Much Ado About Nothing

Summary

Much Ado About Nothing is set in Messina, Sicily, where the governor Leonato welcomes Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon, and his officers home from a victorious war. With the Prince come the young Florentine lord Claudio and the witty Paduan soldier Benedick, and also the Prince's sullen half-brother Don John, lately reconciled after a rebellion. Claudio falls at once for Leonato's daughter Hero, and Don Pedro offers to woo her on his behalf at a masked dance. Meanwhile Leonato's niece Beatrice resumes what her uncle calls a merry war with Benedick: both scorn love and marriage, and each takes every opportunity to mock the other. Don John, who confesses himself a plain-dealing villain, tries first to persuade Claudio that the Prince is wooing Hero for himself; the confusion is cleared and the wedding is fixed. To pass the week before it, Don Pedro proposes a labour of Hercules: to bring Benedick and Beatrice into a mountain of affection. In the orchard Benedick overhears the Prince, Claudio and Leonato say that Beatrice is dying of love for him, and resolves that the world must be peopled; Hero and her gentlewoman Ursula play the same trick on Beatrice, who bids farewell to contempt and maiden pride. Don John's follower Borachio then stages a deception: at night he courts Hero's gentlewoman Margaret at Hero's window, and Claudio and Don Pedro, watching from below, believe Hero false. The bumbling constable Dogberry and his Watch overhear Borachio boasting of the plot to Conrade and arrest them, but Dogberry is so long-winded that Leonato puts him off before the wedding. At the altar Claudio rejects Hero as a rotten orange and Don Pedro confirms the charge; Hero swoons, and Leonato wishes her dead. Friar Francis, convinced of her innocence, advises that she be reported dead so that Claudio may remember her truly. Alone in the church, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love, and Beatrice demands that he prove it: kill Claudio. Benedick challenges his friend. Dogberry's examination of the prisoners at last brings out the truth, Borachio confesses, and Don John is found to have fled. A grieving Claudio hangs an epitaph at Hero's tomb and agrees to marry Leonato's supposed niece unseen; when she unmasks, she is Hero. Benedick and Beatrice, exposed by love sonnets each has written to the other, agree to marry, Benedick silencing her with a kiss, and the play ends with a dance as word comes that Don John has been captured. The play was probably written in 1598-99, was printed in a quarto in 1600, and appeared again in the First Folio of 1623.

Top Lessons

• Seeing and believing

  Almost everyone in the play acts on what they overhear or think they see. Benedick and Beatrice are deceived into a truth; Claudio and Don Pedro are deceived into a lie at Hero's window. The play asks what kind of evidence deserves our trust, and how quickly suspicion should become accusation.

• Wit and pride

  Beatrice and Benedick are the best talkers in Messina, and their wit protects them from being hurt. When each hears friends describe their pride, they set it aside. Shakespeare suggests that cleverness can be a fortress against love until humility opens the gate.

• Honor and a slandered name

  Hero's reputation is destroyed in a public moment by men who believe they are defending honor. The play shows how slander works, how shame leaves the accused almost wordless, and how the truth comes out through the humblest officers in the city.

• Fools who find the truth

  Dogberry cannot say what he means, yet his Watch catches the villains that the Prince and his lords cannot see. The comedy echoes Paul's teaching that God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The play is not medical, but it uses the period's humoral and astrological language of temperament. Don John refuses the moral medicine of patience offered by Conrade, who says he was born under Saturn (the planet of the melancholy humour), and insists that he must be sad when he has cause; Beatrice, by contrast, says that a star danced when she was born. Hero's swoon at the altar and the Friar's plan to publish her death rely on the uncertainty of a faint as a sign of death, a motif Shakespeare uses also in Romeo and Juliet. Margaret's prescription of Carduus benedictus (holy thistle) for Beatrice's cold reflects common herbal practice, and Leonato's remark that no philosopher ever endured the toothache patiently questions Stoic consolation in the face of pain and grief.

• Act 1, Scene 3

  Don John rejects Conrade's counsel of patient sufferance, which he calls a moral medicine, and insists on showing his sadness.

• Act 3, Scene 4

  Margaret recommends distilled Carduus benedictus for Beatrice's cold, with a pun on Benedick.

• Act 4, Scene 1

  Hero swoons after the accusation; the Friar proposes reporting her dead.

• Act 5, Scene 1

  Leonato rejects Antonio's counsel of patience, saying no philosopher has borne the toothache patiently.