hashes out his gullible response with the help of some sorry clich\u00e9s: \u201cFriendship is constant in all other things \/ Save in the office and affairs of love\u201d (546, 2.1.156-57), and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd just like that, thinks Claudio, goodbye Hero. Benedick makes things worse by apparently believing that Don Pedro has indeed wooed Hero for himself. And to himself, Benedick reveals the degree to which Beatrice\u2019s mean description of him has got under his skin: \u201cIt is the base, though bitter, \/ disposition of Beatrice that puts the world into her person \/ and so gives me out\u201d (547, 2.1.185-87).<\/p>\n\n\n\nEnter Don Pedro, who promptly relates to Benedick that Beatrice has a quarrel with him, only to hear the man declare, \u201cI would \/ not marry her though she were endowed with all that Adam \/ had left him before he transgressed\u201d (548, 2.1.222-24). In other words, not for all the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBenedick seems desperate to avoid Beatrice, so of course she immediately shows up, only to be emblematized hilariously as \u201cmy Lady Tongue\u201d (548, 2.1.243). When Don Pedro mildly rebukes Beatrice, saying, \u201cCome, lady, come! You have lost the heart of Signor \/ Benedick\u201d (548, 2.1.244-45), she responds more poignantly than we might have expected: \u201cIndeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave \/ him use for it: a double heart for his single one. Marry, \/ once before he won it of me with false dice\u201d (548, 2.1.246-48).<\/p>\n\n\n\nEvidently, these two have a history, though its parameters are not precisely known to us. It sounds as if Beatrice feels \u201clet down\u201d by this man at whom she now continually rails, and there\u2019s no hint that Benedick has reflected deeply on anything he may have done to incur her displeasure, if indeed that was the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any event, Beatrice has brought along Claudio, who promptly makes a fool of himself by baselessly accusing the honorable Don Pedro of betraying him over Hero. But the Prince immediately cures Claudio of this misprision, saying, \u201cHere, Claudio, \/ I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have \/ broke with her father, and his goodwill obtained\u201d (549, 2.1.262-64). Well, that <\/em>must be embarrassing news\u2014but wonderful all the same\u2014for Claudio! The two lovers do the necessary promising and seal things with a kiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBeatrice exclaims upon witnessing the happiness of Hero and Claudio, \u201cThus goes everyone to \/ the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner \/ and cry, \u2018Heigh ho, for a husband!\u2019\u201d (549, 2.1.281-83) She is the odd woman out, or at least that\u2019s how she describes herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut now it\u2019s Beatrice\u2019s turn to hear a proposal, and the words she speaks are Shakespearean gems. When Don Pedro surprisingly asks her, possibly in earnest, possibly only in admiring jest, <a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> \u201cWill you have me, lady?\u201d her answer is a graceful but firm \u201cNo, my lord, unless I might have another for work- \/ ing days. Your grace is too costly to wear every day\u201d (549, 2.1.289-90). In other words, she sees Don Pedro as being too far beyond her station to marry her, so she lets him down easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen Don Pedro says he believes Beatrice was \u201cborn in a merry \/ hour\u201d (549, 2.1.294-95), she offers the wonderful and revealing observation, \u201cNo, sure, my lord, my mother cried. But then there \/ was a star danced, and under that was I born\u201d (549, 2.1.296-97). In these lines, Beatrice refers to the pain that her mother, like all mothers, suffered to bring her into the world. But after this sorrow came a dancing or shooting star, and in her view, it is this event that truly marks her birth. <a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is a strong sense here of wanting to be noticed, like a celestial event, and yet set free from the travails involved in being a woman since the time of Adam and Eve. That is what makes Beatrice\u2019s witticism at once happy and almost elegiac: it could easily be found in one of Shakespeare\u2019s later, so-called \u201cromance\u201d plays such as The Winter\u2019s Tale <\/em>or The Tempest,<\/em> with their bittersweet ambience.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter asking Beatrice if she will marry him and receiving this happy-sad response, Don Pedro declares to Leonato that they really ought to bring Beatrice and Benedick together, so right away he enlists Hero in deceiving Beatrice, while he and his friends will take care of duping Benedick.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDon Pedro evidently thinks this would be quite an accomplishment: \u201cIf we can do this, Cupid is no longer an \/ archer. His glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods\u201d (550, 2.1.340-41). There are good deceptions and bad deceptions in this comic play\u2014almost any plan is a good plan if it helps bring two well-matched but obstinate lovers together.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDon Pedro\u2019s turn from fielding Beatrice\u2019s rejection of him to cooking up a complex plot is so adroit that it calls to mind the Renaissance author Baldassare Castiglione\u2019s key term sprezzatura, <\/em>by which is meant a kind of \u201cnonchalance\u201d whereby one makes difficult things look easy. Most of the characters in this play, indeed, have a knack for demonstrating this very quality. <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a> With such easy grace, then, does Don Pedro, the Aragonese military overlord of Sicily and therefore of Leonato\u2019s Messina, vie for the title of \u201cLove-God\u201d with no less a divinity than Cupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 2 (550-51, Borachio outlines his plan to Don John whereby Claudio\u2019s imminent marriage to Hero may be prevented; Don John promises Borachio a thousand ducats if the plan succeeds.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, Borachio and Don John are firming up their own wicked designs against Claudio and Hero\u2019s future happiness. This plot turns upon mistaken identity: while Claudio and Don Pedro are induced to look on, Borachio will dally with Hero\u2019s maid Margaret, calling her Hero while she calls him by his own name. <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a> Claudio and Don Pedro will be convinced that they have seen Hero behaving unchastely right before her wedding day.