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Much (detailed) Geeking out about "Much Ado"
[Edited: I'm awake, now, and the thoughts I had about Benedick are still going around in my head, so I'm going to pick up from where I was dropping off [srsly, folks, my eyes were closing of their own accord], and finally get this out of my head.)
I posted about this a couple of days ago, right after I watched it... But it's taken a couple of days for all my thoughts to percolate -- so this is the full-on geek version.
So, this weekend, I found the full, 1984, BBC production of Much Ado About Nothing online, and watched all two and a half hours. It was nowhere as slick or polished as a commercially produced, theatrically released, movie. And if you complained to me that the acting was as stiff and measured as an over-starched dress shirt, I would not argue...
However... I've read the full text several times, and I've seen several versions acted out: a few different versions in live theater, and Kenneth Branagh's film version. But reading words on a page never quite conveys the subtleties of tensions between characters. And in most acted productions, there's always (it seems) going to be something cut out by the modern director. And so this is the first time I'd watched the full text fully acted, and I came away with insights and feels (All the feels!) that I haven't had before.
[ETA: In writing this post, I've gone back and reread the text, and realize a few lines have been cut... but far fewer lines than is usual).
Strictly speaking, it's the intended marriage of Claudio and Hero which is the "A" plot, of the play, and the tricky courtship between Benedick and Beatrice which is the "B" plot. But since the former turns on the importance of an honorable woman's virginity, which is a social value likely to be seen as alien to modern, liberal, Western audiences, it's this "A" plot that gets the most cut lines, and it gets treated as the "B" plot, instead.
...So, here's a quick and dirty recap, for those who don't know the play:
Hero is framed into appearing to be a "wanton stale," simply by the villain's servant calling Hero's Lady in Waiting by Hero's name, while the Prince and Claudio watch from a distance -- the night before the wedding, so there's no time between the deception and the count's rejection for the lie to be discovered.
The next day, the count and the prince show up at the church, go through the motions as if everything were normal, until the moment when the wedding vows are to be spoken, and then make their accusation:
DON PEDRO
Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,
I am sorry you must hear: upon mine honour,
Myself, my brother and this grieved count
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window
Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confess'd the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret.
---
Hero faints, her cousin Beatrice rushes to her side. The Prince and Claudio storm off, leaving her for dead.
Benedick, who, thanks to the "B" plot, is now firmly in love with Beatrice, stays behind, and so witnesses what happens next.
When Hero comes to, her father makes a long speech about how it were better if she had died, and how he is willing to kill her with her own hand (snippet):
Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes:
For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,
Strike at thy life.
Then, the Friar, who was there to perform the wedding, makes a suggestion: Advertise that she did, in fact, die -- go through all the motions of a funeral, and, when Claudio learns that it is his word that killed her, if he loved her at all in the first place, his anger will change to remorse... And, given time, the truth can be found out, and Hero's honor restored...
And if not (and this is the detail in the text that I never quite managed to catch until I watched the whole thing acted out), then she can enter a convent and live hidden away from the entire world and all its rumors for the rest of her natural life. ...In all previous times I've watched the play, I always thought the rage that Leonato, Antonio, and Benedick expressed, when they accuse the Prince and Claudio of killing Hero to be disingenuous, because they all know she's not really dead... But. Being locked away from the world, and all the people you know and love -- that's as close to death as "Not really dead" as you can get.
The friar leads Hero and her father away to a hiding place for her, leaving Benedick and Beatrice alone. It's in this emotionally wrought atmosphere that they admit their love for each other ... And, when Benedick asks how he can prove his love, Beatrice says: "Kill Claudio." (Benedick's best friend). At first, he balks, and she accuses him of being just another liar. He asks if she is certain Hero is innocent. And when Beatrice says she is, that's enough. He goes off to challenge Claudio to a duel.
(Then, there's a break of a comic scene as the buffoon Chief Constable questions the people behind the fraud, mangling language and logic in the process -- but proving Hero's innocence)
The next scene, we see first Leonato (Father) and Antonio (uncle) pass on the news to the Prince and Claudio that Hero is dead... And (contrary to the friar's predictions), the two of them show no remorse at all, basically saying: "We're sorry she died. But it's her sins that killed her, and good riddance."
