Much Ado About Nothing essays

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Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

The central tension in Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” is generated via the interplay between gender specific world-visions and aspirations, specifically, the male and female interplay in romantic and nuptial settings. As the play opens, a battle has recently ended and the fighting troops are retiring to Don Pedro’s estate. Typically, the transference of soldiers to a domestic setting provides ample enough opportunity for drama and conflict; the genius of "Much Ado About Nothing" resides in Shakespeare’s elegant treatment of this serious dramatic theme: what happens to battle-hardened soldiers when they enter the world of domestic intrigue and ambiguity?

From the play’s opening, it is clear that the theme of “war” will be transposed from the battlefield to the domestic realm. “When Beatrice first speaks in Much Ado about Nothing, she inquires after Benedick: "I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?" (I.i.28-9).(1) That her first concern is Benedick's welfare suggests an interest in him beyond their ongoing "skirmish of wit" (Dobranski, 1998)

Similarly, the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice is described by Leonato as a “merry war” in the play’s first scene. What ensues throughout the following Acts is the complication of male “logic” and soldierly “ethics” by the contact with mysterious and amigious femininity. Claudio reveals in his first spoken lines about Hero: “Can the world buy such a jewel?” signaling his obvious unfamiliarity with ways of women, or marriage, and – one assumes – amorous occupations within this formal sphere.

Benedick’s reply: “Yea, and a case to put it into” reveals his slightly more experienced, but equally chauvinistic appraisal of women. Later, in Benedick’s monologue in Act II Scene 3, he reveals his own essential bewilderment at the ways of romance, love, and marriage: “man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviors to love” and also recalls when his friend Claudio knew “no music but the drum and the fife; and now he would rather hear the tabor and the pipe.”

The ambiguous and mysterious nature of the domestic worlds of love and romance is indicated symbolically by the masquerade in Act II scene 1. Here, donning masks and beginning to engage in the “war” of love and marriage, the play’s complications are set spinning. Interestingly, these complications involve not only the “match-making” intrigues of the party-goers, but the darker complications brought upon by Don John, a “bastard,”a specificity which furthers the play’s themes of domesticity and marriage, in effect, proffering the bastard John as a villain and in so doing, enhancing the play’s theme that “balance” of the male and female psyches is the goal of marriage: “The world in Much Ado About Nothing that was out of balance is reined in and balance is achieved. Maturity brings self-knowledge and Beatrice and Benedick shine in the end.” (Lukacs, 2004)

In order for balance and harmony to be achieved; in effect, for the bastard John’s villainous plans to be undone, truth must be ferreted out of the ensuing “masquerade” where everything appears to be something it isn’t. Hero is first believed to be immoral and then believed to be dead. Benedick and Beatrice appear to be bitter enemies but are, in fact, deeply in love. Claudio and Don Pedro appear to be fighting for morality and righteousness, but are, in fact, persecuting an innocent girl.

The world-turned-upside-down vision creates and ironic contrast with the backdrop of the play: warfare, and brings what might otherwise be regarded as trivialities: the “dating and mating” rituals of young couples into bold dramatic relief. The central dichotomies of male/female, truth/lie generate a palpable tension throughout the play, which can only be resolved with a great revelation of some kind; the triumph of truth over masquerade and uncertainty.

That Beatrice reaches for a masculine solution to the slandering of Hero marks an interesting point in dramatic and thematic development. She remarks “God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place!” After which, she succeeds in making Benedick her proxy in challenging Claudio to a duel.

All of this marks the struggle toward truth; the struggle out of the previous plot complications based in ambiguity, masquerade, and the masculine world being turned upside down. However, it is not martial strength, or soldierly vengeance that ultimately restores the harmony and order to the characters lives; instead, it is due to the intervention Dogberry and his minions, who ultimately reveal John’s plans."In Much Ado about Nothing it is the arrival of Dogberry and his assistants that makes the change." (Evans, 1960, p. 77)

The climax of the play, thus, is not the corporal or physical extraction of vengeance against the bastard John or even the righteous defeat by arms of Claudio by Benedick. Instead, “words of truth triumph over dirty deeds and deceitful tongues” which is to infer that the domestic/conjugal “war” between man and woman is to be best won by a communion of minds and intellect, of emotions and “soul.” In this way, the “truth” of love emerges as both the goal and product of the romantic and amorous rituals, but also as evidence of the harmonious balance between the soldierly and domestic spheres of life.

References

Lukacs, B. A. (2004). Much Ado about Nothing. Shakespeare Bulletin, 22(1), 92+.

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