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMost readers will no doubt feel that Claudio\u2019s susceptibility to this cheap, hastily worked-up subterfuge is a mark of his own immaturity and failure to trust the woman whom he would make his bride.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 3 (551-56, Benedick marvels to himself at the change wrought by love in Claudio; Balthasar sings the fine song \u201cSigh no more, ladies\u2026\u201d; Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio aim at the hidden Benedick\u2019s ears a tale about the supposedly lovesick Beatrice\u2014they describe her as too ashamed of her intransigence to declare her love; Benedick marvels at this turn of events, but determines to accept Beatrice\u2019s affection.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn a long prose soliloquy, Benedick <a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a> wonders at his friend Claudio\u2019s sudden transformation from a youth totally caught up in martial pursuits to a soon-to-be married young man. He sums up his own perfectionist attitude about women with the declaration, \u201ctill all graces \/ be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace\u201d (552, 2.3.25-26).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut now the conspirators Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio are on the scene, along with the vocalist Balthasar, who is (perhaps with feigned reluctance) induced to sing a song aimed foremost at women, but that may also shame Benedick into recollecting that he has\u2014to hear Beatrice tell it, as she already has\u2014let his old flame down: \u201cSigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, \/ Men were deceivers ever \u2026\u201d (553, 2.3.57-58ff).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMost likely, the song is a clue to what really underlies both<\/em> Beatrice and Benedick\u2019s hesitation: fear of disappointment or betrayal. But it\u2019s also interesting in its advice to turn passionate lamentation into cheerful nonsense: \u201cbe you blithe and bonny, \/ Converting all your sounds of woe, \/ Into hey nonny nonny\u201d (553, 2.3.62-64). Now that<\/em> would be true liberation, we might suppose\u2014but of course a comedy of manners with a strong love-plot can\u2019t grant the main characters such freedom from the imperative of erotic attraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen the music ends, Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato play their parts to perfection, all giving out that they know Beatrice is enamored of Benedick. Don Pedro even throws in the barb that Benedick ought to realize he is unworthy of so fine a woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBenedick is profoundly impressed by all of this, and takes to heart the accusation that he may have behaved too \u201cproudly\u201d in his previous dealings with Beatrice: \u201cI hear how I am cen- \/ sured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the \/ love come from her\u201d (556, 2.3.199-200).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt seems important to him, too, that Beatrice is considered beautiful by other men: \u201cThey say the lady is fair. \u2018Tis a truth; I can bear them witness\u201d (556, 2.3.203-05). At long last, he gives in to the dictates of society: \u201cNo, the world must be peopled. When I said \/ I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were \/ married\u201d (556, 2.3.213-15).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs so often, people most easily are led to desire what they are convinced others find worthy of desire: just as the social interactions in Much Ado About Nothing <\/em>are often studiedly breezy \u201cperformances,\u201d so there is a kind of specular artifice at work here in Leonato\u2019s beautiful Italian garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHelena is right in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream <\/em>when she says that \u201cThings base and vile, holding no quantity, \/ Love can transpose to form and dignity \u2026.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a> Here, though, what\u2019s needed is not such alchemy but instead a little nudge to reaffirm what seems to be the secret affection of both Benedick and Beatrice for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1 (556-59, Margaret helps trick Beatrice into overhearing Hero and Ursula talk in Leonato\u2019s garden about how deeply Benedick loves her and how worthy a gentleman he is, but also how disdainful and stubborn Beatrice herself is; Beatrice does a turnabout and decides that she must return Benedick\u2019s purported affection.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHero has everything planned to ensnare Beatrice: she tells the gentlewoman Margaret, \u201cWhen I do name him, let it be thy part \/ To praise him more than ever man did merit\u201d (557, 3.1.18-19). As for Hero, her task is to propagate the claim that \u201cBenedick \/ Is sick in love with Beatrice\u201d (557, 3.1.20-21). Beatrice is further treated to a generous helping of dispraise for her arrogance, selfishness, and fundamental unfairness in judging men\u2019s qualities: \u201cSo she turns every man the wrong side out, \/ And never gives to truth and virtue that \/ Which simpleness and merit purchaseth\u201d (558, 3.1.68-70).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBeatrice is impressed both with the report that Benedick is in love with her and with the scornful description of her character. She casts away her hesitations so enthusiastically as to make it seem she was never serious about them: \u201cStand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? \/ Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!\u201d (559, 3.1.108-09) exclaims Beatrice, and now we know that she is more open to love than we (or she) had thought. To the absent Benedick, she promises, \u201cI will requite thee, \/ Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand\u201d (559, 3.1.111-12).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 2 (559-61, Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato mark the physical and behavioral signs that Benedick is in love; as soon as Benedick exits, Don John asserts to Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero is unfaithful\u2014he will prove her so tonight, the night before the wedding is to take place, by bringing them to a spot where they can witness a lover entering her window; Claudio promises to shame Hero at the wedding if this report should prove true.