The father and uncle leave. Then Benedick enters... And this is the scene that gave me chills (and it's often one of the scenes that gets shortened). The Prince and Claudio keep pressing him to make jokes, because they're sad the wedding fell through... And they make fun of the father and uncle who just left (showing they don't really care about their grief). But Benedick is not in the mood...
When Claudio says:
"What, courage, man! What though care killed a cat,
thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care."
There's a double edge to the words, since it is Claudio who is the cause of Benedick's care, and Benedick has, in fact come there on a death mission. Finally, Benedick makes it clear that he's serious about the duel, leaving it to Claudio to choose the time, place and weapons. After he leaves, the Prince and Claudio continue to make jokes about him...
Until the local night watch come in, with the servant who acted out the fraud, who confesses the whole thing.
And only then does Claudio show any remorse...
Now, for the "B" plot:
On the surface, Beatrice and Benedick hate each other -- or, at least, hold each other in disdain -- until Don Pedro dreams up a plot to trick them into falling in love with each other: making sure Benedick is there to overhear talk that Beatrice is near death for love of him, and that Beatrice is there to overhear a similar conversation about Benedick... As Hero puts it: "... then loving goes by haps. Some, Cupid kills with arrows. Some with traps."
But -- in several scenes, Beatrice and Benedick say things that belie their attraction to each other -- before the plot is dreamt up. It's all very clear, between the lines (and Shakespeare wrote those lines wide apart, in these scenes).
I'll start with Beatrice:
The first question out of her mouth, is whether "Signor Montanto" is returned from the wars... Only her cousin Hero knows who she means -- it's her nickname for Benedick. So -- Beatrice cares enough about him to ask about him before anyone else, and we can infer that she's talked fairly often to Hero about him, in the meantime (even if it is to complain about him).
After Don Pedro and his party arrive, we catch a glimpse of the "skirmish of wit between them." It ends here:
BENEDICK
I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and
so good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God's
name; I have done.
BEATRICE
You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.
--
All the notes on this I've read said that a "jade" is an old, worn-out horse (That's where "jaded" as in "A person's disposition" comes from -- not the semi-precious stone), and that "Jade's trick" can mean any (or all?) of the following:
a) a cheat in horse-racing, where the jockey deliberately slows his horse to throw the race (the Shakespeare text from my undergraduate course)
b) when an old, disagreeable, horse drops his head out of the yoke, to avoid work (my Bantam paperback edition of the single play)
c) when someone, trying to sell a jade, employs tricks to make it seem younger and more spirited than it really is ...at least, until the buyer gets it home (the Interwebs, today).
In any case, all three interpretations of this line suggest that Beatrice, for whatever reason, has come to expect Benedick to drop out of his obligations at the last minute -- to not be what he promised to be, early on.
But the clincher, for me, that Beatrice once loved Benedick (and, perhaps still does, in spite of herself) is this bit, from after the masked ball:
DON PEDRO
Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of
Signior Benedick.
BEATRICE
Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave
him use for it, a double heart for his single one:
marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,
therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.
(So -- the translation: she went to him, as to a lender, and asked for his heart. The "use" she gave him for it was what we would call the interest -- she paid double for what he lent her. And then, he won it back from her with false dice... If "jade's trick," mentioned above is the cheat from horse racing, than this will have been the second time she's compared her past relationship with him to a gamble -- where he's cheated her.)
But what about Benedick's feelings? Well....
When, shortly after the exchange with Beatrice, that ends with "jade's trick" Claudio confesses to being in love with Hero -- saying:
CLAUDIO
In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I
looked on.
BENEDICK
I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such
matter: there's her cousin, an she were not
possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty
as the first of May doth the last of December [...]
Oh, really, Ben? That's interesting...
