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| Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (1598-1599) |
Much Ado About Nothing is a Shakespeare comedy, thought to be written in 1598 and 1599. The play revolves around "noting" (in Shakespearean times this was a homophone for "nothing"), which is gossip, rumour, and overhearing. Through noting, Beatrice and Benedick fall in love, and Claudio rejects Hero at the alter. The title is also a double entendre, as in Elizabethan England "nothing" was a euphemism for female genitalia - this is used by Shakespeare to mock the fuss created by the male desire to gain control of the female nothing.
The play explores the nature of true love in an arguably unromantic way. It is honest and critical; romantic lovers are charmless and flawed whereas love's critics are appealing and charismatic. Benedick and Beatrice, on overhearing of their flaws, choose to confront them: "happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending." However, because of their agreement not to "woo peaceably" but to retain their playful antagonism and "love no more than reason", they guaranteed a balanced relationship and require little change in order to obtain true love. Claudio, who outwardly appear more romantic that Benedick or Beatrice, is incapable of love until his romantic idealisation of Hero has been shattered. It is only in his expressions of remorse at Hero's grave that he begins to learn that love transcends slander and death. The play concludes with those who professed love at the beginning having learned how to love, whereas those who initially rebuked it find that it came naturally to them.
Themes and Relevant Quotes
Effects of Love
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Appearance vs Reality
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Gender
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Attitudes to Love
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"Friendship is constant in all
other things save in the office and affairs of love." - Claudio
"... for beauty is a witch against
whose charms faith melteth into blood." - Claudio
"When I said I would die a
bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married." - Benedick
"The greatest note of it [love] is his melancholy." - Don Pedro
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"I was born to speak all mirth and
no matter." - Beatrice
"Is it not strange that sheep's
guts should hale the souls out of men's bodies." - Benedick
"Ha! 'Against my will I am sent bid come you to dinner' - there's a
double meaning to that." - Benedick
"Behold how like a maid she
blushed here!" - Claudio
"Sweet Hero, now thy image doth
appear in the rare semblance that I loved it first." - Claudio
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"By my troth, niece, thou wilt
never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue." - Leonato
"Would it not grieve a woman to be
over-mastered with a piece of valiant dust?" - Beatrice
"... twas the boy who stole your
meat," - Benedick
"Lady, as you are mine, I am
yours;" - Claudio
"Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand." - Beatrice
"O God, that I were a man! I would
eat his heart in the market place." - Beatrice
"But manhood is melted into
curtsies, valour into compliment..." - Beatrice"
"One Hero died defiled" -
Hero
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"I had rather hear my dog bark at
a crow than a man swear he loves me." - Beatrice
"Daughter, remember what I told
you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer." -
Leonato
"If we can do this, Cupid is no longer
an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods." -
Don Pedro
"Some Cupid kills with arrows,
some with traps." - Hero
"Suffer love! A good epithet, I do
suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will." - Benedick
"Thou and I are too wise to woo
peaceably." - Benedick
"Prince, thou art sad; get thee a
wife, get thee a wife." - Benedick
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Critical Responses
- "It is as though the play seeks to underline the point that all transaction, even the most apparently innocently social, are in fact grounded in sexual relations, as indeed its title implies." - Penguin Shakespeare edition of Much Ado About Nothing: Introduction (Janette Dillon)
- "Beatrice, like many another woman before and since, is the slave of a pert tongue; her intellect, though quick, is not strong enough to keep her vanity in subjection, and the consciousness of possessing in a ready wit the power of discomfiting others, proves a successful snare for her good taste and all the graceful effects of her gentle breeding. It is only in situations so inspiring as to compel her for the moment to forget her flippant affectations, that she appears as Nature made her -- a spirited, generous, clever woman." - The Shakespeare Sisterhood: Henrietta Palmer (1859)
- "Instead of remaining the ideal woman, Hero is rewritten unjustly and irrationally by the men. The men's rash conclusions address larger social issues of Renaissance society: men's irrational fear of cuckoldry causes them to victimize even the most ideal products of their system." - Much Ado About Nothing's Criticisms of the Renaissance Patriarchy (Kristin Zomparelli)
- "He risks his reputation, as well as his standing within Messina's predominantly misogynistic culture, for Beatrice's sake. In a play preoccupied with the influence that "fashion" - public image - exerts, Benedick acts purely on principle. What anyone else thinks of him is immaterial." - Big Love: Cynthia Lewis
