Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare, 1598-1599 ★★★★

Blinded by Love

There is no such thing as a B-plot in a Shakespeare play.

In Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom’s antics with the fairies is better remembered than those Athenian kids falling in and out of love with each other. In The Merchant Of Venice, the hatred both generated by and from Shylock makes you forget the other part that’s a comedy.

Much Ado About Nothing centers on young lovers Hero and Claudio, and whether their new love can survive the cruel suspicions and designs of others. But ask people who have seen the play what it’s about, and they recall the pair bickering on the sidelines: Beatrice and Benedick.

They are the B-plot that dominates Much Ado, makes it a true comedy and drives home the lesson at the play’s core about the falsity of appearances and the folly of thinking yourself the captain of your soul:

BEATRICE

But for which of my
good parts did you first suffer love for me?

BENEDICK

‘Suffer love!’ A good epithet! I do suffer love
indeed, for I love thee against my will. [Act V, scene ii, lines 60-63]

"Is it possible disdain should die if it have such food to feed it as Signor Benedick?" [I, i, 14-15] Eve Best as Beatrice spars with Charles Edwards' Benedick in a 2011 Shakespeare Globe Theatre production.
Photo by Manuel Harlan from https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/blogs-and-features/2022/04/20/much-ado-about-nothing-a-battle-of-wits/

That exchange takes place late in the play, by which time their battle of wills has mellowed. For most of the play, even admitting a possible attraction is beyond their egos to allow. This makes them fun.

Would Much Ado have been better if Shakespeare had given us more of Beatrice and Benedick? As much as they drive the energy of the play, I think not; Shakespeare was after more than laughs by this point in his career; he wanted to get across the horrible, sweet confusion implicit in the rites of romance, how we can be distended or even destroyed when we lock our fate so closely to another.

The play starts with one couple already matched. Rich noble Claudio is a callow youth, just back from war and harboring a keen interest for the governor of Messina’s daughter, Hero, whose return of affections are never in doubt. Everyone agrees the couple will be fantastic together.

Not quite everyone. Don John, brother and recently-defeated foe of Claudio’s lord, Don Pedro, conspires with some associates to spread malicious gossip about Hero being promiscuous. This sets up a terrible confrontation at the wedding altar, in which a misled Claudio calls her out:

CLAUDIO

Out on thee, seeming! I will write against it:
You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pampered animals
That rage in savage sensuality. [IV, i, 55-60]

Hero reacts to Claudio's denunciation of sexual misconduct by fainting. Claudio is not appeased: "Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty!" [IV, i, 40] This 1846 painting by Alfred Elmore depicts the moment.
Image from https://www.zmescience.com/science/why-shakespeares-much-ado-about-nothing-is-a-brilliant-sneaky-innuendo/

Claudio is too far gone to realize how wrong he is, a victim like everyone else in the play of that pernicious thing called “seeming.”

In the Arden Shakespeare edition of the play, Claire McEachern calls out the double meaning of the play’s title. Much Ado About Nothing works on its face as the concerns overtaking our players prove baseless, but there is also the word “nothing” being pronounced in Elizabethan times like “noting.” That such a difference of meaning is lost in pronunciation is of a piece with a lot of the verbal information being dispensed here.

Don John and his associates set up Hero by tricking Claudio to observe a woman dressed as Hero with another man. Just before this, Don John tells Claudio: You may think I love you not. Let that appear hereafter, and aim better at me by that I now will manifest. [III, ii, 85-87]

He is not exactly lying, but he is consciously misleading, and wittily, too.

More benign forms of falsehood also appear. A friar convinces Hero’s father to fake his daughter’s death, and thus win her some sympathy while matters are put right. His sophistic justification is worth quoting at length:

FRIAR
For it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours. [IV, i, 217-222]

Diana Wynyard as Beatrice and Anthony Quayle as Benedick in a 1949 production. At a masque ball in Act II, she cleverly needles him. "O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!" [II, i, 219-220] he exclaims after.
Image from https://www.rsc.org.uk/much-ado-about-nothing/about-the-play/dates-and-sources 

Most famously in the play, Beatrice and Benedick are tricked by their friends into believing that each loves the other, a ruse prompted by true desire for their happiness but also by the pair’s careless scoffing at love. The rest of the cast agrees the pair should be taken down a notch.

