Much Ado About Nothing Plot Summary

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare A Study Guide prepared by Jason Chimonides Much Ado About Nothing is generally considered one of Shakespeare’s best comedies, because it combines elements of robust hilarity with more serious meditations on honor, shame, and the nature of romantic love. It was probably written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. Like As You Like It and Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, though interspersed with darker concerns, is a joyful comedy that ends with multiple marriages and no deaths. Although one of the features of Shakespearean comedy is that no one dies, it would be a mistake to assume that death or danger is absent from this genre. Often, Shakespeare’s comedies are more accepting of death than his tragedies, treating death as part of the natural cycle of life. Much Ado About Nothing is no exception, and Hero’s pretending to die of humiliation makes death more vividly present here than in any of Shakespeare’s other comedies. The crisis that lies at the center of Much Ado About Nothing troubles many readers and viewers since the play creates a very strong sense of anger, betrayal, hatred, grief, and despair among the main characters. Although the crisis ends quickly, Much Ado About Nothing sometimes seems only steps away from becoming a tragedy. Indeed, the line between tragedy and comedy is sometimes fuzzy. Many critics have noted that the plot of Much Ado About Nothing shares significant elements with that of Romeo and Juliet. Much Ado About Nothing also shares many features with Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale, which most critics assign to a different genre—that of problem comedy or romance. Like Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, Hero stages a false death only to come back to life once her beloved has repented. Although the young lovers Hero and Claudio provide the main impetus for the plot, the courtship between the older, wiser lovers Benedick and Beatrice is what makes Much Ado About Nothing so memorable. Benedick and Beatrice argue with delightful wit, and Shakespeare develops their journey from antagonism to sincere love and affection with a rich sense of humor and compassion. Since Beatrice and Benedick have a history behind them that adds weight to their relationship, they are older and more mature than the typical lovers in Shakespeare’s comedies, though their unhealthy competitiveness reveals them to be childish novices when it comes to love. Plot Summary Note: **Do be advised that Theatre Jacksonville’s production of “Much Ado” has taken some creative liberties in terms of cross gender casting as well as the exclusion and /or synthesis of some of the play’s smaller characters. The descriptions below pertain to our very unique production / adaptation.** Act I Leonata, a kindly, respectable and widowed noblewoman, lives in the idyllic Italian town of Messina. Having inherited the Governorship of the town from her deceased husband, Leonata shares her house with her lovely young daughter, Hero and her playful, clever niece, Beatrice. As the play begins, Leonata prepares to welcome some friends home from a war. The friends include Don 1 Pedro, a prince who is a close friend of Leonata, and two fellow soldiers: Claudio, a well-respected young nobleman, and Benedick, a clever man who constantly makes witty jokes, often at the expense of his friends. Dona Joan, Don Pedro’s illegitimate sister, is part of the crowd as well. Dona Joan is sullen and bitter, and makes trouble for the others. When the soldiers arrive at Leonata’s home, Claudio quickly falls in love with Hero. Meanwhile, Benedick and Beatrice resume the war of witty insults that they have carried on with each other in the past. Claudio and Hero pledge their love to one another and decide to be married. To pass the time in the week before the wedding, the lovers and their friends decide to play a game. They want to get Beatrice and Benedick, who are clearly meant for each other, to stop arguing and fall in love. Their tricks prove successful, and Beatrice and Benedick soon fall secretly in love with each other. But Dona Joan has decided to disrupt everyone’s happiness. She has her companion Borachio make love to Margaret, Hero’s serving woman, at Hero’s window in the darkness of the night, and he brings Don Pedro and Claudio to watch. Act II Believing that he has seen Hero being unfaithful to him, the enraged Claudio humiliates Hero by suddenly accusing her of lechery on the day of their wedding and abandoning her at the altar. Hero’s stricken family members decide to pretend that she died suddenly of shock and grief and to hide her away while they wait for the truth about her innocence to come to light. In the aftermath of the rejection, Benedick and Beatrice finally confess their love to one another. Fortunately, the night watchmen overhear Borachio bragging about his crime. Dogberry and Verges, the heads of the local police, ultimately arrest both Borachio and Conrad, another of Dona Joan’s followers. Everyone learns that Hero is really innocent, and Claudio, who believes she is dead, grieves for her. Leonata tells Claudio that, as punishment, he wants Claudio to tell everybody in the city how innocent Hero was. He also wants Claudio to marry Leonata’s “niece”—a girl who, he says, looks much like the dead Hero. Claudio goes to church with the others, preparing to marry the mysterious, masked woman he thinks is Hero’s cousin. When Hero reveals herself as the masked woman, Claudio is overwhelmed with joy. Benedick then asks Beatrice if she will marry him, and after some arguing they agree. The joyful lovers all have a merry dance before they celebrate their double wedding. Themes, Motifs & Symbols Deception as a Means to an End The plot of Much Ado About Nothing is based upon