Act 2 Scene 3 of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

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Act 2 Scene 3 of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Much of the plot is moved along by characters eavesdropping on a

conversation and either misunderstanding what they overhear or being

deceived by gossip or by a trick. Hero, Claudio, and the rest trick

Benedick and Beatrice by setting them up to overhear conversations in

which their friends deliberately mislead them. Don John’s spiteful

gossip makes Claudio and Don Pedro suspicious that Hero is disloyal.

The window trick, in which Borachio and the disguised Margaret make

love at Hero’s window, is itself a sort of overhearing. In this case,

two people spying on the scene, Claudio and Don Pedro, misunderstand

what they see, because Don John has set it up to deceive them. The

window scene restages the trick played upon Beatrice and Benedick, but

with the opposite effect. Instead of causing two people to fall in

love, it causes Claudio to abandon Hero.

When Benedick’s friends decide to enact their own benign trick to get

Benedick and Beatrice to fall in love we start to see the characters

in a new light. They know that Benedick is currently wandering around

in the garden, wondering aloud to himself how, although he knows that

love makes men into idiots, any intelligent man can fall in love. He

ponders how Claudio can have turned from a plain-speaking, practical

soldier into a moony-eyed lover. Benedick thinks it unlikely that he

himself will ever become a lover.

Suddenly, Benedick hears Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato approaching,

and he decides to hide among the trees in the arbor and eavesdrop. Don

Pedro and Claudio, noticing him there, confer quietly with each other

and decide it’s time to put their scheme into effect. They begin to

talk loudly, pretending that they have just learned that Beatrice has

fallen in love with Benedick. As the audience know what trick Claudio,

Leonato and Don Pedro are playing on Benedick there is a definite

humour to this part of the scene (seeing a grown man eavesdropping on

a conversation whilst hid in a bus and seeing his reactions to the

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