Gender Identity and Sexuality in Much Ado About Nothing

Introduction: A Gendered World on the Surface

Much Ado About Nothing engages deeply with the roles of gender and sexuality, with particular focus on the gender identity of Hero. For all that it is a cheery play, it has more to do with gender conflicts than happy endings. Much Ado argues, on the surface, for a binarily gendered world — one in which women and men are not just polar opposites, but opposites who engage with each other only through relationships of tension. Those relationships vary from sexual tension to conflict to outright antagonism, yet always women and men are bound in a dance of sex and dissension. Men are men, women are women, and everyone is straight.

But Shakespeare's little world is more complicated than it appears. Hero's sexual identity is questionable. Claudio's gendered nature casts him as the subtle villain of the story. And Balthazar sings quietly in the background, drawing attention away from the surface of things. These dynamics of polarity, conflict, and sexual tension are perfectly expressed in the play's two principal couples: Hero and Claudio, and Beatrice and Benedick.

Hero and Claudio: Archetypes in Opposition

Hero and Claudio are pristine examples of their expected gender roles and are necessarily cast as film negatives of each other. Where Hero is the quiet lady, Claudio is the boisterous soldier. Where Hero faints, Claudio rages. Where Hero is right, Claudio is wrong. This opposition is quite intentional on Shakespeare's part and is meant to portray several things. The first, and most obvious, is that the audience is meant to appreciate the characters for their expression of extreme gender identities. Hero is charming because of her modesty and purity; Claudio is appealing because he is a victorious soldier. The audience connects with both characters and finds them attractive precisely because they are so strongly gendered. On a less immediate level, this serves as an idealization of femininity — after all, it is Claudio's gendered rage and pride that makes him act so cruelly, and Hero's modesty and sweetness that keeps the audience on her side.

From the beginning, the tension between Claudio and Hero is forcefully thrust upon the audience. Claudio declares his love at several points in true Shakespearean fashion, and even grows jealous of Don Pedro, whom he believes is wooing Hero (though this turns out not to be the case). Though all of Claudio's emotions are cloaked in the guise of romantic love, it is clearly lust that Shakespeare means to imbue in him through all his sighing, speeches, and jealousy. It would have been clear to the audience — in the bawdy and unabashed Elizabethan era — that Claudio was acting on the whims of lust rather than the drives of love.

Hero, Claudio's reverse, is clearly not so passionately in love with her opposite. From the very onset of the play, she seems disengaged from all men and keeps to her women, though this disengagement is veiled with the always-handy excuse of maidenly caprice. The sexual tension between Hero and Claudio soon transmutes itself into outright conflict when Hero is betrayed and Claudio is tricked. Here, too, both characters are flawless representations not so much of themselves, but of that which they have been assigned to be. They are perfect archetypes — living, breathing incarnations of gender roles. Claudio is cruel and melodramatic, every inch the slighted gentleman. Hero is weepy and quiet. Rather notably, she disengages entirely in this scene by fainting dead away.

Beatrice and Benedick: Two Faces of the Same Coin

And so we come to Beatrice and Benedick — two faces of the same coin. Here Shakespeare seems to underline both the couple's conflict-driven relationship and the two individuals' eerie similarity. Both aspects are essential to understanding the nature of their relationship and their respective gender roles and identities. The very first scene with them together sets them at odds — and equally matched. Here again we see men and women engaged only in a tension-laden relationship, and the only cause of that tension is the differently-gendered nature of the two parties. But interestingly, Shakespeare chooses to underline that it is only gender that separates them (and later on gender that brings them together), and nothing else. They both trade clever quips about the nature of women, men, and each other. In this, the first time we ever meet Beatrice and Benedick, we know they are destined to be lovers — precisely because of the arguing and protestations of dislike.

The relationships between men and women in traditional Western stories are like energy as defined by modern science: energy can be almost anything — light, heat, the push off the ground, friction. So too are women and men changeable when it comes to each other. Enemies are easily made into lovers; ex-lovers readily become the hated villain. This fluidity of opposite-sex relationships is contrasted with the static, unchanging nature of same-sex relationships. The soldier-brothers never waver, the cruel enemy is never redeemed, and the endless stream of nondescript female friends never fail in loyalty. That is, in most stories.

Conclusion: Rebellion and Resolution

Much Ado About Nothing is, of course, a comedy, and an English Renaissance comedy at that. Beatrice and Benedick are allowed to rebel, to push against conventional sexuality and marriage, but only temporarily. By the end of the play, social expectations have intervened and the two are happily — and conventionally — married. But despite this predictable ending, the fact that Shakespeare has introduced the possibility that not all people spend their lives desiring conventional heterosexuality allows for a more complicated set of conclusions. As is true of other comedies — notably The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure — we are left both celebrating conventional pairings and asking ourselves, as the house lights come up and we leave the theater, whether we have indeed witnessed a comedy or a tragedy wrapped up, as if in drag, as a comedy.

Works Cited

Marlowe, Christopher. "Hero and Leander." Classic Literature Library. 1 December 2009.

"Hero." www.etymonline.com. 2005. 1 December 2009.

Hamilton, Sharon. Shakespeare's Daughters. New York: McFarland & Company, 2007.