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDon Pedro, Claudio and Leonato tease Benedick about certain signs that he may, at long last, be in love. Don Pedro at first half-professes not to believe it, saying, \u201cThere is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be \/ a fancy that he hath to strange disguises \u2026\u201d (560, 3.2.26-27), but this line of thinking quickly turns towards affirmations of the charge: \u201cConclude, con- \/ clude! He is in love\u201d (560, 3.2.51-52). Benedick takes his leave, most likely to broach the subject of marriage in conversation with Leonato.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDon John is up to his devious tricks again, this time proclaiming to Claudio in supposed confidence that Hero is not what the young man thinks she is: \u201cthe lady is disloyal\u201d (561, 3.2.86-87). In sum, Don John asserts that Claudio may see for himself the timely proof he needs: \u201cYou shall see her chamber window entered, \/ even the night before her wedding day\u201d (561, 3.2.94-95).<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudio, na\u00efve as he is, believes the older man, though with graver consequences than Benedick\u2019s crediting of Leonato because of his white beard when Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato are busy duping him into pining for Beatrice. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a> Claudio says that if he finds Hero disloyal, he will humiliate her in public, at church, right at the moment when they are to be married. This is unattractively ostentatious of him, to say the least. While Don Pedro says, \u201cI will not think it\u201d (561, 3.2.99), he chimes in with a promise to \u201cdisgrace\u201d Hero if what Don John says proves true.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 3 (562-65, Constable Dogberry and his helper Verges choose the night watch, giving strangely ineffectual orders on how to deal with offenders and charging the men to look for anything untoward near Leonato\u2019s house, where wedding preparations are under way; Borachio relates to Conrad how, following Don John\u2019s request, he has wooed Margaret and fooled Claudio and Don Pedro into believing they have witnessed Hero being unfaithful; two of Dogberry\u2019s watchmen overhear the vile tale and arrest Conrad and Borachio.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nConstable Dogberry enters the play here with Verges, and chooses the watchmen for this evening. The Constable utters one confused line after another, as when Dogberry says to the first watchman, \u201cTo be a well-favored man is the gift \/ of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature\u201d (562, 3.3.14-15).<\/p>\n\n\n\nDogberry is a malapropist who prides himself on being a man of means and an upholder of authority, but his orders to the watch couldn\u2019t be less authoritative: \u201cyou are to bid any man stand, in the Prince\u2019s name,\u201d he says, but if they won\u2019t stand (i.e., stop), the watchmen are to \u201ctake no note of him, but let him go \/ \u2026 and thank \/ God you are rid of a knave\u201d (562, 3.3.25-27).<\/p>\n\n\n\nVerges adds helpfully that if a man won\u2019t stop when he\u2019s ordered to, why then, he is \u201cnone of \/ the Prince\u2019s subjects \u2026\u201d (562, 3.3.28-29) and therefore none of the watchmen\u2019s concern. It appears that neither Dogberry nor Verges has the slightest idea what his job really entails. Even so, two vigilant watchmen he has chosen actually do Messina a huge favor when they overhear Borachio recounting to Conrad his part in Don John\u2019s plot against Hero and Claudio.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne thing we can say is that while Dogberry has no clear grasp of the concept of \u201csecurity,\u201d at least his notions come from a good place: his character is distinguished by charity:<\/em> as he says, \u201cI would not hang a dog by my will, much \/ more a man who hath any honesty in him\u201d (563, 3.3.57-58).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 4 (565-67, Hero spends the morning preparing for the wedding; Beatrice claims to have a cold; Hero and Margaret needle her about being in love with her nemesis, Benedick.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHero fusses about her wedding dress and accoutrements, and Beatrice enters, claiming to be suffering from a cold. Hero and especially Margaret engage in a bit of bawdy humor at Beatrice\u2019s expense. Margaret professes her disbelief that Beatrice could possibly be in love: \u201cI cannot think, if I would think my heart out of \/ thinking, that you are in love, or that you will be in love, or \/ that you can be in love\u201d (567, 3.4.373-75).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll the same, she says, Benedick was in the same case not long ago, as a sworn enemy of love and all its pitfalls. Finally, she says to Beatrice bluntly, \u201cmethinks you look with your eyes as other women do\u201d (567, 3.4.79). The conversation ends when Ursula brings news that Don Pedro, Leonato, Benedick, Don John and other men are coming to escort her to her wedding to Claudio.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 5 (567-68, Dogberry and Verges try to tell Leonato that they\u2019ve arrested Borachio and Conrad, but they make such a hash of it that he doesn\u2019t understand their report, and so dismisses them with orders to question the prisoners; Leonato departs for the wedding, not realizing that he\u2019s missed an opportunity to discover the plot against Hero and Claudio.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDogberry and his assistant Verges squander a golden chance to help Leonato discover Don John\u2019s sordid plot against his daughter Hero\u2014the Constable does little more than mangle terms of respect for Leonato and string together a series of unrelated and irrelevant proverbs. Like a number of Shakespeare\u2019s comic characters, Dogberry does his level best to imitate the expressions of his learned \u201cbetters,\u201d but his attempts only end up making him look ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnly Verges, ironically, even comes close to breaking the news comprehensibly when he says \u201cour watch tonight \u2026 \/ ha\u2019 ta\u2019en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in \/ Messina\u201d (568, 3.5.28-30). But he is at once silenced by Dogberry, and Leonato soon leaves in haste to bring Hero to her wedding ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 1 (569-75, As the wedding ceremony commences, Claudio denounces Hero as unchaste and disloyal; both Don Pedro and Dohn John back up his claim; Leonato is stricken, convinced by this testimony; Hero collapses, and is left alone with Beatrice and Benedick, the Friar Francis, and Leonato; the Friar is convinced that Hero is innocent and tells Leonato to announce that she has died, which, he reasons, will induce deep regret within Claudio and recall him to his former affection for Hero.