Actually, a shit ton of Ado About Nothing. A comedy by William Shakespeare.
Out of all the Shakesperean comedies, this is perhaps the most straightforward, the most digestible. But it is no slouch. Comedies being comedies, it is far more lightweight than Shakespeare’s tragedies, yet what separate the tragedies and comedies are merely the endings. King Lear could have been a comedy if Lear and Cordelia had won out, restoring the balance to the kingdom and inversely, The Merchant of Venice would have finished a tragedy if Shylock had prevailed to extract Antonio’s pound of flesh.
There are other plays which might have felt like a tragedy throughout (Macbeth felt dark from the beginning to end) or a comedy from the start (The Gentlemen of Verona perhaps?). Much Ado About Nothing, if it had finished a tragedy may not have been the greatest of the tragedies. But the fact that it ended with the retribution of Claudio and the conciliation of Benedick and Beatrice puts it as one of the more memorable of the bard’s comedies, despite its light-heartedness.
The trouble with weddings
Claudio and Benedick, returning successfully from war paid a visit to Leonato’s house where Claudio fell head over heel’s for the host’s daughter in Hero. Beatrice, who knows Benedick from a distance, couldn’t but chide him with or without his presence. It seems that she’s fostering a secret love for him despite her spite, but we’re not supposed to know that yet. Claudio is pretty sure about his love for Hero however, and asked Don Pedro to be his intermediary to start the conversation with Leonato.
It’s all well and good, the marriage is set but evil is at bay. Don John who’s petty as shit, planned to break up the marriage by having Hero’s maid dress as her and spreading rumours that Hero has not been as innocent as everybody thinks she is. At the day of the wedding, when the supposed to be newlyweds are exchanging the vows, Claudio pulled the gun and humiliated the shit out of Hero calling her all sorts of names in front of her dad. This wasn’t cool obviously, as Hero had a bit of a heart attack and presumed dead while Claudio just fucks off somewhere.
But Hero wasn’t dead but was recovering. The perpetrators of the crime were caught red-handed in the bush talking shit and were arrested by the militia. Claudio realised that he fucked up big time and put his fate under Leonato’s decision who it seems, still wanted his name conjoined to his own family and advised him to marry Hero’s cousin who he had never met before. Claudio agreed and found that he was set up because the said cousin was Hero all along, who was more than willing to forgive Claudio’s hastiness.
The deafening silence of the other women, and the prominent voice of Beatrice
One thing that stands naked was the silence of the women. Shakespeare rarely ever had female leads, but Beatrice almost came close to one. But we cannot ignore the silences of the other female characters in the play, starting with Act I where Leonato’s wife was mentioned but did not say a damn word. She would return a couple of acts later to also make this cameo appearance and really not attribute to much of an opinion to the play.
Yet, it is her daughter which was soon to be married, and if anything, she probably should have profess an opinion on that right? Hero came out of her fucking vagina after all. But I suppose this is the power that women had back in the 16th century. Hero’s marriage to Claudio could also be seen as a strategic benefit to the Leonato family, as Claudio’s roots came from a good vineyard. After Don Pedro had worked his magic to win Leonat’s consent, Hero’s consent was tacit, out of screen and we only know that the wedding is set.
The passive Hero, though the main subject of the lead’s romance, plays only a peripheral role to Beatrice’s more outspoken, more masculine Beatrice. It is indeed this masculinity which gave Beatrice more voice than the meek and submissive Hero (perhaps the most ironic of all names in the Shakespearean lore). Beatrice found her clearest voice in fact, when she speculated what she would have been like if she was a man:
“Is a’ not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man ! what, bear in hand, until they come to take hands, and then with public accusations uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour? O God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place.”
And she then furthers antagonises what the duplicitous nature of man:
“But manhood is melted into curtsies, valour into compliment, and men are only turn’d into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules, that only tells a lie, and swears it: I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.”
Beatrice, from these lines alone, make for one of the strongest marks out of all Shakespeare’s “heroines”. Some would argue that she is only propagating the masculine status quo, but I cannot see this. I think Beatrice is a bit of a badass and provided a voice for early female characters (which of course at the time of the earliest performances were still played by men).
Much Ado About Nothing indeed
Despite all the drama that went past, the story ended the way it was supposed to before a small sidetrack. Benedick and Beatrice also set aside their drama and decided to elope, adding more relevance to the title. Don John was caught in the end, and arguably he was the only person whose story had changed if all these “ado” didn’t happen.
Much Ado About Nothing, like all Shakespearean plays, is drama for the sake of drama. But Shakespeare had done better in other plays, even in other comedies. He had questioned man. What the fuck is man? Why are we so messy? And though he might have asked some questions about the nature of jealousy and the hasty consequences of it, much of it felt that it had been done in his other plays. Sure, we always need to suspend disbelief sometimes to accept the comedy: that Hero would have forgiven Claudio, that a change of nature is possible within an act. Shakespeare pulled harder shit like this before.
No, it’s not terrible. Actually, it is quite enjoyable. But I couldn’t help asking these gaps, like why Don John decided to ruin the wedding even though it seems that he had no romantic affiliation towards Hero. He makes for a poor Iago. There are no jesters here with the worldly wisdom, but we get the wordy Dogberry instead who provided maybe a smile or two but not the belly laughs that someone like Falstaff might.
But this is the tragedy of the Shakespearean comedies (and all his plays) in that they will always be compared to his other works, that his characters would always be compared with characters from his other plays. Or perhaps this is just me as a casual Shakespeare reader.
