Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

1. Characters

   • Beatrice(Beat.): main woman, funny, insightful, jester to angry
   • Benedick(Ben.): jerk, mean in regards to love, loves Beat.
   • Claudio(Claud.): starry eyed kid, friends with Ben., Hero love
   • Hero: engaged to Claud., loving, little action in play
   • Don Pedro(Ped.): Prince of Arragon, leader of Ben and Claud., bro. of John
   • Don John(John.): bad guy, bro. to Ped., runs off in the end

2. Summary

   • Leonato, Governor of Messina, has just gotten word that he’s to be visited by his great friend Don Pedro of Arragon, who’s on his way back from battle. Beatrice, Leonato’s niece, asks the messenger whether Benedick is returning. We learn that Beatrice and Benedick have been engaged in a war of wits for as long as they’ve known each other, and she seems to be full of scorn for the dude. Don Pedro, Benedick, Claudio, and Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother, Don John, arrive. Benedick and Beatrice exchange some barbs, and the sum of their interaction is that they both hate love and will never get married. (Unless they fall in love with each other and get married. Ahem.) After all the welcoming, Claudio pulls Benedick aside and reveals that he’s fallen for Leonato’s daughter, Hero. Benedick is full of jokes, and thinks marriage and women are bad news, especially the two combined. Benedick reveals Claudio’s love to Don Pedro, who’s more sympathetic. Left alone, Claudio confirms to Don P

3. The Set Up

   • Shakespeare's Career

4. Hospitality & Festivity

   • The Strain of Hospitality
   • Meeting Trouble

5. The Love Plot

   • The First Obstacle: The Homosocial World of Men
   • Brokering Love: Negotiations Among Men
   • Play, Mask, Carnival

6. Love's Obstacles: Don John

   • A Strange Villain, A Plain-Dealing Villain
   • Strange Villain: Sadness Without Limit
   • Bastardy: Edmund, the bastard, from King Lear

7. Beatrice & Benedick

   • The Romance Subplot/The Main Event
   • A Merry War
   • Conspiring Toward Marriage & Happy Endings

8. Much Ado About Noting

   • Noting/Nothing

9. Wedding Crashed

   • "This looks not like a nuptial"
   • Misogynistic Logic
   • Virgin Whore Dichotonomy
   • Misogyny as Blood Sport
   • Faithless Fathers/Absent Mothers

10. Suspending Judgement, Tragedy

    • John Keats

11. Beatrice & Benedick Transformed

    • Demanding Justice
    • Beatrice, Avenging Cousin
    • Benedick, Champion of Women
    • The Importance of Being Earnest

12. Ending in Marriage & Comedy

    • The Idiot Calvary
    • Bungling Toward Truth & Justice
    • Dogberry, The Friar, and the Force of Genre

13. Social Labor/Being Beatrice

    • Born in a Merry Hour?
    • Choosing to Have a Merry Heart
    • The Work of Hey Nonny, Nonny

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