<\/strong> \n\t\t\tWhen they are finally alone, Benedick and Beatrice declare their love, each in their own delightfully eccentric way; then, prodded by Beatrice, Benedick agrees to \u201cKill Claudio\u201d by defeating him in a duel.)<\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-c6z3S' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen the wedding ceremony begins, Claudio behaves cruelly towards Hero, shaming her in front of the entire wedding party: he says that Hero is \u201cbut the sign and semblance of her honor\u201d (569, 4.1.32). In Shakespeare, when a woman\u2019s chastity is suspected due to some misprision, men\u2019s insults flow freely and can become extreme: Claudio says with the utmost disrespect to Hero, \u201cyou are more intemperate in your blood \/ Than Venus or those pampered animals \/ That rage in savage sensuality\u201d (570, 4.1.58-60). <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudio is also disrespectful towards Leonato, and the elder man, rather than become righteously angry at the vile insults heaped upon his daughter in public, asks in anguish and probably more than a little self-pity, \u201cHath no man\u2019s dagger here a point for me?\u201d (571, 4.1.107) He even suggests that death would be better for Hero than the shame into which her reputation has instantly fallen.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDon Pedro, another seeming male adult in the room, has also been taken in by Don John\u2019s midnight \u201cshow.\u201d He believes he has been an eyewitness to Hero\u2019s shameful conduct, and thus adds his denunciation to the chorus of men against her. We might be willing to excuse the immature Claudio, at least were it not for his abject failure to tell the difference between a flesh-and-blood human being and an abstract category as constructed by other men, but to see the same behavior from Leonato and Don Pedro is heartbreaking, not to mention cringeworthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut even as Leonato continues to pepper the dialogue with absurd and offensive condemnations of his own daughter, Beatrice, Benedick, and Friar Francis understand the situation better. Beatrice is at once sure that Hero has been betrayed by some villain, and it doesn\u2019t take Benedick long to suppose that the villain must be Don John. He reasons that the princes condemning her are ordinarily men of honor, so they must be speaking in a state of induced misprision: \u201cThe practice of it lives in John the bastard, \/ Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies\u201d (573, 4.1.186-87).<\/p>\n\n\n\nFriar Francis has been closely observing Hero\u2019s countenance, and is quite certain that she has been vilely abused: he says to the company, \u201ctrust not my age, \/ My reverence, calling, nor divinity, \/ If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here, \/ Under some biting error\u201d (572, 4.1.165-68). Francis soon thereafter works up a scheme not unlike the one Friar Laurence designed for Juliet in Romeo and Juliet <\/em>a few years before Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing.<\/em> <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Francis\u2019s plan, Hero will disappear and everyone will be told that she has died, as indeed it appeared she had when she collapsed at the wedding. The extreme suppositions, the rashness, of Claudio and his supporters must be cured with a show of extremity of another sort. As Francis says, this plan will instill remorse <\/em>in those who have been so quick to condemn Hero: he explains, \u201cwhat we have, we prize not to the worth \/ Whiles we enjoy it. But being lacked and lost, \/ Why, then we rack the value\u201d (573, 4.1.16-18).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs soon as they get some time alone, Beatrice and Benedick at last declare their love. The expressions of love, when they finally issue forth, are every bit as strange as we should expect them to be, considering the two eccentrics issuing them. Benedick\u2019s first iteration is, \u201cI do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not \/ that strange?\u201d (574, 4.1.264-65) And Beatrice comes round to the utterance, \u201cYou have stayed me in a happy hour. I was about \/ to protest I loved you\u201d (574, 4.1.279-80).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy the way, the whole conversation about love between these two is in prose, not verse, which seems appropriate. Let there be no fancy Romeo-and-Juliet-style shared sonnets for Beatrice and Benedick, thank you\u2014just their usual witty exchange. <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nBut Beatrice is Beatrice, and she is not quite done yet. When Benedick dares her, \u201cCome, bid me do anything for thee\u201d (575, 4.1.284), she lays a heavy burden upon him: \u201cKill Claudio\u201d (575, 4.1.285). That is how he can prove his loyalty to her. At first, Benedick refuses\u2014the male social bonds are very strong in this play, as we can see from the ease with which the men band together and take one another\u2019s word for holy writ. Beatrice pointedly avers that if she were a man, Claudio would be done for: \u201cI would eat \/ his heart in the marketplace\u201d (575, 4.1.301-02).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWithout much more prodding than that very effective barb (which makes him realize that nice words purporting \u201callyship\u201d aren\u2019t going to cut it with a firebrand like Beatrice) Benedick gives in, saying, \u201cEnough, I am engaged. I will challenge him\u201d (575, 4.1.323).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 2 (576-77, Dogberry questions Borachio and Conrad in the most confusing manner possible; the Sexton orders Borachio and Conrad to be tied up and taken to Leonato\u2019s place.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn their confused and meandering way, and with the Sexton\u2019s help, Dogberry and Verges draw the truth from Borachio, which is simply that Don John offered him a thousand ducats for making a false accusation against Hero. (576, 4.2.41-42) Don John himself has departed from Messina, knowing that the game is up.