---
Benedick, of course, can't help but make fun of Claudio for wanting to get married, especially since (it's implied) that when they went off to war together, Claudio promised to be a forever bachelor-best friend with Benedick. And now that they're home safe from the war, Claudio wants to get married, and get married now... The poor boy is unmistakably jealous that Hero is taking his bestie away.
So he mocks and makes fun of the whole idea of marriage:
That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she
brought me up, I likewise give her most humble
thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my
forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick,
all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do
them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the
right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which
I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.
So... The reason he disdains women and marriage to them is because he fears they will always be unfaithful... Which (perhaps) puts him in a parallel story to Claudio's -- in that both their sins are to suspect women of infidelity.
The prince notes that he may someday change his mind:
DON PEDRO
Well, as time shall try: 'In time the savage bull
doth bear the yoke.'
To which Benedick answers:
BENEDICK
The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible
Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set
them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted,
and in such great letters as they write 'Here is
good horse to hire,' let them signify under my sign
'Here you may see Benedick the married man.'
(So, now, he's putting himself in comparison with the jade for sale... echoing Beatrice's earlier line)
Later, at the masked ball, it's Beatrice he chooses to dance with (Well, it's their dance pairing we get a glimpse of -- Shakespeare did a marvelous job of making a montage of the masked ball scene, given that he had no cameras to cut between -- there's a real sense of overhearing snippets of many conversations going on at once). He refuses to admit his true identity, and claims not even to know who Benedick is, asking Beatrice to describe him.
Um... if he truly had no feelings for her, he wouldn't care what she thought of him. Instead, it seems what he's interested in most.
And a bit later, he tells Don Pedro all about how she hurt his feelings:
[snip]
O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!
an oak but with one green leaf on it would have
answered her; my very visor began to assume life and
scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been
myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was
duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest
with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood
like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at
me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs;
[snip]
Again, I say: if he really didn't care about her, her words wouldn't hurt at all.
After Benedick overhears Leonato, Claudia, and Don Pedro making up tall tales about how Beatrice torments herself with loving him, he says:
"[...] if I do not/love her, I am a Jew." -- calling back the image of the money-lender, from before.
---
When I woke up this morning, I realized something: our first impressions of Benedick come from Beatrice's clearly biased and cynical point of view... But then, when we get to see Benedick for ourselves, her words are confirmed by his behavior.
She makes the claim that she's always the winner, in their skirmishes of wit.
When Benedick complains to the Prince about how terribly she insulted him, he's making excuses for why he can't answer her.
She says he always played the jade's trick.
He uses the image of a jade for sale to describe himself as a married man.
She compares him to a money-lender, in their first attempt at a relationship; he later says that if he does not love her, he is a Jew (being money-lenders was one of the few occupations open to them).
---
The thing about this play that makes me so happy is that neither Beatrice nor Benedick try to change who they are for the sake of their love. But they do temper their behavior -- once the idea of "She loves me/He loves me" is planted in their ears, they're open to viewing the other person (and perhaps even themselves) in a more forgiving light.
That's something I wish more rom-coms would do, today (and tomorrow). You know?
---
Many years ago, a friend and I were talking about this play, she said it was almost as if this were Shakespeare's apology to women for The Taming of the Shrew. After doing this analysis, it has occurred to me that an alternate title for this play could be The Taming by the Shrew: Beatrice has gotten the savage bull to bear the yoke...
---
I'm still working through my thoughts on the darker "A"-Plot of this play, since my most recent viewing was the first time that I noticed it being put on a par with the comedic "B"-plot. But the central issue of the Hero/Claudio arc seems to be the role of privilege, and how having it (or not having it) influences which rumors and snatches of conversation you decide to give credit to...
Which deserves more careful pondering, I think...
---
I also realized, just today, that this post is the first time I've sat down and analysed this play, even though Much Ado has been a favorite of mine for over 25 years... Other of Shakespeare's plays, I first discovered by seeing them on television, or through a class assignment in high school or college. This play, I first discovered by deciding to read it, on my own. I fell in love with it within the first few lines, and have since sought out performances. But I never really had the context to break it down line-by-line and talk about it...