Much of the worst manipulation takes place inside Benedick’s own head, first by being so cocksure Claudio is the one with the Cupid issue, then from the gaslighting about Beatrice.

Soon, even a summons to dinner is recombobulated by him into earnest love-talk:

BENEDICK
‘Against my will I am sent to bid you come

in to dinner’ – there’s a double meaning in that. ‘I took

no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to
thank me’ – that’s as much as to say ‘Any pains that I
take for you is as easy as thanks.’ [II, iii, 248-252]

Overthinking our charms is a recognizable human failing that adds to the comedy here, especially when it plays out so agreeably.

Emma Thompson as Beatrice and Kenneth Branagh as Benedick in the 1993 film adaption directed by Branagh. It is probably the version of the play people are most familiar with and certainly enjoyable, especially for its scenic Tuscany setting.
Image from https://ew.com/movies/2019/05/10/kenneth-branagh-shakespeare-movies-ranked/

While enormously entertaining, Much Ado does push against modern sensibilities in places, making the mistakings more impactful even when they seem old-fashioned. The big challenge in this respect is Claudio’s violent verbal assault on Hero after he “discovers” her being unfaithful the night before their wedding.

Are we supposed to root for Claudio after this? I can only enjoy him grudgingly, even when Benedick barbs him. However out of place it is in our own culture, the outburst and its aftermath reveal how much Shakespeare placed social order above emotional hurt. Community and its obligations serve as principal drivers for everyone. Even Benedick excuses his about-face regarding his bachelor status by shrugging “the world must be peopled” [II, iii, 233].

The only person with clear sight about the situation is Beatrice. She demonstrates this in her actions and in her words: “I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.” [II, i, 71-73]

Others have criticized her for a tendency to shrewishness, and there are times that charge seems warranted, as when she explains she can’t abide men with beards but also disdains men without them. She wears her fickleness at times proudly, like a badge. Yet she is the heart of the play: when Benedick falls in love with her, it is a matter of mere gravity; when she does the same with him, it has the force of blessing.

Five acts of the pair sparring with each other would grow tedious; that is why Hero and Claudio serve as the pause that refreshes. In fact, the false accusation against Hero provides substance for Benedick and Beatrice’s union, as both take Hero’s part in the matter when everyone else but the faithful Friar is inclined to think the worst of her.

That they are a frightfully suspicious crew seems Shakespeare’s point:

CLAUDIO
Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent… [II, i, 163-164]

Proof of Much Ado About Nothing's outsized popularity in its own day: An extant quarto from 1600, 16 years before its author's death. Only The Taming Of The Shrew and Love's Labour Lost have earlier surviving quartos.
Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Much_Ado_About_Nothing  

Such a character is putty in the hands of Don John, not a first-rate schemer as we see him in operation, but more than enough to wreak havoc here. Even Beatrice can be hoodwinked for a time, as when she is made to believe her friends’s false reports of Benedick’s love.

The only characters who seem immune to dupery is Dogberry and his Messina constabulary, who prove too stupid to be so cleverly tricked. There is a moral in how they stumble readily on a positive solution everyone else is far too perceptive to see. It is only a matter of overhearing Don John’s chatty associates as they brag about their big score, but at least they act correctly on what they hear, making them outliers in the cast.

Lawman Dogberry is also one of Shakespeare’s most time-proof clowns, his malaprops still landing after some 425 years. At least I love him:

DOGBERRY
If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue

of your office, to be no true man; and, for such
kind of men, the less you meddle or make with them,
why the more is for your honesty. [III, iii, 49-52]

At left, Patrick Wymark as Dogberry confers with his faithful assistant Verges (Ian Holm) in a 1958 Royal Shakespeare Company production.

Photo by Angus McBean from https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeare-learning-zone/much-ado-about-nothing/character/relationships

Again, a play that spent too much time on Dogberry would risk being tedious. But Shakespeare had a gift for balance, and for not overloading his plays with too much of any one good thing.

Much Ado About Nothing shows up in the fertile middle period of Shakespeare’s career, with many of his greatest works still to come. Though he still employs broad strokes, the Bard is much more subtle in his humor. Just compare the interplay between Benedick and Beatrice with that of Kate and Petruchio in The Taming Of The Shrew.

Even good Shakespeare comedies fall in and out of style; Much Ado is a rare exception that has never been out of favor. It may be as popular today as it has ever been, both as a pastoral comedy and as a social satire. It pays not to skimp on the B-plot.