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut aside from the actual purpose of the hearing, Constable Dogberry is upset that Conrad has called him an ass. This insult jars with his own high estimation of himself: \u201cI am a wise fellow, and which is more, \/ an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is \/ more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina \u2026\u201d and so forth (577, 4.2.71-73). Dogberry doesn\u2019t seem to understand that everyone present has probably recognized that for once, Conrad is telling the truth. Dogberry is honorable, but we may be sure that he is also an ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Sexton has heard enough, and he orders the two malefactors bound and sent off to Leonato, who can determine what to do with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 1 (577-84, Anthony tries to console Leonato, only to be rebuked; Claudio and Don Pedro arrive, and Leonato and Anthony, both old men, tell them that Hero has died, after which they attempt unsuccessfully to challenge Claudio to a duel; then in comes Benedick, and he, <\/em>too, insults and challenges the incredulous Claudio; Dogberry brings in the prisoners Borachio and Claudio, and soon Don Pedro and Claudio realize that they have been deceived about Hero; Don John has run away from Messina. \n\t\t\tClaudio asks pardon from Leonato; Leonato\u2019s price for forgiveness is that first Claudio must show up at Hero\u2019s tomb and sing her an epitaph, and on the morning after, he must marry her supposed niece; Meanwhile, Leonato means to question Margaret about any knowledge she may have pertaining to Don John\u2019s plot.)<\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-4gR9j' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLeonato is in anguish about Hero\u2019s death, and his brother, Anthony, tries to console him, but to no avail. As Leonato says, \u201cthere was never yet philosopher \/ That could endure the toothache patiently, \/ However they have writ the style of gods \/ And made a push at chance and sufferance\u201d (578, 5.1.35-38).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen Claudio and Don Pedro arrive, the seniors Leonato and Anthony inform them that Hero has died. They then try at length and without success to challenge Claudio to a duel. The young man, it seems, does not take their challenge seriously, which only angers them the more.<\/p>\n\n\n\nImmediately after the two old men depart, in marches Benedick and begins a lengthy but entirely serious challenge of his own to an incredulous Claudio. At first, neither Claudio nor Don Pedro really believes Benedick is in earnest. They both try to engage him in a characteristic battle of wits, but as he becomes more and more cutting, they finally realize that he means business. Benedick says firmly, \u201cYou have among you killed a sweet and innocent \/ lady. For my lord Lackbeard there, he and I shall meet, and \/ till then, peace be with him\u201d (581, 5.1.182-84).<\/p>\n\n\n\nDogberry and Verges enter, and make about as much (or as little) sense as they usually do. Don Pedro finds it necessary to get the truth directly from Borachio, and once he has done so, the only remaining thing is how, if at all, Claudio can make partial amends for his grievous fault in accusing Hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeonato offers a solution that is very far from the violent approach he took earlier in this scene: he proposes to Claudio, \u201cMy brother hath a daughter, \/ Almost the copy of my child that\u2019s dead, \/ And she alone is heir to both of us. \/ Give her the right you should have given her cousin, \/ And so dies my revenge\u201d (583, 5.1.273-77). We may feel compelled to ask what good this could do for poor Hero, were she actually dead, but in any case, Claudio is overwhelmed with gratitude and accepts the offer at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLeonato still means to speak closely with the gentlewoman Margaret about any knowledge she may have pertaining to Don John\u2019s plot, and of course there will be the business of dealing with the villain Don John, who has skipped town. But otherwise, with regard to the criminal proceedings, \u201cwe\u2019re done here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 2 (584-86, Benedick has a saucy conversation with Margaret, and then laments that he is a dreadful poet; Benedick lets Beatrice know that he has challenged Claudio to a duel, just as she requested; Beatrice and Benedick exchange jests over what first attracted each to the other; Ursula bids them go to Leonato\u2019s house and hear the news in full that Hero has been \u201cmightily abused,\u201d Claudio and Don Pedro deceived, and Don John has fled from Messina.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nBenedick and Margaret enjoy a spirited conversation shot through with racy double entendres, but once he is alone, Benedick struggles to sing a tune or come up with even a minimally acceptable rhyme for, as he says, he \u201cwas not born under \/ a rhyming planet \u2026\u201d (585, 5.2.83-84). That much is evident from the rhymes he mentions trying.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBeatrice enters and wants to know if Benedick has done what she requested: challenge Claudio to a duel. He is able to say that he has done so. That said, he is free to ask Beatrice how they two first fell in love. As for their courtship, the sum is, as Benedick puts it, \u201cThou and I are too wise to woo peaceably\u201d (586, 5.2.60). The charming thing about this couple is that while they can scarcely be said to idealize romantic love, they are also\u2014and obviously\u2014deeply in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe happy, barb-slinging couple are summoned by Ursula to Leonato\u2019s house with the news that Hero\u2019s innocence has been proved, Claudio and Don Pedro were deceived, and Don John has fled from Messina, knowing he has been identified as the mastermind of this whole plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 3 (586-87, Claudio arrives at Leonato\u2019s family tomb; Claudio reads out an epitaph for Hero, and hangs the scroll upon the tomb.