Lovers of Messina in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Lovers of Messina in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Figuratively speaking, there are several ears propped to a door, eavesdropping on a conversation pivotal to Shakespeare's comedy, Much Ado About Nothing; a story about love; real, new and pretended, that began before the messenger arrives with his news. Two very different couples cling to each other or push one another away during five acts of masked balls, sighing under balconies, hysterics, a make-shift death and resurrection, attempts to compose poetry and finally, a feast. The lovers of Messina: innocent Hero, fiery Beatrice and their gallant knights, weak Claudio and comic Benedict stumble through abundant trickery, taking very different paths to reach the same goal: a happily-ever-after ending.

Hero, though one of the main characters of the play is a silent presence for the entire First and Second Acts, given a voice only when others speak about or for her. She is first introduced not by name, but as "the daughter of Signior Leonato", described by Claudio as a "modest young lady" and "the sweetest lady I ever laid mine eyes upon". Hero is described by everyone as beautiful, kind and gentle. Always she was the dutiful daughter. When her father, Leonato, instructs Hero that she must consent to a wedding proposal by Don Pedro, a man she barely knows, she happily agrees. Leonato says, "Daughter remember that I told you. If the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know the answer."

In truth, Hero and her father realize later, she had not conceded to marrying Don Pedro, but Claudio. Her willingness to transport her hand from one man to another shows that it is not in her own interests that she acts, shows that her happiness is not as important as her father's wil...

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... exchange personalities with respect to our heroines, Hero and Beatrice. While Bene*censored* loves Beatrice, writes poetry for her and attempts to woo her, Claudio scorns Hero though with real anger and not the mock anger shared by Beatrice and Bene*censored*. The two female protagonists do not exchange personalities but rather situations; Beatrice no had a new love and the prospect of marriage, while it no longer seemed that Hero would ever be married.

We can imagine the lives of the lovers of Messina as they were before the play began and we can infer how they will be when the last curtain closes; it could be a happy scene. Claudio has wronged Hero, killed her; out of her death and rebirth there might be a new love. Beatrice and Bene*censored* may very well talk themselves mad but they do share a real love, one that arose from the ashes of a pretended love.