Much Ado About Nothing: The movie vs. the play
...eatrice is a strong minded, sharp-tongued woman; she has sterling traits of character, but is, on the whole, unlovely” (4). Her quickness of intellect makes her superior to any man of the company. Unfortunately, Beatrice’s intellectual acuteness has covered up the emotional nature, but this is still alive, and gives out a few straggling sparks. Beatrice, who initially disparages love sneering, ‘I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me’ (1.1.120-122), but her first words (1.1.28-89) have “already betrayed her interest in Benedick, although she covers it with a veneer of witty insults and teasing” (2). Later, she rejects these attitudes and becomes his betrothed. “She in fact loves him all along, as the audience knows; her own awareness comes only with the assurance that he loves her” (2). Hero’s reticence is nicely contrasted with Beatrice’s brashness. Hero is the well-trained daughter of an upper-class family. She obeys her father implicitly and accepts the husband chosen for her. “Obviously she is not much in love with Claudio, whom she barely knows. Nobility is her sole characteristic and her only asset” (6). Hero speaks only six times in the first two acts, and then murmurs “banalities or responds perfunctorily to insignificant, factual inquiries” (6). “How definite is her picture; yet how little she says! She offers no resistance; she makes no reflection; it is her supreme happiness to dwell in the feelings of domestic life” (4). When the impending engagement is announced, Hero, like Claudio, needs to be prompted by Beatrice to divulge her feelings and then speaks in private to Claudio alone. This image of a docile and reserved woman is quite the opposite of Beatrice’s boldness and eagerness to speak her mind. “Beatrice and Benedict’s ‘merry war.’ for all its wrangling, suggests a true engagement of personalities” (1). “Both are convinced of the folly of love on proof of their own observation” (5). For Beatrice, men are clearly made of earth and it is therefore unreasonable to ‘make an account’ of oneself to a ‘clod of a wayward marl’ (II. i. 62-3), and for Benedick man is clearly a fool when he ‘dedicates his behaviors to love’ (II. iii. 9). Their perception of love and what it entails is slightly blinding. “To say truth, these wise ones - in spite of sharp eyes and shrewd tongues, in spite of challenging Cupid and scorning matrimony - these wise ones have failed to see or understand their own inward qualities” (5). Though in a relationship formed through deception, “they were, in fact, disguised to each other; the trick simple tears off the disguise” (4). Singly or together, in spite of their failure to known themselves, “these two serve as yardsticks for measuring the disproportionate in others, while missing the disproportionate in themselves” (6). When Hero is cruelly rejected on false evidence of promiscuity, Beatrice proves her essential goodness, believing in her cousin’s innocence in the face of the evidence and demanding aid from Benedick. When Beatrice asks him to support the maligned Hero, Benedick agrees. “Trusting in his certainty of Beatrice’s essential decency, Benedick has grown from shallow misogyny to implicit faith in his lover” (3). His maturation, along with Beatrice’s corresponding development, is “the chief psychological theme of the play” (3). “The two witty lovers become involved in a serious conflict, bolstered by each other’s trust” (2). In asking for Benedick’s aid, Beatrice confirms her love and acknowledges his. The brief passage in which they declare their love (IV.i. 255-end) is perhaps the most eloquent love scene in the work, and they become believable as complex and developing individuals. Both Benedick and Beatrice gain a new and much more complex equilibrium and dignity. “Both pledge themselves by their ‘soul’ to Hero’s cause, and hence to each other” (6). Not only will they marry, but will marry each other; such is their comic retribution. Claudio and Hero are the ultimate products of a fashionable code, “thoughtless conformists who question nothing, least of all themselves” (6). “Claudio expresses his love for Hero…but only after he has assured himself that she is an heiress” (1). We never see him alone with her, and their relationship seems insubstantial. His apparent lack of sentiment is further emphasized by the manner in which he accepts the false report that Don Pedro has won Hero for himself and the method in which he readily denounces her at the wedding. Furthermore, her apparent death leads him to no real soul searching, and her forgiveness and their “subsequent reconciliation are sketchily presented” (1). “Certainly the characters of the main plot are less convincing than those of the subplot” (1). Beatrice and Benedick are the relationship centered on substance and intellect compared to Hero and Claudio‘s shy love. F...