deliberate deceptions, some malevolent and others benign. The duping of Claudio and Don Pedro results in Hero’s disgrace, while the ruse of her death prepares the way for her redemption and reconciliation with Claudio. In a more lighthearted vein, Beatrice and Benedick are fooled into thinking that each loves the other, and they actually do fall in love as a result. Much Ado About Nothing shows that deceit is not inherently evil, but something that can be used as a means to good or bad ends. In the play, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between good and bad deception. When Claudio announces his desire to woo Hero, Don Pedro takes it upon himself to woo her for Claudio. Then, at the instigation of Dona Joan, Claudio begins to mistrust Don Pedro, thinking he has been deceived. Just as the play’s audience comes to believe, temporarily, in the illusions of the theater, so the play’s characters become caught up in the illusions that they help to create for one another. Benedick and Beatrice flirt caustically at the masked ball, 2 each possibly aware of the other’s presence yet pretending not to know the person hiding behind the mask. Likewise, when Claudio has shamed and rejected Hero, Leonata and his household “publish” that Hero has died in order to punish Claudio for his mistake. When Claudio returns, penitent, to accept the hand of Leonata’s “niece” (actually Hero), a group of masked women enters and Claudio must wed blindly. The masking of Hero and the other women reveals that the social institution of marriage has little to do with love. When Claudio flounders and asks, “Which is the lady I must seize upon?” he is ready and willing to commit the rest of his life to one of a group of unknowns. His willingness stems not only from his guilt about slandering an innocent woman but also from the fact that he may care more about rising in Leonata’s favor than in marrying for love. In the end, deceit is neither purely positive nor purely negative: it is a means to an end, a way to create an illusion that helps one succeed socially. Study Questions: To convey his character’s acts of deception and deceit on stage Shakespeare uses dramatic methods that may strike us today as a bit antiquated, such as the “aside,” in which a character speaking their internal thoughts in direct address to the audience. Another such example might be the staging of private conferences in which the character who is the object of the deceit seems to be in clear view of their deceivers. (Benedick over hearing that Beatrice is “madly in love with him” as he hangs from the trellis.) A) What moments of deception struck you most in the production and why? B) Now contrast this type of dramatic device with modern cinema. How might a contemporary film organize “deception as a means to an end?” What cinematic techniques would be employed to captivate the viewer? The Importance of Honor: The aborted wedding ceremony, in which Claudio rejects Hero, accusing her of infidelity and violated chastity and publicly shaming her, is the climax of the play. In Shakespeare’s time, a woman’s honor was based upon her virginity and chaste behavior. For a woman to lose her honor by having sexual relations before marriage meant that she would lose all social standing, a disaster from which she could never recover. Moreover, this loss of honor would poison the woman’s whole family. Thus, when Leonata rashly believes Claudio’s shaming of Hero at the wedding ceremony, she tries to obliterate her entirely: “Hence from her, let her die” (IV.i.153). Furthermore, she speaks of her loss of honor as an indelible stain from which she cannot distance herself, no matter how hard she tries: “O she is fallen / Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea / Hath drops too few to wash her clean again” (IV.i.138–140). For women in that era, the loss of honor was a form of annihilation. For men, on the other hand, honor depended on male friendship alliances and was more military in nature. Unlike a woman, a man could defend his honor, and that of his family, by fighting in a battle or a duel. Beatrice urges Benedick to avenge Hero’s honor by dueling to the death with Claudio. As a woman, Hero cannot seize back her honor, but Benedick can do it for her via physical combat. Study Questions: Within our society today, it may seem very difficult to imagine such an extreme and brutal policy as public shaming. Save violent crime, what could a 15-year-old girl possibly do to invoke such drastic measures?! It is only until we dig deeper and look squarely at our contemporary cravings for status, prestige, and honor: the protection of it, and the preservation of it at all costs, that we begin to see similarities between the Elizabethan era and today. What is timeless about the play is that 3 Shakespeare is criticizing the blind, arrogant pursuit of honor, and as a cautionary tale, unveils for us its darker side. A) If “Much Ado” were to be modernized into a contemporary film [such as the recent: “10 Things I Hate About You” (The Taming of the Shrew) or “She’s The Man” (Twelfth Night)], to translate / interpret the play properly, one would first need to do some thinking about what constitutes “Honor” in the 21st century. What is a contemporary analog for loss of honor in a teenage girl that would have the same devastating social effects on her and her family? What event could compel this type of drama today? B) Imagine this event now as a cinematic scene and create a story outline for how that scene would unfold. War Throughout the play, images of war frequently symbolize verbal arguments and confrontations. At the beginning of the play, Leonata relates to the other characters that there is a “merry war” between Beatrice and Benedick: “Whenever they meet there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (I.i.50–51). Beatrice carries on this martial imagery, describing