Themes Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Ideal of Social Grace
The
characters’ dense, colorful manner of speaking represents the ideal that
Renaissance courtiers strove for in their social interactions. The play’s
language is heavily laden with metaphor and ornamented by rhetoric. Benedick,
Claudio, and Don Pedro all produce the kind of witty banter that courtiers used
to attract attention and approval in noble households. Courtiers were expected
to speak in highly contrived language but to make their clever performances
seem effortless. The most famous model for this kind of behavior is Baldassare
Castiglione’s sixteenth-century manual The Courtier, translated
into English by Thomas Hoby in 1561.
According to this work, the ideal courtier masks his effort and appears to
project elegance and natural grace by means of what Castiglione calls sprezzatura, the illusion of effortlessness.
Benedick and his companions try to display their polished social graces both in
their behavior and in their speech.
The play
pokes fun at the fanciful language of love that courtiers used. When Claudio
falls in love, he tries to be the perfect courtier by using intricate language.
As Benedick notes: “His words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many
strange dishes” (II.iii.18–19). Although the
young gallants in the play seem casual in their displays of wit, they
constantly struggle to maintain their social positions. Benedick and Claudio
must constantly strive to remain in Don Pedro’s favor. When Claudio silently
agrees to let Don Pedro take his place to woo Hero, it is quite possible that
he does so not because he is too shy to woo the woman himself, but because he
must accede to Don Pedro’s authority in order to stay in Don Pedro’s good
favor. When Claudio believes that Don Pedro has deceived him and wooed Hero not
for Claudio but for himself, he cannot drop his polite civility, even though he
is full of despair. Beatrice jokes that Claudio is “civil as an orange,”
punning on the Seville orange, a bitter fruit (II.i.256). Claudio remains polite and nearly silent even though
he is upset, telling Benedick of Don Pedro and Hero: “I wish him joy of her”
(II.i.170). Clearly, Claudio
chooses his obedience to Don Pedro over his love for Hero.
Claudio
displays social grace, but his strict adherence to social propriety eventually
leads him into a trap. He abandons Hero at the wedding because Don John leads
him to believe that she is unchaste (marriage to an unchaste woman would be
socially unacceptable). But Don John’s plan to unseat Claudio does not succeed,
of course, as Claudio remains Don Pedro’s favorite, and it is Hero who has to
suffer until her good reputation is restored.
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 Don John, 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, 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,
Leonato 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
Leonato’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 (V.iv.53). 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 Leonato’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.
The Importance of Honor
The aborted
wedding ceremony, in which Claudio rejects Hero, accusing her of infidelity and
violated chastity and publicly shaming her in front of her father, 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 Leonato rashly believes Claudio’s
shaming of Hero at the wedding ceremony, he tries to obliterate her entirely:
“Hence from her, let her die” (IV.i.153).
Furthermore, he speaks of her loss of honor as an indelible stain from which he
cannot distance himself, no matter how hard he 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.
Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices
that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Public Shaming
Even though
Hero is ultimately vindicated, her public shaming at the wedding ceremony is
too terrible to be ignored. In a sense, this kind of humiliation incurs more
damage to her honor and her family name than would an act of unchaste
behavior—an transgression she never commits. The language that both Claudio and
Leonato use to shame Hero is extremely strong. To Claudio she is a “rotten
orange” (IV.i.30), and to Leonato a
rotting carcass that cannot be preserved: “the wide sea / Hath . . . / . . .
salt too little which may season give / To her foul tainted flesh!” (IV.i.139–142).
Shame is
also what Don John hopes will cause Claudio to lose his place as Don Pedro’s
favorite: once Claudio is discovered to be engaged to a loose woman, Don John
believes that Don Pedro will reject Claudio as he rejected Don John long ago.
Shame is a form of social punishment closely connected to loss of honor. A
product of an illegitimate sexual coupling himself, Don John has grown up
constantly reminded of his own social shame, and he will do anything to right
the balance. Ironically, in the end Don John is shamed and threatened with
torture to punish him for deceiving the company. Clearly, he will never gain a
good place in courtly society.
Noting
In
Shakespeare’s time, the “Nothing” of the title would have been pronounced
“Noting.” Thus, the play’s title could read: “Much Ado About Noting.” Indeed,
many of the players participate in the actions of observing, listening, and
writing, or noting. In order for a plot hinged on instances of deceit to work,
the characters must note one another constantly. When the women manipulate
Beatrice into believing that Benedick adores her, they conceal themselves in
the orchard so that Beatrice can better note their conversation. Since they
know that Beatrice loves to eavesdrop, they are sure that their plot will
succeed: “look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs / Close by the ground to hear
our conference,” notes Hero (III.i.24–25).
Each line the women speak is a carefully placed note for Beatrice to take up
and ponder; the same is true of the scheme to convince Benedick of Beatrice’s
passion.
