Much Ado About Nothing

I picked up Much Ado About Nothing after a heavy run of tragedies. I had just finished Hamlet and Macbeth and I wanted something that ends with dancing instead of funerals. A friend told me Beatrice and Benedick were the funniest couple Shakespeare wrote, better than the young lovers, and that sold me. I read the Oxford World's Classics text, the one with ISBN 9780199536115 and 224 pages, which keeps the First Quarto of 1600 as its base. That quarto was printed by Andrew Wise and William Aspley in London. Knowing it was already a stage hit by 1600 helped me read it as a working script, with doors and windows and eavesdropping spots, rather than a poem on a page.

Messina feels sunny and watched at the same time. Leonato governs the town. He lives with his daughter Hero, his niece Beatrice, and his brother Antonio. A messenger arrives to say Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon, is coming back from war with his men, including the young Claudio from Florence and the lord Benedick from Padua. Leonato asks after them all. The messenger says Claudio has done brave work and Benedick is still Benedick. Beatrice cuts in at once. She asks about Signior Mountanto, her private nickname for Benedick, and wants to know who has beaten him in a contest of words lately. The messenger looks confused. Leonato explains they have a merry war between them and never meet without a skirmish of wit.

That merry war starts the minute the soldiers walk in. Don Pedro greets Leonato warmly. Benedick greets Beatrice with a jab about her parrot teacher and she answers that a bird of her tongue will eat better food than a man of his. Everyone laughs because they know the pattern. Claudio is quieter. He has seen Hero and he tells Benedick she seems the sweetest lady he ever looked on. Benedick teases him for changing his taste in wars to changing it in women. Don John enters too, the bastard brother of Don Pedro, and the mood cools a little. Don Pedro says he has reconciled with him. Borachio, who follows Don John, adds smooth talk. You can feel two plots already. One is Beatrice and Benedick snapping at each other for sport. The other is Claudio falling fast for Hero while Don John watches for a chance to sour everything.

Soldiers home and a governor's garden

The first long stretch in Messina sets the pairs. Don Pedro stays with Leonato for a month at least. There is talk of a dance and supper. Claudio admits to Don Pedro that he loves Hero. Don Pedro likes the match and offers to woo her in Claudio's name at the masked ball that night. That was a normal court trick, a prince borrowing a friend's voice to speed a marriage. Beatrice keeps needling Benedick. She tells him in front of everyone that he is a jester to himself and that no woman will ever love his brand of scorn. Benedick tells Don Pedro he will never marry, and lists impossible demands for any bride, which proves he is joking and a little scared.

Leonato worries a little about Beatrice. He tells Hero and Beatrice to mind their manners with princes. Antonio brings news he overheard in the garden, that Don Pedro means to marry Hero himself. That gossip travels fast and lands on Claudio through Don John. The masked ball then scrambles everything in a good way. Everyone wears vizards. Don Pedro takes Hero aside and speaks for Claudio. Beatrice dances with Benedick without knowing him behind the mask and tells him Benedick is a dull fool. Don John finds Claudio alone, calls him Claudio though Claudio is masked, and tells him Don Pedro loves Hero and means to keep her. Borachio backs the lie. Claudio believes it at once and sulks.

I found that jealous turn telling. Claudio loves quickly and doubts quickly. When Don Pedro later tells him plainly that he spoke for Claudio and Hero has consented, Claudio flips back to joy. Leonato proposes marriage for Hero and Claudio within a week. Claudio agrees. Don Pedro decides to pass the week by tricking Beatrice and Benedick into loving each other. Leonato, Hero, and Claudio all join the plan. Don John, left out, tells Borachio he wants to cross it. Borachio says he can. He has been close with Margaret and can make Claudio see something false at Hero's window.

The gulling in the orchard

The two gulling scenes are the heart of the comedy and they still play. First the men trap Benedick. Don Pedro sends Hero and Margaret away and tells Leonato and Claudio to walk in the orchard where Benedick is hiding in the arbor. Benedick has just sworn he will never fall. He crouches behind leaves while the three men stage a chat. Leonato says Beatrice loves Benedick so hard she writes of him and tears the paper and will die of it if he does not pity her. Claudio says Hero told him Beatrice would rather die than show love. Don Pedro says Beatrice is too proud and Benedick will mock her. Leonato says they told Beatrice to stop loving, to think reason, but she will not. Benedick hears it all and believes every word. He comes out after they leave and gives a speech about manhood and appetite and how the world turns. He decides he will love Beatrice and be horribly in love with her. He even forgives her sharp tongue in advance.

Beatrice gets the mirror trap the next day. Hero sends Margaret to call Beatrice to the garden where Hero and Ursula walk and talk loud enough to be heard from the bower. Beatrice runs to hide among honeysuckles. Hero tells Ursula that Don Pedro and Claudio says Benedick loves Beatrice and begs Hero to tell her, and that Beatrice is too scornful and will mock him into madness. Ursula adds that Benedick is handsome and good and that Beatrice should take him. Hero says Beatrice turns every man to jest and would laugh Benedick out of love. Beatrice hears it all. She comes out after they leave and drops the scorn in a plain speech. She says contempt farewell and maiden pride adieu. She will love Benedick if he loves her.

What makes these scenes work is that Shakespeare lets us watch the watchers. Benedick interrupts his own hiding with asides about rheumatism from sitting still. Beatrice mutters about hearing too much. The friends overact on purpose. Leonato keeps saying Beatrice is too disdainful while Claudio keeps praising Benedick's worth. Hero keeps saying Benedick deserves a better wife than scorn. The audience knows it is fake before the victims do, and the victims know they want it to be true. I laughed most when Benedick tries to order a love song afterward, then tries to shave and dress well. Beatrice starts asking Margaret if she seems changed. Both swore they would stay single. Both fold fast.