how, when she won the last duel with Benedick, “four of his five wits went halting off” (I.i.53). When Benedick arrives, their witty exchange resembles the blows and parries of a well-executed fencing match. Leonata accuses Claudio of killing Hero with words: “Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart” (V.i.68). Later in the same scene, Benedick presents Claudio with a violent verbal challenge: to duel to the death over Hero’s honor. When Borachio confesses to staging the loss of Hero’s innocence, Don Pedro describes this spoken evidence as a sword that tears through Claudio’s heart: “Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?” (V.i.227), and Claudio responds that he has already figuratively committed suicide upon hearing these words: “I have drunk poison whiles he uttered it” (V.i.228). Study Questions: Shakespeare’s plays are filled with exciting battles of wit in which words become the primary weapon of choice, not unlike today’s “hip hop battle rapping.” If you’re familiar with this art form (as in MTV’s “Wild n’ Out”) you know that these “skirmishes of wit” are not limited to just the actor’s voice, rather it is a whole body affair! A) In watching the performance how did the director and actors bring these contests of will to life? What moments of verbal dueling flashed for you? How were they staged? How did the characters behave in these moments? How was this behavior distinctive from modern “battles of wit?” Note: ***We are setting our production of Much Ado About Nothing in the period in which it was written (the late 1590’s) here is a rather exhaustive list of cultural details from that period that should enrich your understanding and enjoyment of the play!*** Fun Facts from the Elizabethan Era Filling the Time: • Gossip, of course. But, like flirting, you can do that anywhere, especially while doing almost any of the following. 4 • • Tennis is popular. It's played indoors or in a high-walled outdoor court. (The grass court comes into use in 1591.) Other sports include bowls (lawn bowling) for which Henry VIII set up an alley at White Hall; shuttlecock (like badminton), archery, billiards, hunting and riding, wrestling, and political maneuvering. Attend the theatre. Remember, this is in the afternoons, since there is no artificial lighting. Young gentlemen of appearance can, for an extra fee, have their chairs put right up on the stage. There is a different play every day; perhaps 4-6 plays in a repertory season. There are no playhouses until 1576; the performance is very likely in an inn yard. Ladies attend, but are usually veiled or in masks. Embroider. Like gossip, you can do this nearly anywhere. Ladies may gather in the garden, or in the Queen's Privy Chamber, or some other well-lighted room to do this. You might do it while watching a friend take a lute lesson or sit for a portrait. Play cards, chess, tables (backgammon) or draughts (i.e., checkers, pronounced DRAFTS). Card games include Primero, Taroccho or Trumps, and many others. Sing. Like dancing, this has to be practiced, especially since some madrigals are quite difficult. The English are famous as sight-readers. Visit your tailor. This can take hours, especially if you take along some friends. Sit for a portrait. The painter will make several visits, or you may visit him. You approve his sketches and his progress, and promise to pay the bill. A miniature by Hillyard will set you back about £40. Visit the bear pit. Bear baiting consists of letting a pack of crazed hounds loose on a chained bear, and watching from a safe distance while the beasts fight. Very popular. Almost as much fun as a public hanging. Even the Queen thinks this is great fun. • • • • • • • • • • • What We Eat: • • • • • Elizabethan cookery is generally sweeter than today's; meats are often cooked with fruits, producing a mix of sweet and savory. Some medical texts advise against eating raw vegetables as engendering wind (gas) or evil humors. The potato is still a novelty. It is not yet a crop in Ireland, nor is it found in our stews. The turnip, which has that honor, is followed closely by the parsnip. Tomatoes are considered doubtful, if not actually poisonous, although they have already appeared in some southern European cooking. Chocolate has not yet come in, except for medicinal purposes. The Swiss have not yet added milk and sugar to it (and neither has anyone else). If you have ever tasted chocolate (which is very doubtful) it was a thin and bitter drink. Almond is the most common flavoring in sweets, followed by cinnamon, clove, and saunders (sandalwood). Coffee and tea are period in the strictest sense, but not in use in Europe, except medicinally, and even then are very, very rare. 5 • • • Sugar is available, but is rather more expensive than honey, since it has to be imported. Grown as sugarcane, it comes as a 3- or 4-pound square or conical loaf, and has to be grated or pounded into useful form. Games: • • • • Drinking may be done in taverns, ale houses, or tippling houses. Gambling is gaming (game-ing). Playing with dice is dicing. A good dice game is Hazard, rather like Craps. The word for backgammon is tables. The "acey-deucy" version is called the Corsican game. You can lose a good deal of money in a tabling den. Domestic Details: • • • In great houses the whole household eats in the Hall or Great Hall. Most of the male servants sleep there on palettes, which are taken up during the day. The family sits at the high table, and everyone else at trestle tables (sort of a board on saw horses) in order of household precedence. Privacy in general is rare and not much valued. Everybody shares a room and probably a bed. A household steward's job is not so much to see that all the staff or guests have rooms, but that "gentlemen should abide with other gentlemen, and the yeomen with yeomen." Servants are not democrats. In general, they