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudio must show remorse for the supposed death of Hero, and to facilitate this, Leonato has arranged a nighttime ceremony. Claudio reads from the scroll the epitaph lines, beginning with, \u201cDone to death by slanderous tongues \/ Was the Hero that here lies\u201d (586, 5.3.2-3). A musician sings the tune, \u201cPardon goddess of the night, \/ Those that slew thy virgin knight\u201d (587, 5.3.12-13ff). Now that this obligation is done, Claudio and Don Pedro will head for Leonato\u2019s place and the second wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 4 (587-90, Leonato reaffirms the innocence of those who had been thought otherwise, and choreographs the upcoming ceremony; Claudio and Don Pedro arrive; Benedick privately asks Leonato if he may marry; the women enter wearing masks; Claudio takes Leonato\u2019s \u201cniece\u201d by the hand, and she unmasks to reveal that she is Hero; Benedick inquires which is Beatrice; Beatrice and Benedick at first deny that they love each other, but their stolen poems are adduced as evidence; they agree to marry, so a double wedding will take place after the concluding dance.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nSpeaking to Benedick, the Friar, Anthony, Margaret, and Ursula, Leonato happily reaffirms that Don Pedro and Claudio as well as Hero and, for the most part, Margaret, are all innocent of intentional wrongdoing. He then asks the women to withdraw and return wearing masks when he next calls for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBenedick privately asks Leonato for permission to marry Beatrice since, he says \u201cYour niece regards me with an eye of favor\u201d (588, 5.4.22). Leonato responds, \u201cThat eye my daughter lent her \u2026\u201d (588, 5.4.23). And when Benedick avows that his eye, in turn, is similarly disposed toward Beatrice, Leonato hints that he, Claudio, and Don Pedro may have had something to do with that circumstance. Benedick doesn\u2019t seem to realize the implication here\u2014Leonato is referring obliquely to the dual plots whereby Benedick and Beatrice were tricked into falling in love. No matter\u2014the outcome is the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudio and Don Pedro arrive, and after teasing Benedick a little while, it\u2019s time for Claudio to receive his new bride, sight unseen. With Leonato looking on, the young man takes his bride by the hand, she unmasks and reveals that she is in fact Hero. Leonato confirms as much, saying, \u201cShe died, my lord, but whiles her slander lived\u201d (589, 5.4.66).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBenedick then asks which masked woman is Beatrice, and she answers in her own name. At first, these two are flummoxed at the new reality of declaring their love in full view of the public, or even in full view mainly of their closest friends and relatives. When asked by Benedick is she loves him, Beatrice can say only, \u201cWhy, no, no more than reason\u201d (589, 5.4.74), while Benedick, asked if he loves Beatrice, makes the same reply. This standoffishness is quickly overcome, however, when a stolen sample of their love poetry is produced as evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt last, Benedick, when challenged by Don Pedro\u2019s teasing barbs, is ready to declare his passion before everyone: \u201csince I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any \/ purpose that the world can say against it,\u201d and he continues, \u201cfor man is a \/ giddy thing \u2026\u201d (590, 5.4.104-05, 106-07). Whatever he may have said about love and marriage in the past, why, that\u2019s all done now. Benedick calls for a dance, tells Don Pedro he looks sad and should find himself a wife, saying, \u201cThere is no \/ staff more reverend than one tipped with horn\u201d (590, 5.4.119-20).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe play ends by banishing, at least for a day, all thought of how precisely to deal with that dedicated villain Don John, but Benedick assures everyone that the man\u2019s future will involve \u201cbrave punishments\u201d (590, 5.4.124).<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinal Reflections on Much Ado About Nothing<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is the \u201cnothing\u201d about which there is so much ado in this play? It seems to be certain overly rigid notions pertaining to female chastity and male honor. It isn\u2019t that Shakespeare would have us tear these concepts to pieces or dismiss them altogether, and in general his plays affirm the value of such central social constructions. The point seems instead that when mainstays like chastity and honor are too closely defined, too rigidly enforced, or too heavily leaned on, serious problems ensue.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven the most vital concepts, when mistreated, quickly become hollow shells of themselves, useful mainly to those who would abuse them for power or gain. They become a cover for the narrow-minded and the toxically insecure, a cudgel for those determined to cause harm, and a stumbling-block for the na\u00efve and inexperienced. This \u201chollowing-out\u201d tendency is something that Shakespeare tracks through a great many of his plays, in all four of the genres we use to describe them today: comedy, tragedy, history, and romance. This interest of his is by no means limited to tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMuch Ado About Nothing <\/em>ends as a more or less sunny romantic comedy, and the developing love match between the \u201cwiseguys\u201d Beatrice and Benedick steals the show, even though the Hero and Claudio plot is also vital to the play\u2019s success. Still, the whole action could easily have taken a tragic turn after the fashion of, say, Othello <\/em>or Romeo and Juliet. <\/em>Claudio\u2019s inexperienced overreliance on a rigid, brittle notion of Hero\u2019s \u201cchastity\u201d and a similarly wrongheaded conception of his own \u201chonor\u201d really could have been the death of Hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat saves Claudio and his ultimate bride is simply the comic disposition of the universe created by Shakespeare. The comedy gods are with Hero and Claudio, so to speak, and we all know the comedy gods love to grant people second (and sometimes umpteenth) chances.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe language, customs, and institutions that keep a society healthy may need to be stress-tested from time to time, lest they become hollow or otherwise structurally unsound. Still, there\u2019s no need to overdo <\/em>things, either. Just the right amount of pressure will do, thank you. Of course, there\u2019s always the Gospel injunction to season such testing: \u201cCare not then for the morrow, for the morrow shall care for itself: the day hath enough with his own grief.