A face at the window and vows at the church

Borachio's plot is ugly on purpose and Shakespeare times it to hurt. Don John brings Claudio and Don Pedro to Leonato's garden at night before the wedding. They stand below Hero's chamber window. Borachio goes inside with Margaret, who wears Hero's clothes for the sport of it, and calls her Hero aloud while he woos her at the open window. Margaret plays along, thinking it is a late night game. From below, in the dark, Claudio and Don Pedro see what looks like Hero giving herself to another man. Don John whispers that Hero is disloyal. Claudio swears he will shame her at the wedding tomorrow. Don Pedro believes his brother's eyes over Hero's whole life.

The wedding scene is hard to read even now. Hero walks in bright clothes with her father. Claudio is asked to take her. He refuses. He says she is a rotten orange to the eye, fresh outside and rotten within, and that her blush is guilt, not modesty. Don Pedro backs him. He says he saw her at the window that night. Leonato begs for proof and then turns on his own daughter. He wishes she were dead rather than shamed. Hero faints. Don John slips away. Beatrice stands by Hero and tells Benedick that Claudio has wronged her cousin. Benedick, who has just confessed love to Beatrice in the chapel porch, offers to do anything for her. Beatrice says kill Claudio. Benedick balks, then agrees to challenge him. It is the only time the comedy stops joking.

I kept stopping here to think about Claudio. He trusts a night glimpse arranged by a known malcontent over Hero's plain speech. He chooses public shaming over a private question. Don Pedro, older and meant to be wise, does the same. Leonato, who should guard his house, calls for Hero's death in words before Friar Francis steps in. Hero says little. She denies, she faints, she is carried aside. Modern readers often feel she is too passive. I felt that too. She has charm with Margaret and Ursula, and spirit when she teases Beatrice, but in the church she gets almost no defense except Beatrice and the Friar. That imbalance is part of the point, I think, about how fast a town can turn on a young woman, yet it still leaves Hero thin next to Beatrice.

Friar Francis and the night watch

Friar Francis saves the play with a strange plan. He has watched Hero's face during the charge. He says her blush and her bearing do not fit guilt. He tells Leonato to report that Hero died of grief that night. Hide her in secret. Publish mourning. Let Claudio hear she died innocent by proof to come. Sorrow will soften slander into pity, and if Borachio's truth ever breaks, Claudio will have to answer to a grave. Leonato agrees. Beatrice stays with Hero. Benedick goes to find Claudio.

While the great folk plot grief, the low folk find the truth by accident. Dogberry, the constable, and his deputy Verges set the watch for the night. Dogberry gives long orders full of malapropisms. He tells the watchmen to be quiet, to bid vagrants stand, to sleep rather than talk, and to avoid touching unclean things. The men nod along. Seacoal and the others take posts near the church. Borachio walks in drunk with Conrade and brags aloud about earning a thousand ducats from Don John for the window trick with Margaret. He names names and laughs about fashioning a wedding out of false seeing. The watch hear it all and seize them.

The trial the next morning is funny and slow at once. Dogberry calls the Sexton to write down answers and keeps calling Conrade and Borachio villains with long titles. Verges keeps saying yes to everything. Borachio confesses plainly and tells the Sexton to go warn Leonato that Hero is innocent and Claudio was tricked. Leonato has already hung verses on Hero's empty tomb with Claudio weeping beside it. When the Sexton brings word, Leonato demands that Claudio marry Antonio's daughter sight unseen as penance. Don John has fled Messina by then, and Don Pedro admits his own fault in believing the window show.

Dogberry steals time here. On stage his misuse of words must kill. On the page some of it drags. I laughed when Dogberry asks to be remembered as an ass. Shakespeare gives these men real power, though. Without their ears, Borachio would have drunk his money and left Hero dead in story. The comedy needs their blunders to fix what the noble men's pride broke.

Two dances and a sore spot that stays

The last wedding brings the pairs together as a reveal. Claudio arrives to marry Antonio's daughter veiled. Leonato gives him Hero instead, unveiled alive. Claudio cries out. Hero answers briefly and forgives. They both get caught by love poems they wrote. Claudio pulls Benedick's verses from his pocket. Hero pulls Beatrice's. Benedick tells Beatrice they will marry but will not be made a stock for jest. News comes that Don John was caught in flight. Benedick calls for music. They dance out.

That dance covers a sore spot that never quite fades, which is why the play lasts. Claudio gets Hero after shaming her in church. He weeps at a tomb, sings, then takes her back in one scene. Hero forgives fast. Leonato forgives fast. Don Pedro forgives himself fast. Only Beatrice holds out and only Benedick must prove change by challenging his friend. I wanted one more scene where Claudio answers plainly for the cruelty, with more than a tomb song and a new vow. Hero's quietness makes that harder. She is kind and witty with her women, yet the play gives her few long speeches. Beatrice gets the speeches. Margaret gets the jokes. Hero gets the plot happening to her.

Still, I kept the Oxford paperback on my table for days after, which tells me the good parts won. The arbor scenes reward rereading because the lies are kind and the hearers want to be fooled. Beatrice and Benedick earn their ending through change you can hear in their speech, from war to plain asking. The First Quarto text from 1600, printed by Andrew Wise and William Aspley, keeps all this tight. At 224 pages in this edition it reads in two sittings. If you come from Hamlet, watch how fast this town believes eyes over ears, and how one Friar and one foolish watch have to teach princes to listen.