What’s it about? We follow the ups and downs of two relationships over the course of a few days. People meddle with Relationship #1 to make it become a romantic relationships. Other people meddle with Relationship #2 to break up the romance. Both are successful…except not really.
What’s it really about? Well…we follow the ups and downs of two relationships over the course of a few days.
No, really, what’s it ACTUALLY about? To me, this is a play about the perils of judging others. It’s a powerful reminder that people are not always who we think they are.
My thoughts:
I chose to write about this play this week because it is the day that my Master’s thesis is due and I could not resist the slightly hilarious spin that put on the title: Much Ado About Nothing. Can we take a moment to just appreciate that?
Okay, moving on.
This play is unique in a few ways. One of the things that interests me is its construction and how that is reflected in its title. It seems a bit ridiculous to have a play with a title that tells the audience, in essence, that all the action in the show adds up to “nothing.” The title tells us that we’re going to spend 2-3 hours watching events unfold and, in the end, those events are not really going to matter. This connotation seems appropriate for this play, which is one of Shakespeare’s darker comedies. (I think possibly only Merchant of Venice and All’s Well That Ends Well are the only two of his comedies that are darker. Correct me if I’m wrong!)
The structure of the play is very interesting, too. It is very similar to Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies up through the first wedding scene, which would have been the climax and finale of most other of the Bard’s comedies. But instead, the neat ends that are waiting to be tied up start to unravel. In that way, we almost get two plays in Much Ado About Nothing. One that is tidy and sweet, and one that feels more complex and ambiguous.
In some regards, this play actually reminds me a lot of Love’s Labour Lost, although I can’t quite articulate why. Perhaps it is simply the extent to which they show that life is complicated and fickle–and even when everything is great…it’s not actually so great.
This feels like a very jaded view/reading of these plays, but it’s what stands out to me right now (although reading these plays a few months from now may leave me with a very different impression). In fact, I would go so far as to say that this play helped me realize that Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories are actually, in some ways, more optimistic and full of joy than his comedies are. This is definitely something I am going to be thinking about as I continue my quest of reading all of Shakespeare’s plays this year.
For now, despite its surprising darkness, I have to say that Much Ado About Nothing is still an absolute delight. It contains one of my all-time favorite scenes (”I do spy some marks of love in her…”) and Beatrice and Benedick are very hard to beat as characters. They are thoroughly charming and witty. They are by far and away the best thing about Much Ado–which is fitting. If you have not seen Kenneth Branagh’s film version of this play, you are missing out. And if you’re looking for a good place to start with Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing is one obvious and excellent choice.
I would actually say that Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s darkest comedy, though that may be a discussion for another time.
That’s a good point! Romeo and Juliet REALLY blurs the lines of tragedy and comedy. There are so many surprising comedic moments.
I have a theory that Romeo and Juliet was actually an experiment into what happens to a comedy when the usual “deus ex machina” solution doesn’t happen. Up until Tybalt kills Mercurio, R&J is structured in precisely the same way as every other standard comedy, complete with sex jokes and fool (the nurse) – dysfunctional community, young lovers, parental blocking figures, clever ruse to protect the protagonists.
In the standard comedy, the clever ruse works, even though we all know it’s kind of dumb (tell me again why they think hiding Hero in a closet and telling everyone she’s dead is a good idea?). But in R&J everything completely goes to heck, because of course it will – what was the friar thinking? a sleeping potion? really?
And the experiment is, I think, whether one can write a tragedy that’s a tragedy about a community, instead of a tragedy about an individual. How do you do that? You adapt a genre that is usually about communities – comedy – and you make it hurt. Brilliant.
That is brilliant. Thanks so much for sharing that!
It makes me think of how Much Ado compares to Othello. He wrote Much Ado first and then it’s almost like he said (to use your idea), “How do I take that same story and now make it hurt?” Same kind of idea. Purposely really pushing and flipping those boundaries of genre.
What do you think?
Oh, I like that idea. It’s like he said, “ok, so Hero and Claudio get married, but Claudio is still a bit of a dink – he still has no clue at all what it means to be in love with a person instead of an Image-of-Woman, so what happens after they get married?” As soon as he figures out she has to actually go to the bathroom and take a bath, his image of her will be totoally shattered. It’s recipe for an very unhappy marriage, if you ask me.
Butting in to say that I love this commentary. I always thought Claudio would be kind of a shitty husband for that reason – he views Hero as a Woman and not a person. In a college Shakespeare class I took, we debated whether or not Claudio was really the “lion in sheep’s clothing” that he’s branded as. My thought was that if he was such a lion he would be able to ask a girl out by himself! I give their marriage a year tops.
In a weird way, Benedick and Beatrice actually have a much healthier relationship than Hero and Claudio, IMHO.Absolutely they have the better relationship. They actually talk to one another. They have similar temperaments. They have a history, and we get lots of hints that they have been attracted to each other in the past (In act 2, Don Pedro says to Beatrice “Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.” And she replies, “Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave / him use for it, a double heart for his single one: / marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, / therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.”).
I’m convinced that B&B will have lots of arguments with lots of hot, frantic make-up sex, while Claudio will be cheating Hero within 6 months and Hero willl become another Lady Capulet who lives vicariously through her daughter.
I’m imagining every time Claudio screws up Beatrice gets a call like, “Hey it’s Hero. Claudio is being dumb so I need to fake my own death again. Can we make that happen?”
So true! Benedick and Beatrice definitely have the healthier relationship. Like both of you said, they will argue a lot, but they have an understanding of each other as actual people. Not as some ideal. Claudio has always kind of bothered me.