approve of the social order, just like their masters. And they intend to take advantage of it. The good servant, like a good waiter, is attentive. The best servant is a little bit psychic. He is there when you need him but never hovers. He finds some virtuous occupation when you disappear. He is neither lewd nor vain, but maintains a respectable countenance, to the credit of his master. He is modest but never craven, humble but never base, candid but not insolent. The good master is proud but never despotic. He is patient, governing his household with fatherly care. He does not twist your sincere desire to serve into a sincere desire to punch him out. He lets you do your job. He maintains his superior station, as God has given it him, by honorable behavior, not by argument. • • • Weddings and Betrothals: • • • • At a betrothal, the two people join hands. He gives her a ring to be worn on the right hand. It changes to the left at the wedding. They seal the contract with a kiss. If he has no good reason to break the marriage contract, he has to give back (double!) any tokens received, usually small gifts. Betrothals can be terminated by mutual consent. In certain circumstances, one can withdraw unilaterally if the other is: guilty of heresy, apostasy, or infidelity, seriously disfigured, proved to be previously (and still) married, guilty of enmity or wickedness or drunkenness. Or if a long separation has occurred between them. It is luckiest to have the wedding before noon. With parental permission, boys are legal to marry at 14, girls at 12, though it is not recommended so early. One comes of age at 21. 6 • • • • • • • It is generally considered foolish to marry for love, although love may occur in marriage. Children are the property of their parents, and give them the respect a servant gives his master. Or else. Wives are the property of their husbands. Some women more independent than others. However, every woman expects to be married, and to depend on her male relatives throughout her life. In general, every man wants to marry too, or at least acknowledges that he must. If he is not noble, he must be married to become the legal head of a household and eligible to hold public or ecclesiastical office and other positions of civic responsibility. Divorce is actually more difficult to obtain in the Protestant regime than in the Catholic, even with cause. Since you can't apply to the Pope anymore, you have to get an Act of Parliament! That's a lot more than most people can buy. A bride is not expected to wear a white dress. It can be any fashionable or current color and cut. White as a color for brides does not become entrenched until the 19th century. The wedding is always a religious ceremony, conducted by a minister. No getting married in the Registry, or at a Justice of the Peace, and no running off to Gretna Green. The words of the English service are essentially the same then and now. (See The Book of Common Prayer of 1559.) For noble and other propertied families, the most significant part of a wedding day is the signing of the wedding contract, which sets out the terms of dowry, jointure, and other elements for the financial security of both parties. • • • • Honor and Dueling: • Is nowhere described better than by Lawrence Stone in Crisis of the Aristocracy: “Tempers were short and weapons easy to hand. The basic characteristics of the nobility, like those of the poor, were ferocity and childishness and lack of self control.” Calling someone a liar, or otherwise impugning his honor, his courage, or his name is a challenge in itself. Dueling is illegal, so you take the fight out of the way, and sometimes out of the country (any warzone will do). Usually this is single combat, unlike the group duels of France, which lead to longstanding feuds. • • Dancing / Masques: • The masque was a popular entertainment in the Elizabethan and Stuart courts. Masques began as costume balls designed around a theme; costumed guests would perform a dance before the host and company, after which they would invite the spectators to join them. Typically, masques were occasions for reveling during festive events such as weddings, or Christmas. The masque usually began after supper, continuing into the night and sometimes into early morning. After the performance, the reveling continued with a banquet, and guests were often known to become quite unruly--in 1605 one banquet "was so furiously assaulted that down went tables and tressles before one bit was touched." Both Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth were fond of dancing and the masque: Henry actually wrote music celebrating good times at court*. 7 • • Cosmology: • • In the Renaissance, educated people did not believe the Earth was flat, but that it was in the center of a spherical universe. A Greek-Egyptian of the second century A. D. was largely responsible for the beliefs on the nature of the cosmos, which those in the Renaissance inherited. Ptolemy collected and organized the beliefs of earlier writers, and devised an elaborate model of the universe in order to explain the movements of the sun and planets. To us it may seem a cozy place with the earth comfortably nestled in the center of a series of spheres. The teaching of the Church, however, was that since the Fall that part of the cosmos that was at the center -- within the sphere of the moon -- had been polluted by human sin, and was a kind of sinkhole or cesspool for all that was evil. Almost like hell. The enclosed earth, far from being a comforting shelter from the infinite, was a prison. • Sources and further reading: http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/intro/introsubj.html (Shakespeare Homepage) http://renaissance.dm.net/compendium/home.html (Life in Elizabethan England) http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/muchado/ (Much Ado SPARKNOTES Website) 8