Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

AO3: show understanding of the relationships between the texts and the contexts in which they were written.

“Lady Disdain” - the cold, cruel woman was a feature of Elizabethan Love Poetry - a woman was renounced as cold and haughty by the narrator of the poems for rejecting him. Is Benedick inadvertently addressing Beatrice as though he’s a scorned lover?

The play is set in a patriarchal society, dominated by men and male values. Men were expected to train to fight for their country. Close bonds of friendship, especially those forged in war, were valued, and men prized their honour and reputation above all else. This explains Benedick’s disgust at Claudio when he ‘dedicates his behaviours to love’ (soliloquy at the start of A2S3).

Women in the patriarchal society were expected to be submissive ( e.g. Hero) but Beatrice as an orphan has no father or indeed parent to control her.

A woman was her father’s property until married then her husband’s. Historians often have problems finding the names of women in history, as the records often state ‘wife of…’. Note the number of times Hero is referred to as ‘Leonato’s daughter’.

Claudio and Hero’s relationship demonstrates the conventional rituals of aristocratic courtship and marriage at the time. Don Pedro acts on Claudio’s behalf to woo Hero, the dowry is settled, there is a formal betrothal and then marriage. (‘fitted with a husband’; ‘It is my cousin’s duty to make curtsy, and say, father as it please you’; ‘I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won’; ‘Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes’)

Leonato’s behaviour is conventional for an Elizabethan father - using his daughter for the purposes of alliance and furthering his own social status.

Wit/wordplay was highly prized in the Elizabethan era.

Love was seen as a kind of sickness hence all the references e.g. Don Pedro’s challenge to Benedick,”I will see thee ere I die look pale with love”. Benedick in his soliloquy at the beginning of the tricking scene says, “ One woman is fair but I am well…... “etc

Beatrice’s statement that she ”would rather hear a dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves her” is a comic, mocking inversion of the traditional romantic concept of a male serenading (or like Benedick later in the play writing a sonnet to) his loved one.

Poorer members of the audience would have witnessed women punished for not holding their tongues with the scold’s bridle and ducking. This would make Beatrice’s refusal to hold her tongue, and the fact that she’s not punished for it, particularly powerful.

The reign of an all-powerful woman in a patriarchal society meant