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nShakespeare\u2019s comedy takes for one of its main concerns an appreciation of the need for accommodation in human societies and among people in their individual relations. This accommodation is sometimes said to be one-sided, in the sense of individuals needing to accommodate themselves to the dictates and imperatives of the collectivity if they would wrest for themselves some measure of happiness, but it seems more accurate to say that the demand is reciprocal: sometimes, societies need to make allowances for the sheer quirkiness, the eccentricity, of the individuals who comprise them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn As You Like It, <\/em>marriage as an institution seems entirely capable of making room not only for \u201cperfect couples\u201d such as Rosalind and Orlando but also for silly, flawed ones like the jester Touchstone and his goat-keeper lass, Audrey: it can use them all in the service of its social imperative. <a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a> As Benedick himself says, \u201cthe world must be peopled. When I said \/ I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were \/ married\u201d (556, 2.3.213-15).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBeatrice might well much the same thing, and for both hilariously eccentric, ever-jesting individuals in this coupling, while in one sense they\u2019re giving in to their society\u2019s main imperative, in another, their society is making room for, even blessing, their peculiar, irony-rich kind of union.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne last thought: while some readers or audience members may find the play\u2019s many references to the inevitability of \u201ccuckoldry\u201d rather distasteful or at least shopworn, its omnipresence in this and some other Shakespeare plays is probably an affirmation of the irrepressible strength of eros <\/em>or sexual desire and of the role it plays in human life.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEros,<\/em> that is, no doubt produces a lot of chaos in the institutional context of marriage, but at the same time, that institution (which is nearly universal in one form or another) would not exist without it, and so would not deliver the nearly magical societal benefits that Shakespeare attributes to it. And so we return to the need for something better, more mature, than na\u00efve overreliance on impossibly perfect notions of honor and chastity. Shakespeare seems to suggest that \u201csociety\u201d itself levies no such rigid demands for perfection, so why should its individual members?<\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong>\u00a0Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors.\u00a0The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. <\/em>3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13:\u00a0978-0-393-93861-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 11\/2\/2025 10:10 AM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> Kenneth Branagh\u2019s 1993 production was filmed in Villa Vignamaggio, Greve in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> Marlowe, Christopher. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/44674\/hero-and-leander\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hero and Leander<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> \u201cWhere both deliberate, the love is slight: \/ Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?\u201d Poetry Foundation. Accessed 8\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> In his essay \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/57795\/pg57795-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hamlet and His Problems<\/a>,\u201d T. S. Eliot writes that Hamlet\u2019s melancholia has no immediate cause or object. To state his general point more fully, \u201cThe only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an \u2018objective correlative\u2019; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular<\/em> emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.\u201d [continued \u2026.]<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe example Eliot gives of such a correlative is Lady Macbeth\u2019s sleepwalking episodes: we have been informed already by the play\u2019s events as to why <\/em>she is suffering these episodes. Project Gutenberg. Accessed 3\/29\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What You Will.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 743-97. Sir Toby skewers Malvolio with the following excellent questions: \u201cArt any more \/ than a steward? Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, \/ there shall be no more cakes and ale?\u201d (761, 2.3.105-07)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Comical History of The Merchant of Venice.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 467-521. Shylock\u2019s famous cutting-off of Antonio\u2019s pleas is, \u201cI\u2019ll have no speaking; I will have my bond\u201d (501, 3.3.17).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> See the Norton editors\u2019 footnote 5 on pg. 543.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. As You Like It.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 673-731. Jaques begins with the observation that \u201cAll the world\u2019s a stage \u2026\u201d and goes on to list the supposed seven phases of an individual\u2019s life (696, 2.7.139).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> Wilde, Oscar. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/887\/887-h\/887-h.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Critic as Artist<\/a>.\u201d The full quotation runs, Gilbert: \u201cMan is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.\u201d Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 4\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> Though as the Norton editors\u2019 \u201cPerformance Comment 6\u201d on pg. 549 points out, the actors in this scene could play Don Pedro\u2019s proposal as merely being meant to elicit more of Beatrice\u2019s famous verbal wit, which it succeeds in doing. Either reading is plausible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> What is a \u201cdancing\u201d star? Does Beatrice mean \u201ca shooting star\u201d? Shakespeare has been known to connect dancing with astronomical or astrological references, as when, in Twelfth Night, <\/em>he makes Sir Toby Belch compliment Sir Andrew Aguecheek\u2019s calf by saying that he thought it was \u201cformed under the star of a galliard\u201d (Norton Comedies <\/em>748, 1.3.119) by which is meant a cinquepace-patterned dance. Then there is Helen in All\u2019s Well That Ends Well, <\/em>sighing that her love for Bertram is hopeless: \u201c\u2019Twere all one \/ That I should love a bright particular star \/ And think to wed it, he is so above me\u201d (Norton Comedies<\/em> 973, 1.1.81-83). [continued \u2026.]