The Presentation of the Characters Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing
In this essay I’m comparing the characters Beatrice and Hero from
Shakespeare’s play, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’.
‘Much Ado about Nothing’ is a comedy written by William Shakespeare c.
1598 – 1599. Shakespeare found the story in Orlando Furioso, which is
a great poem written by Ludovico Ariosto, however Shakespeare did come
up with the Benedick - Beatrice plot.
The attention of the characters is aimed at Claudio and Hero and their
young, romantic love and Benedick and Beatrice are the comedy pair in
the play, their witty battles of words provides great comedy.
The story is about two different sets of lovers Beatrice and Benedick
and Claudio and Hero. Beatrice and Benedick both pretend to themselves
that they hate one another but a cunning and well thought out plan by
Don Pedro (the prince of Aragon) fools both of them into love. Claudio
and Hero are made for each other and almost all the romance in the
play circles around them. The evil in the play is given by Don John
(also Don Pedro’s bastard brother), who tricks Claudio into believing
a lie. Claudio falls for this and his relationship with Hero shatters
until they marry at the end of the play to the rejoice of all good
people at Leonato’s (governor of Messina and Hero’s father) home.
My ideas about the two women are that Beatrice is a feisty one with a
great wit that everyone admires and Hero is almost the complete
opposite being obedient and demure. I also believe they lead
completely different relationships with men, I reckon Hero’s
relationship with Claudio is romantic and well placed in society for
the age and that Beatrice’s relationship with Benedick is odd because
they both, at first, say they loath each other. The relationships are
different also because in Hero’s case the relationship is
man-controlled and in Beatrice’s it is an equal partnership based on
mutual respect which is strange for Messina society.
The social system in Messina is patriarchal.