I love being a geek!
I posted about this a couple of days ago, right after I watched it... But it's taken a couple of days for all my thoughts to percolate -- so this is the full-on geek version.
So, this weekend, I found the full, 1984, BBC production of Much Ado About Nothing online, and watched all two and a half hours. It was nowhere as slick or polished as a commercially produced, theatrically released, movie. And if you complained to me that the acting was as stiff and measured as an over-starched dress shirt, I would not argue...
However... I've read the full text several times, and I've seen several versions acted out: a few different versions in live theater, and Kenneth Branagh's film version. But reading words on a page never quite conveys the subtleties of tensions between characters. And in most acted productions, there's always (it seems) going to be something cut out by the modern director. And so this is the first time I'd watched the full text fully acted, and I came away with insights and feels (All the feels!) that I haven't had before.
[ETA: In writing this post, I've gone back and reread the text, and realize a few lines have been cut... but far fewer lines than is usual).
Strictly speaking, it's the intended marriage of Claudio and Hero which is the "A" plot, of the play, and the tricky courtship between Benedick and Beatrice which is the "B" plot. But since the former turns on the importance of an honorable woman's virginity, which is a social value likely to be seen as alien to modern, liberal, Western audiences, it's this "A" plot that gets the most cut lines, and it gets treated as the "B" plot, instead.
...So, here's a quick and dirty recap, for those who don't know the play:
Hero is framed into appearing to be a "wanton stale," simply by the villain's servant calling Hero's Lady in Waiting by Hero's name, while the Prince and Claudio watch from a distance -- the night before the wedding, so there's no time between the deception and the count's rejection for the lie to be discovered.
The next day, the count and the prince show up at the church, go through the motions as if everything were normal, until the moment when the wedding vows are to be spoken, and then make their accusation:
DON PEDRO
Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,
I am sorry you must hear: upon mine honour,
Myself, my brother and this grieved count
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window
Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confess'd the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret.
---
Hero faints, her cousin Beatrice rushes to her side. The Prince and Claudio storm off, leaving her for dead.
Benedick, who, thanks to the "B" plot, is now firmly in love with Beatrice, stays behind, and so witnesses what happens next.
When Hero comes to, her father makes a long speech about how it were better if she had died, and how he is willing to kill her with her own hand (snippet):
Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes:
For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,
Strike at thy life.
Then, the Friar, who was there to perform the wedding, makes a suggestion: Advertise that she did, in fact, die -- go through all the motions of a funeral, and, when Claudio learns that it is his word that killed her, if he loved her at all in the first place, his anger will change to remorse... And, given time, the truth can be found out, and Hero's honor restored...
And if not (and this is the detail in the text that I never quite managed to catch until I watched the whole thing acted out), then she can enter a convent and live hidden away from the entire world and all its rumors for the rest of her natural life. ...In all previous times I've watched the play, I always thought the rage that Leonato, Antonio, and Benedick expressed, when they accuse the Prince and Claudio of killing Hero to be disingenuous, because they all know she's not really dead... But. Being locked away from the world, and all the people you know and love -- that's as close to death as "Not really dead" as you can get.
The friar leads Hero and her father away to a hiding place for her, leaving Benedick and Beatrice alone. It's in this emotionally wrought atmosphere that they admit their love for each other ... And, when Benedick asks how he can prove his love, Beatrice says: "Kill Claudio." (Benedick's best friend). At first, he balks, and she accuses him of being just another liar. He asks if she is certain Hero is innocent. And when Beatrice says she is, that's enough. He goes off to challenge Claudio to a duel.
(Then, there's a break of a comic scene as the buffoon Chief Constable questions the people behind the fraud, mangling language and logic in the process -- but proving Hero's innocence)
The next scene, we see first Leonato (Father) and Antonio (uncle) pass on the news to the Prince and Claudio that Hero is dead... And (contrary to the friar's predictions), the two of them show no remorse at all, basically saying: "We're sorry she died. But it's her sins that killed her, and good riddance."
