Much ado about nothing: themes of deception and social commentary

¶ … Ado About Nothing

Tragedies that Never Happened in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing

Shakespeare's play Much Ado about Nothing effectively combines the comic and tragic elements in its structure. The title is the point where the reading should begin: Shakespeare himself indicates that the play is about "nothing," that is, there are no real events in the text, no real action, only deceiving and misprision. The plot focuses on the two couples that are the main protagonists: Berenice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio. The dissembling, deceiving and misprisions in the play seem endless and are directly related to the tragic undertones of the text. Berenice and Benedick exchange during the first three acts a long series of invectives and maledictions against one another and against the opposite sex in general, dissimulating thus the attraction between them. Claudio falls in love with Hero, but lets Don Pedro woe her for him and only after does he propose. Don John, the most important negative character in the play, is the one who continues the series of plots and deceives Don Pedro and Claudio into believing that Hero has another lover with the help of Borachio and Margaret who impersonate the fake couple. Claudio then rejects Hero in front of the altar, with the entire congregation present, and leaves her there swooned. Friar Francis misinforms everyone by telling them Hero is dead, and finally, Don John's plot is discovered. The play can thus be considered tragic because the characters, the bad and the good as well, simulate and dissimulate, manufacture plots out of "nothing" and play with reality in a dangerous way that could have serious consequences for everyone.

First of all Much Ado about Nothing is not a genuine comedy, in spite of the abundant witticism and humor of the lines, because it has a truly negative character, Don John. John is neither a jester nor an innocent evil-doer but a purposeful, malefic character, who, as Shakespeare indicates, intends to play no less than an evil Cupid's role in the text: "If we can do this, / Cupid is no longer an archer: his glory shall be / ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me, / and I will tell you my drift."(II.i.344-347) as Father Francis observes, Don John is the main cause of the misprision that ensues in Hero and Claudio's case: "There is some strange misprision in the princes."(IV.i.191)

The next obvious tragedy that doesn't actually happen but hovers over the text is related to Hero and Claudio's love affair. A part of the tragedy does take place since Hero is certainly wounded by Claudio's almost sadistic discourse about her in the church. He simply returns Hero to her father, at the same time emphasizing what he sees as the deceit- her innocence is not what it seems according to him:

There, Leonato, take her back again. / Give not this rotten orange to your friend: / She's but the sign and semblance of her honour. / Behold how like a maid she blushes here! / O, what authority and show of truth / Can cunning sin cover itself withal! / Comes not that blood as modest evidence / to witness simple virtue? Would you not swear, / All you that see her, that she were a maid, / by these exterior shows? But she is none.

She knows the heat of a luxurious bed; / Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty."(IV.i.32-43)

Also, Leonato's bitter rejection of his daughter after she had been accused by Claudio is equally painful for Hero. He actually wishes her death, and threatens to kill her himself if she does not die of shame:

Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes: / for, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die, / Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, / Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, / Strike at thy life."(IV.i.127-131)

Claudio's observation before he makes his accusation of Hero is very significant: it can be said to translate Shakespeare's intentions regarding the tragic undertones of the play. Claudio wonders about men's ignorance that leads them to unconscious acts everyday, referring of course to his so-called blindness to Hero's actual character: "O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily / do, not knowing what they do!"(IV.i.16-17) the line however clearly describes the general behavior of the characters in the play, that "dare do" all kinds of things that provoke fate, without knowing what they do. Don Pedro's wooing of Hero to help Claudio is also significant, as Claudio does not actually needs his help so the offering is superfluous.

Even Friar Francis who pretends Hero is dead endangers the happiness of the two, in spite of his good intentions. If we remember Romeo and Juliet's story we can deduce the kind of consequences that his deception might have had: "Your daughter here the princes left for dead. / Let her awhile be secretly kept in,/and publish it that she is dead indeed. / Maintain a mourning ostentation / and on your family's old monument / Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites/That appertain unto a burial."(IV.i.204-10.)

Berenice and Benedick's love affair is even stranger, as they continually aim at each other with all kinds of injurious declarations, also running the peril of inducing serious consequences. Also, their story seems to have been silenced somehow by Shakespeare, and to have had a previous darker part. Their apparent hatred for each other seems very serious: "Not till God make men of some other metal than / earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be / overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? To make / an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? / No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren;/and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. (II.i.52-57) the allusions to Hercules as Dobransky points out are very significant as the mythological hero had actually done a terrible act of jealously and killed his sons (Dobransky, 237):

She told me, not thinking I had been / myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was / duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest / with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood / like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at / me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: / if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, / there were no living near her; she would infect to / the north star. I would not marry her, though she / were endowed with all that Adam bad left him before / he transgressed: she would have made Hercules have / turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make / the fire too. (II.i.215-227)