Post 3: "Much Ado About Nothing" - Nerina Franguelli

After talking about it in class, I think that the important themes in the play are: marriage and property, love, virginity and the idea of Appearances vs. Reality that can be perceived throughout the play.
Marriage:
At that time, marriage brought two families and their property together and with this combined wealth came greater influence over public events. The grander the family, the more direct influence parents expected to have over their children’s choice of marriage partner. In this play we can see that when Hero is thought to have “shamed” the family Leonato treats her with brutality and wish her dead.
Furthermore, different views over marriage are presented, e.g:
- Benedick didn’t believe in long happy marriages, or in women being faithful and he define it as a kind of prison:
“In faith, hath not the world one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?”
“An thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it – and sigh away Sundays.”
- As regards Beatrice, everyone wanted her to get married. They thought that it would calm her down because her behaviour was not suitable for a lady. But like Benedick, she didn’t want to marry, perhaps because she thought it would be difficult to her since she is an orphan.
Leonato: “By my troth, niece, thou will never get thee a husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.”

Love:
A distinction can be made between the different couples: I think that the most believable couple is that of Beatrice and Benedick since both characters are more developed than those of Hero and Claudio and because we see them express their opinion in different situations. Love doesn’t seem to exist between Hero and Claudio since they seem to accept facts or other peoples’ ideas without complaining and they change their mind easily. Besides, we can see Claudio interested in the matter that Hero is an only-child.
Claudio: “Hath Leonato any son, my lord?”

Virginity: at that time, “an unchaste woman lost her value on the marriage market; and if already married, she might corrupt the pure line of descent by insinuating a bastard into it. Consequently a young virgin was counselled to live before her marriage in an utterly chaste manner.”
Margaret Loftus Ranald, Shakespeare and His Social Context, 1986.

Appearances vs. Reality: this idea is well developed in this play since the contrast can be noticed in a number of situations, e.g: in the use of masks at the ball, when Hero is thought to be dead, etc.

As explained in class and in the post of Alejadra Simoncelli the title has two interpretation: the literal one, that implies that a great fuss ("much ado") is made of something which is insignificant ("nothing"), pointing as an example the situation of the wedding when Hero is thought to be unfaithful; and other interpretation that arises if we consider the play on the words “nothing” and “noting”, which, in Shakespeare’s day, were pronounced as homophones. Besides, I´ve found that “nothing” was Elizabethan slang for "vagina", evidently derived from the pun of a woman having "nothing" between her legs.

What surprised me about this play is the way it is written and the use of different devices that aimed at different social classes: “malapropisms” entertained groundlings, whereas “puns” entertained the nobility.

The play made me think about how easily we are sometimes persuaded in certain situations by other peoples´ words and made me remember that we have to think twice before believing what other people say or before basing our acts in relation to things that we´ve been told of.

If I had the chance to ask William Shakespeare a question I would ask him why is the character of Hero not much developed. I would like to know more about her and her thoughts.