The father and uncle leave. Then Benedick enters... And this is the scene that gave me chills (and it's often one of the scenes that gets shortened). The Prince and Claudio keep pressing him to make jokes, because they're sad the wedding fell through... And they make fun of the father and uncle who just left (showing they don't really care about their grief). But Benedick is not in the mood...
When Claudio says:
"What, courage, man! What though care killed a cat,
thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care."
There's a double edge to the words, since it is Claudio who is the cause of Benedick's care, and Benedick has, in fact come there on a death mission. Finally, Benedick makes it clear that he's serious about the duel, leaving it to Claudio to choose the time, place and weapons. After he leaves, the Prince and Claudio continue to make jokes about him...
Until the local night watch come in, with the servant who acted out the fraud, who confesses the whole thing.
And only then does Claudio show any remorse...
Now, for the "B" plot:
On the surface, Beatrice and Benedick hate each other -- or, at least, hold each other in disdain -- until Don Pedro dreams up a plot to trick them into falling in love with each other: making sure Benedick is there to overhear talk that Beatrice is near death for love of him, and that Beatrice is there to overhear a similar conversation about Benedick... As Hero puts it: "... then loving goes by haps. Some, Cupid kills with arrows. Some with traps."
But -- in several scenes, Beatrice and Benedick say things that belie their attraction to each other -- before the plot is dreamt up. It's all very clear, between the lines (and Shakespeare wrote those lines wide apart, in these scenes).
I'll start with Beatrice:
The first question out of her mouth, is whether "Signor Montanto" is returned from the wars... Only her cousin Hero knows who she means -- it's her nickname for Benedick. So -- Beatrice cares enough about him to ask about him before anyone else, and we can infer that she's talked fairly often to Hero about him, in the meantime (even if it is to complain about him).
After Don Pedro and his party arrive, we catch a glimpse of the "skirmish of wit between them." It ends here:
BENEDICK
I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and
so good a continuer. But keep your way, i' God's
name; I have done.
BEATRICE
You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.
--
All the notes on this I've read said that a "jade" is an old, worn-out horse (That's where "jaded" as in "A person's disposition" comes from -- not the semi-precious stone), and that "Jade's trick" can mean any (or all?) of the following:
a) a cheat in horse-racing, where the jockey deliberately slows his horse to throw the race (the Shakespeare text from my undergraduate course)
b) when an old, disagreeable, horse drops his head out of the yoke, to avoid work (my Bantam paperback edition of the single play)
c) when someone, trying to sell a jade, employs tricks to make it seem younger and more spirited than it really is ...at least, until the buyer gets it home (the Interwebs, today).
In any case, all three interpretations of this line suggest that Beatrice, for whatever reason, has come to expect Benedick to drop out of his obligations at the last minute -- to not be what he promised to be, early on.
But the clincher, for me, that Beatrice once loved Benedick (and, perhaps still does, in spite of herself) is this bit, from after the masked ball:
DON PEDRO
Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of
Signior Benedick.
BEATRICE
Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave
him use for it, a double heart for his single one:
marry, once before he won it of me with false dice,
therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.
(So -- the translation: she went to him, as to a lender, and asked for his heart. The "use" she gave him for it was what we would call the interest -- she paid double for what he lent her. And then, he won it back from her with false dice... If "jade's trick," mentioned above is the cheat from horse racing, than this will have been the second time she's compared her past relationship with him to a gamble -- where he's cheated her.)
But what about Benedick's feelings? Well....
When, shortly after the exchange with Beatrice, that ends with "jade's trick" Claudio confesses to being in love with Hero -- saying:
CLAUDIO
In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I
looked on.
BENEDICK
I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such
matter: there's her cousin, an she were not
possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty
as the first of May doth the last of December [...]
Oh, really, Ben? That's interesting...
---
Benedick, of course, can't help but make fun of Claudio for wanting to get married, especially since (it's implied) that when they went off to war together, Claudio promised to be a forever bachelor-best friend with Benedick. And now that they're home safe from the war, Claudio wants to get married, and get married now... The poor boy is unmistakably jealous that Hero is taking his bestie away.
