Through out Much Ado About Nothing characters miscommunicate and misunderstand each other, sometimes through deception. In several scenes, characters confuse the appearance of things and their reality. In Act 4, Scene 1, for example Claudio arrives at his wedding to Hero believing that she is lewd (since she appeared to be so when Borachio seduced Margaret) when in fact she is chaste. Confused by appearances he denounces her appearance as a chaste woman at her wedding as a false appearance. He states:
Out of thee, seeming! I will write against it.
You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown.
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pampered animals
That rage in savage sensuality (4.1.57-62)
Thus he curses false appearances, not realizing that he himself is still confounded by false appearances. This mistake leads to the disruption of his wedding and the ill health of his would-be bride. Yet on the other hand, deception and misunderstanding also leads to Beatrice and Benedick's union and the reconciliation of Hero and Claudio at the end. What is the play telling us about communication or miscommunication? About truth and deception? About appearance and reality?
I think that Shakespeare uses the play to poke fun at how easily people are swayed to believe one thing or another. With the given example, everyone immediately turns on Hero the moment Claudio denounces her. They have no solid proof, they just go along with the general consensus. However, when Dogberry clears Hero's name, the group of characters forgets their hostile feelings towards her without hesitation. Shakespeare's character's exaggerated changing of opinions on one another show that deception is common and applicable to characters who are so prone to change their minds.
ReplyDeleteAnother example can be found in Benedick and Beatrice. Throughout the play, their feelings toward each other change drastically. At the start, Beatrice says, "What should I do with him—dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him" (2.1.28–32). By this, she means that she has no interest in Benedick (or any other man) whatsoever. However, all it took to change her mind was hearing that Benedick (or hearing what she thought was Benedick) proclaiming his love for her.
However, when Beatrice does hear this, she immediately drops all prior hesitations about Benedick and confesses to noone in particular that she loves him as well. This shows that Benedick and Beatrice change their minds about one another incredibly quickly and easily, based only off of hearing one piece of evidence about something. In this scenario, everything worked out well because they loved each other anyway; however, the "evidence" based on which they changed their minds turned out to be a false deception planted by the characters' friends.
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ReplyDeleteDuring the course of Much Ado about Nothing, it shows us that reality is based off of deception. For the duration of the play the most important occurrences happened because of miscommunication of the characters. This play is trying to tell us that miscommunication and dishonesty are key for creating a reality. Without these factors in life, there would be no reality. Certain things in life, like love and family, are based off of lies. Life is filled with lies and deception and without it there would be no truth in life. One example of this would be when Beatrice and Benedick fall in love from lies told by their friends. Benedick’s friends put on an act about how Beatrice is madly in love with him and Beatrice’s friends do the same to her. They say, “Then down on her knees she falls, weeps,/ sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses:/ ‘O sweet Benedick, God give me patience’ (2.3.154-156)!
ReplyDeleteOnce they are deceived, they fall in love because they both have sonnets written about each other. Benedick says, “A miracle! Here’s our own hands against/ our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light/ I take thee for pity” (5.4.96-98). If they did not trick Benedick and Beatrice, they would not have ended up falling in love and getting married at the end of the play. Shakespeare’s comedies are filled with miscommunication and deception; without it his comedies would be just basic love stories without any drama or depth.
Miscommunication is present in nearly every scene of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and thus plays a very important role. Deception and white lies are a way of life for these people, and they have grown so accustomed to them that they don’t even look for the truth. Upon arriving in Messina, Claudio has Don Pedro win the heart of Hero while disguised as him. Don Pedro gladly assumes Claudio’s identity declaring, “I will assume thy part in some disguise / And tell fair Hero I am Claudio” (1.1.317-8). Claudio deceiving Hero was completely unnecessary, but the environment in which he is in supports that kind of behavior. Claudio then falls for his own lie, believing that Don Pedro is trying to win Hero for himself. There is no legitimate reason that Claudio should have forgotten his plan so quickly except that he expects to be lied to. All is not well in Messina and the apparent banality has led gossip and miscommunication to thrive. When Claudio is tricked into believing that Hero has been unfaithful, he announces it to everyone on the day of their wedding. Leonato immediately believes him despite the fact that he has produced no proof and the fact that Hero says it’s a lie. The only scenario in which Leonato would wish the death of his only child would be if an underlying social tension were already present. Misconception and lies run amuck in this community. It is not only allowed, but it is encouraged. Claudio, Don Pedro, Hero, Ursula, and Leonato had to trick Beatrice and Benedick to fall in love with each other. This decision was accepted by everyone immediately, denoting no recognition that tricking people and toying with their emotions is wrong. Much Ado About Nothing emphasizes that an environment in which misconceptions and lies are tolerated, they will consume everything and tear apart the society.
ReplyDeleteI think that this play uses deception and miscommunication in many different ways. Some characters think that by using deception they are actually helping other characters. For example, in act 3 when Beatrice is overhearing a conversion between Hero and Ursula, which they use to their advantage. They talk of Benedick and how much he loves Beatrice, yet Beatrice does not reciprocate. Hero says:
ReplyDelete"No, rather I will go to Benedick
And counsel him to fight against his passion;
And truly I'll devise some honest slanders
To stain my cousin with. One doth not know
How much an ill word may empoison liking"(3.1.87-91).