<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Folklore Society\u2019s website at <a href=\"https:\/\/folklore-society.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/folklore-society.com<\/a> offers this interesting note, though they do not connect it to Much Ado About Nothing: <\/em>\u201cOne major liturgical symbol is the kindling of \u2018new light\u2019 between Holy Saturday and Easter Day, ideally at midnight or at dawn, to represent Christ the Light, or Sun, of the world. In folk tradition, as recorded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was commonly believed throughout England that the sun itself danced for joy as it rose on Easter Sunday.\u201d [continued \u2026.]<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis would explain the technical element in Beatrice\u2019s reference to a dancing star, but unless she means that she was born on Easter Sunday, this folk allusion doesn\u2019t seem to fit the context: surely she is not comparing herself to the risen Christ. See \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/folklore-society.com\/resources\/easter\/#:~:text=In%20folk%20tradition%2C%20as%20recorded,it%20rose%20on%20Easter%20Sunday.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Easter: Miscellaneous<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 4\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> In his introduction to Much Ado, <\/em>editor Stephen Greenblatt mentions this key term of the Italian Renaissance on pg. 523, defining it more or less as the ability to combine excellent qualities like sincerity and elegance or wit into one seamless performance. For Castiglione\u2019s treatment of la sprezzatura, <\/em>see <a href=\"https:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/e\/eebo\/A18135.0001.001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio diuided into foure books<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, or the Project Gutenberg\u2019s e-text of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/67799\/67799-h\/67799-h.htm#r73\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1902 translation by Leonard E. Opdycke<\/a>. Castiglione\u2019s Count Lodovico da Canossa explains the term \u201cla sprezzatura\u201d: [continued ….]<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cBut having before now often considered whence this grace springs, laying aside those men who have it by nature, I find one universal rule concerning it \u2026 and that is to avoid affectation to the uttermost and as it were a very sharp and dangerous rock; and, to use possibly a new word, to practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.\u201d The term \u201cnonchalance\u201d in this passage is the translation Opdycke chose for la sprezzatura.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> As the Norton editors point out, there seems to be a slip at line 44; it makes no sense that Margaret would call Borachio Claudio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> It\u2019s uncertain why the Norton editors chose to rename Benedick as Benedict, but in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/BC1-MuchAdos-Showerman.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shakespeare\u2019s Many Much Ado\u2019s: Alcestis, Hercules, and Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Wonne<\/a>\u201d (Brief Chronicles <\/em>Vol. I (2009) 109; Earl Showerman cites the Arden Shakespeare editor Claire McEachern\u2019s gloss of the sole quarto printing of Much Ado About Nothing, <\/em>1.1.81-85 (\u201cO Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease! \/ He is sooner caught than the \/ pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! If \/ he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere ‘a be cured\u201d) as follows: [continued \u2026.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cBenedicts\u201d were the \u201cCatholic priests qualified to perform exorcisms, and madness was often thought to be caused by demonic possession, hence \u2018caught the Benedict.\u2019\u201d (McEachern 155) The change, then, at least in the Quarto edition, is delightfully ironic in that Benedick<\/em> thinks himself all but immune from the crazy-making passion of love. Accessed 4\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.<\/em> Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 406-53. See 411, 1.1.232-33.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> See Much Ado, <\/em>2.3.109-10: [aside<\/em>] \u201cI should think this a gull, but that the \/ white-bearded fellow speaks it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.<\/em> Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 512-86. Othello\u2019s descriptions of Desdemona\u2019s alleged unfaithfulness include such passages as, \u201cHeaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks; \/ The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, \/ Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth, \/ And will not hear\u2019t\u201d (568, 4.2.76-79).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.<\/em> Second Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 209-77. See 261, 4.1.68-76.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.<\/em> Second Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 209-77. See 225-26, 1.4.204-17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+6%3A34&version=GNV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Matthew<\/em> 6:34<\/a>. (Geneva Bible 1599). Gatewaybible.com. Accessed 8\/2\/2024. In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Matthew+6%3A34&version=KJV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">King James version<\/a>, this line is rendered, \u201cTake therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> See Shakespeare, William. As You Like It.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 673-731.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s Much Ado About Nothing Commentary A. J. Drake Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 534-90). 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{"id":195,"date":"2024-04-13T21:25:21","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T04:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=195"},"modified":"2025-11-02T10:16:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T18:16:37","slug":"much-ado-about-nothing-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/much-ado-about-nothing-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Much Ado about Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"