Don John’s
plot to undo Claudio also hinges on noting: in order for Claudio to believe
that Hero is unchaste and unfaithful, he must be brought to her window to
witness, or note, Margaret (whom he takes to be Hero) bidding farewell to
Borachio in the semidarkness. Dogberry, Verges, and the rest of the comical
night watch discover and arrest Don John because, although ill-equipped to
express themselves linguistically, they overhear talk of the Margaret--Borachio
staging. Despite their verbal deficiencies, they manage to capture Don John and
bring him to Leonato, after having had the sexton (a church official) “note”
the occurrences of the evening in writing. In the end, noting, in the sense of
writing, unites Beatrice and Benedick for good: Hero and Claudio reveal love
sonnets written by Beatrice and Benedick, textual evidence that notes and
proves their love for one another.
Entertainment
From the
witty yet plaintive song that Balthasar sings about the deceitfulness of men to
the masked ball and the music and dancing at the end of the play, the
characters of Much Ado About Nothing spend
much of their time engaging in elaborate spectacles and entertainments. The
play’s title encapsulates the sentiment of effervescent and light court
entertainment: the two hours’ traffic onstage will be entertaining, comic, and
absorbing. The characters who merrily spar and fall in love in the beginning
will, of course, end up together in the conclusion. Beatrice compares courtship
and marriage to delightful court dances: “wooing, wedding and repenting is as a
Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace” (II.i.60–61).
By including a masquerade as court entertainment in the middle, as well as two
songs and a dance at the end, the play presents itself as sheer entertainment,
conscious of its own theatricality.
Counterfeiting
The idea of
counterfeiting, in the sense of presenting a false face to the world, appears
frequently throughout the play. A particularly rich and complex example of
counterfeiting occurs as Leonato, Claudio, and Don Pedro pretend that Beatrice
is head over heels in love with Benedick so that the eavesdropping Benedick
will overhear it and believe it. Luring Benedick into this trap, Leonato
ironically dismisses the idea that perhaps Beatrice counterfeits her desire for
Benedick, as he and the others counterfeit this love themselves: “O God!
Counterfeit? There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of
passion as she discovers it” (II.iii.98–99).
Another,
more serious reference to counterfeiting occurs at the wedding ceremony, as
Claudio rhetorically paints a picture of Hero as a perfect counterfeit of
innocence, unchaste and impure beneath a seemingly unblemished surface:
She’s
but the sign and semblance of her honour.
Behold how like a maid she blushes here!
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
(IV.i.31–34)
Hero’s
supposed counterfeiting is of a grave nature, as it threatens her womanly
reputation. It is not her emotions that are being misconstrued, as with
Beatrice, but rather her character and integrity.
Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures,
and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Taming of Wild Animals
The play is
peppered with metaphors involving the taming of wild animals. In the case of
the courtship between Beatrice and Benedick, the symbol of a tamed savage
animal represents the social taming that must occur for both wild souls to be
ready to submit themselves to the shackles of love and marriage. Beatrice’s vow
to submit to Benedick’s love by “[t]aming my wild heart to thy loving hand”
makes use of terms from falconry, suggesting that Benedick is to become
Beatrice’s master (III.i.113). In the opening
act, Claudio and Don Pedro tease Benedick about his aversion to marriage,
comparing him to a wild animal. Don Pedro quotes a common adage, “‘In time the
savage bull doth bear the yoke,’” meaning that in time even the savage Benedick
will surrender to the taming of love and marriage (I.i.213). Benedick mocks this sentiment, professing that he
will never submit to the will of a woman. At the very end, when Benedick and
Beatrice agree to marry, Claudio pokes fun at Benedick’s mortified countenance,
suggesting that Benedick is reluctant to marry because he remembers the
allusion to tamed bulls:
Tush,
fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold,
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee
As once Europa did at lusty Jove
When he would play the noble beast in love.
(V.iv.44–47)
Claudio
changes Benedick from a laboring farm animal, a bull straining under a yoke, to
a wild god, empowered by his bestial form to take sexual possession of his
lady. While the bull of marriage is the sadly yoked, formerly savage creature,
the bull that Claudio refers to comes from the classical myth in which Zeus
took the form of a bull and carried off the mortal woman Europa. This second
bull is supposed to represent the other side of the coin: the bull of bestial
male sexuality.
Throughout
the play, images of war frequently symbolize verbal arguments and
confrontations. At the beginning of the play, Leonato relates to the other
characters that there is a “merry war” between Beatrice and Benedick: “They
never meet but 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. Leonato 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).
Hero’s Death
Claudio’s
powerful words accusing Hero of unchaste and disloyal acts cause her to fall
down in apparent lifelessness. Leonato accentuates the direness of Hero’s
state, pushing her further into seeming death by renouncing her, “Hence from
her, let her die” (IV.i.153). When Friar
Francis, Hero, and Beatrice convince Leonato of his daughter’s innocence, they
maintain that she really has died, in order to punish Claudio and give Hero a
respectable amount of time to regain her honor, which, although not lost, has
been publicly savaged. Claudio performs all the actions of mourning Hero,
paying a choir to sing a dirge at her tomb. In a symbolic sense, Hero has died,
since, although she is pure, Claudio’s damning accusation has permanently
besmirched her name. She must symbolically die and be reborn pure again in
order for Claudio to marry her a second time. Hero’s false death is less a
charade aimed to induce remorse in Claudio than it is a social ritual designed
to cleanse her name and person of infamy.