They trick Beatrice into feeling bad and try to bring them together. But sometimes, this may not always be the case.
When Claudio's friends tell him of Hero cheating on him, and lying, they hurt a situation that never needed to be there. They cause the wedding to be stopped and Claudio think that Hero is nothing but lying scum. Although this is a comedy and everything works out in the end, that could have not have been the case. Deception in this play is used a lot, and it harms people, and brings people together. It just all depends on the situation and how deception is used.
Throughout Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, there is constant miscommunication and misrepresentation between characters. This trend is one of the attributes that makes the play so funny in the first place. However, when certain instances of miscommunication in this play are looked at more closely, a pattern emerges. This play is sending the message that miscommunication and misrepresentation are necessary to allow people to appreciate the true world and make certain realizations.
ReplyDeleteThe relationship between Beatrice and Benedick is a perfect example of this. In the first half of the play, it is obvious that these two characters hate each other with a passion. This attitude changes however when their friends lie to them about the other’s feelings for them. In a staged conversation between Leonato, the Prince, and Claudio, Leonato comments how Beatrice, “should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviors seemed ever to abhor,” (2.3.102-4). Leonato is making this up simply to mess with Benedick, whom he knows is listening around the corner. In a similarly staged conversation between Hero and Ursula, Hero says, “My talk to thee must be how Benedick is sick in love with Beatrice,” (3.1.21-2). Again, Hero is making this up because she knows that this will make Beatrice love Benedick back. In each of these staged conversations, a misrepresentation of another person’s true feelings makes Beatrice and Benedick both realize that they should, and really already do, love each other. What was underlying feelings now become exposed because of this miscommunication.
Another instance of where a person comes to appreciate the true world more through miscommunication is Claudio. After the Claudio accuses Hero of being unfaithful at the wedding, many pretend that she is dead to make Claudio appreciate what he lost. Leonato, in a conversation with Claudio, says, “And [Hero] lies buried with her ancestors, oh, in a tomb where never scandal slept, save this of hers, framed by villainy,” (5.1.77-9). Here, Leonato is misrepresenting whether or not Hero is dead or alive because he wants Claudio to feel some amount of pity when he realizes that she is, in fact, alive. In this way, miscommunication allows for Claudio to appreciate more fully the woman he was going to marry than he did before.
In both cases mentioned above, miscommunication allowed for people to make realizations about the world that they would have otherwise not seen. Beatrice and Benedick fall in love and Claudio more fully appreciates Hero. Miscommunication is a necessary tool that allows people to fully understand the true world.
Much Ado About Nothing exemplifies the cliché “things are not always as they appear to be”. If certain character in Much Ado had not taken what they saw or heard at face value, many of the problems could have been avoided. The only time that the character did not fall a deception was in Act 2 Scene 2, when Don John trick Claudio into thinking that Don Pedro has one Hero for himself. When Benedict realizes that Claudio thinks that the Princes is wooing Hero for himself, he talks to the Prince, who immediately clarifies that he would never try to steal Hero from Claudio an that he was just trying to help. Because Benedict actually went an the person accused about the accusation, the whole conflict was avoided. It shows that you should not immediately believe what you hear. You should take the time to make sure you have all the facts straight
ReplyDeleteThe play also shows that deception is not necessarily a bad thing. What makes it bad or good is based on what the goal of the deceiver is in doing the deception. For example Don John trying to break up Claudio’s and Hero’s wedding through deception is bad because his intent was evil. But the deception used to get Benedict and Beatrice together was good because it was intended to make them happy. The play shows the importance and power of deception and lying in our society. We need lying for our culture to function, if people did not deceive each other in small ways each day no one would be able to get along. For example telling someone you like their shirt even if you do not, instead of telling them you hate it. But it can also cause problems if used badly, like lying about cheating on a test.
ReplyDeleteThe play is plainly saying that one must be on the outside of a situation to see things clearly. The character Dogberry constantly has problems with communication when he is speaking in simple dialogue. No one can understand him but he can understand everyone else. The character Leonato cannot communicate with Dogberry in Act 3 scene 5 and ends up being fooled by Don John into thinking that his daughter was an immodest person. Yet Dogberry against all odds reveals the villain as Don John. In the conversation he has in act 4 scene 2, he actually says, “Why, this is flat perjury, to call a prince’s brother villain” (4.2.43-4). This is actually what leads Dogberry to the information clearing Hero’s name, Don John is a villain. Don John had paid off Conrade and Barachio to frame Hero of being unfaithful. No one else can figure this out this plot because everyone else in the play is completely tied up in the relationship between Claudio and Hero. I don’t really think that Dogberry even knows that he is doing what he is doing. I think the main focus of this situation is to shows that those on the inside cannot solve their own problems. This was even a theme in The Merchant of Venice because Antonio needed Portia, an outsider, to come in and solve his pound of flesh problem. She can do this because of her fresh view of the situation. It seems like outside characters and inside character could represent more reasonable or practical characters and emotional characters.