So he mocks and makes fun of the whole idea of marriage:
That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she
brought me up, I likewise give her most humble
thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my
forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick,
all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do
them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the
right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which
I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.
So... The reason he disdains women and marriage to them is because he fears they will always be unfaithful... Which (perhaps) puts him in a parallel story to Claudio's -- in that both their sins are to suspect women of infidelity.
The prince notes that he may someday change his mind:
DON PEDRO
Well, as time shall try: 'In time the savage bull
doth bear the yoke.'
To which Benedick answers:
BENEDICK
The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible
Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set
them in my forehead: and let me be vilely painted,
and in such great letters as they write 'Here is
good horse to hire,' let them signify under my sign
'Here you may see Benedick the married man.'
(So, now, he's putting himself in comparison with the jade for sale... echoing Beatrice's earlier line)
Later, at the masked ball, it's Beatrice he chooses to dance with (Well, it's their dance pairing we get a glimpse of -- Shakespeare did a marvelous job of making a montage of the masked ball scene, given that he had no cameras to cut between -- there's a real sense of overhearing snippets of many conversations going on at once). He refuses to admit his true identity, and claims not even to know who Benedick is, asking Beatrice to describe him.
Um... if he truly had no feelings for her, he wouldn't care what she thought of him. Instead, it seems what he's interested in most.
And a bit later, he tells Don Pedro all about how she hurt his feelings:
[snip]
O, she misused me past the endurance of a block!
an oak but with one green leaf on it would have
answered her; my very visor began to assume life and
scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been
myself, that I was the prince's jester, that I was
duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest
with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood
like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at
me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs;
[snip]
Again, I say: if he really didn't care about her, her words wouldn't hurt at all.
After Benedick overhears Leonato, Claudia, and Don Pedro making up tall tales about how Beatrice torments herself with loving him, he says:
"[...] if I do not/love her, I am a Jew." -- calling back the image of the money-lender, from before.
---
When I woke up this morning, I realized something: our first impressions of Benedick come from Beatrice's clearly biased and cynical point of view... But then, when we get to see Benedick for ourselves, her words are confirmed by his behavior.
She makes the claim that she's always the winner, in their skirmishes of wit.
When Benedick complains to the Prince about how terribly she insulted him, he's making excuses for why he can't answer her.
She says he always played the jade's trick.
He uses the image of a jade for sale to describe himself as a married man.
She compares him to a money-lender, in their first attempt at a relationship; he later says that if he does not love her, he is a Jew (being money-lenders was one of the few occupations open to them).
---
The thing about this play that makes me so happy is that neither Beatrice nor Benedick try to change who they are for the sake of their love. But they do temper their behavior -- once the idea of "She loves me/He loves me" is planted in their ears, they're open to viewing the other person (and perhaps even themselves) in a more forgiving light.
That's something I wish more rom-coms would do, today (and tomorrow). You know?
---
Many years ago, a friend and I were talking about this play, she said it was almost as if this were Shakespeare's apology to women for The Taming of the Shrew. After doing this analysis, it has occurred to me that an alternate title for this play could be The Taming by the Shrew: Beatrice has gotten the savage bull to bear the yoke...
---
I'm still working through my thoughts on the darker "A"-Plot of this play, since my most recent viewing was the first time that I noticed it being put on a par with the comedic "B"-plot. But the central issue of the Hero/Claudio arc seems to be the role of privilege, and how having it (or not having it) influences which rumors and snatches of conversation you decide to give credit to...
Which deserves more careful pondering, I think...
---
I also realized, just today, that this post is the first time I've sat down and analysed this play, even though Much Ado has been a favorite of mine for over 25 years... Other of Shakespeare's plays, I first discovered by seeing them on television, or through a class assignment in high school or college. This play, I first discovered by deciding to read it, on my own. I fell in love with it within the first few lines, and have since sought out performances. But I never really had the context to break it down line-by-line and talk about it...
I love being a geek!