Much Ado About

Nothing
By William Shakespeare
Presented by: Ghinea Delia
 Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy play by William Shakespeare first

performed in 1612. The humor of the play borrows on and transcends that of
a typical comedy of errors. The play relies on tensions created by a
paradoxical use of deception by its characters: deceit can be used as an
instrument with which both to disrupt love between people and to
encourage and promote it.
 CHARACTER MAP
Antonio uncle Beatrice lovers Benedick
The responsible one
brothers
The witty one The bachelor

Friar Francis Don Pedro

The wise one friends The prince

Leonato
father Hero lovers Claudio brothers
the naive one The idealist
The host
friends
Ursula Margaret Borachio
The lascivious one Don John
The gentle one The feisty one lovers friends
The angsty one
Verges Oatcake
Conrade
The old one
employer The young one The follower

Dogberry
The bumbler
 Summary
Leonato, a kindly, respectable nobleman, lives in the idyllic Italian town of Messina. Leonato shares
his house with his lovely young daughter, Hero, his playful, clever niece, Beatrice, and his elderly
brother, Antonio (who is Beatrice's father). As the play begins, Leonato prepares to welcome some
friends home from war. The friends include Don Pedro, a prince who is a close friend of Leonato, 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. Don John, Don Pedro’s illegitimate
brother, is part of the crowd as well. Don John is sullen and bitter and makes trouble for the others.
When the soldiers arrive at Leonato’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 Don John has decided to disrupt everyone’s happiness. He has his 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. 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 Don John’s
followers. Everyone learns that Hero is really innocent, and Claudio, who believes she is dead, grieves
for her.
Leonato tells Claudio that, as punishment, he wants Claudio to tell everybody in the city how innocent
Hero was. He also wants Claudio to marry Leonato’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
 The aborted wedding ceremony, in which Claudio
rejects Hero, accusing her of infidelity, violating
chastity, and publicly shaming her in front of her
father, is the play's climax. 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 losing
all social standing, a disaster from which she could
never recover.
Honor
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)
For women in that era, the loss of honor was a form
of annihilation.
 Trickery and deception abound in Much Ado About Nothing, and the plots to
deceive piggyback off one another through the end of the play. Some things, like
bringing Beatrice and Benedick together, are for the good, while others are
purely to harm. Shakespeare doesn't take a stance on the use of tricks to achieve
a certain goal, but he does show how once deceptions begin, they're hard to
stop:
Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio and woos Hero for him.
Don John tells Claudio Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself.
Beatrice pretends she doesn't know Benedick is behind the mask and insults
Trickery & him.
Don Pedro creates a plan to bring Beatrice and Benedick together by
deception
making each think one loves the other.
Borachio and Don John team up to make Claudio and Don Pedro think Hero
is unchaste.
The friar suggests Hero pretend to be dead to make Claudio and Don Pedro
feel guilty.
Leonato instructs Claudio to marry his niece (who is actually Hero) sight
unseen.
 Language distinguishes social status, separates the comic from the
serious, and serves as both weapon and balm.
Language is also used to delineate the difference between comedy and
tragedy in Much Ado About Nothing

Language

Women were treated like second-class citizens in the Elizabethan era,

and as such, they weren't afforded many opportunities to better their
situations without the assistance of a father or a husband.
A man's word was considered more trustworthy and valuable than a
woman's, even if the woman was in the right. This happens to Hero,
who is accused of being unchaste and is not given the opportunity to
defend herself and prove her accusers wrong. Gender politics
Symbols
 Horns, such as those from a bull, are the traditional symbols of cuckoldry. A cuckold
is a man whose wife sleeps with other men without his knowledge. To be branded a
cuckold meant everyone except the husband knew about the wife's extramarital
activities, which would have been intensely shameful for her husband. The horn is a
perfect symbol of this shame—everyone can see the horns on a cuckold's forehead
Horns while he cannot. Don Pedro jokes with Benedick about the horns of the "savage bull"
when Benedick protests against marriage, suggesting that marriage tames the wild
bull. The symbol transforms throughout the course of the play as the characters'
views of marriage transform.

The poems in Much Ado About Nothing symbolize

Benedick and Beatrice's failed attempts at a conventional
romance. Beatrice and Benedick both try their hands at it,
as evidenced by the sonnets their friends show as proof of
their love, but they aren't natural poets.
Poetry
 Masks are worn from two reasons: to deceive and to hide one's true feelings. Don
Pedro wears a mask to woo Hero for Claudio, and Benedick wears a mask to find
out Beatrice's feelings about him. In these cases masks are symbols of insecurity.

Masks

Beards were a sign of masculinity during the Elizabethan era.

Benedick has a beard at the beginning of the play.Women of
the era would have been attracted to a man with a beard, but
not Beatrice. Shaving his beard symbolizes how he puts aside
his own preferences to please Beatrice.
Beard
Adaptations
Much Ado About Nothing - 1993
Much Ado About Nothing - 2012
Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About
Nothing — a modern-day version
 The end
Thank you!