Don John opens with a customary courteous greeting before baiting both men with his declaration that he has something of interest to reveal concerning them both: ‘If your leisure served, I would speak with you / yet Count Claudio may hear; for what I would speak of concerns him.’ ‘I know not that, when he knows what I know’.
With their curiosity secured, Don Pedro conveys a rather convoluted proclamation of regret and remorse for the bad news he is about to impart, ‘You may think I love you not: let that appear hereafter…’ and when combined with his fallacious self-deprecation, we observe further his dexterity as their sympathy and trust is won.
As he continues with his tacit allegations, Don John uses a loose and undefined disparagement ‘disloyal’ which would imply a certain reluctance to accuse Hero, yet his following remark; ‘The word is too good to paint out her wickedness’ incites the other men to affix their own condemnation of her. A dramatic irony here ensures the audience’s perception of this as a further ruse whilst for the seemingly naïve and gullible Claudio and Don John, it makes the hurried offer of immediate visual evidence irresistible; ‘Go but with me tonight, you shall see her chamber-window entered’, a crude vaginal symbol is used to further offend the newly enamoured Claudio, who in his youthful inexperience has believed in his betrothed’s virginity.
Their melodramatic exclamations in response to this, one after another, serve to indicate ironically how they, who tricked Benedick, have been no less suddenly transformed. Claudio asks rhetorically ‘May this be so?’ and vows if it is, ‘…should not marry her tomorrow in the congregation, where I should wed, there I will shame her’. The marked use of sibilants serves to emphasise his fury, suggesting suspicion and fear to be the other side of Claudio’s idealisation and the aggressive denunciation may arise from a personal insecurity urging him to make such a pledge. In Messina sexual relations are complicated by conventions and illusions, Claudio has already tried and found Hero guilty before even witnessing the evidence. Such a rash conviction is reminiscent of his earlier behaviour during the masked ball in Act II Scene I which gave us foresight of Claudio’s impulsive and fickle characteristics, a man so easily influenced by the ‘hearsay’ from Don John and his own irrationality and mistrust in women. Though it is easy to criticise and condemn Claudio for such tenuous judgements, one must not disregard Messina’a patriarchal society and the sense of superiority to women which regulated masculine loyalties.
Such loyalty is evident in Don Pedro, who; when informed of Hero’s alleged infidelity, endorses Claudio’s vengeance by offering to ‘join with thee to disgrace her’. Such is Don Pedro’s influence and arrogance that Claudio offers to accompany his departure from Messina on the wedding day. We must now question Don Pedro’s willingness to join Claudio’s slandering of Hero which not only seems cowardly but most absurd having himself been the ‘accused’ by the same source of indictment – his rebel brother, the bastard Don John. Whilst for an audience of the twenty-first century this continued credulous behaviour might seem somewhat contrived, we must consider that Don John, a melodramatically sketched, stereotypical villain, serves a thematic and narrative function. His role is principally to expose the flaws within others, namely his brother Don Pedro and Claudio and highlight the shared immorality in his companions Conrade and Borachio as well as present themes of slander, noting, jealousy, honour, illusion and reality. Since the major complication of the play arises from Claudio’s denunciation of Hero on the basis of Don John’s trickery, and in fact therefore ‘nothing’ at all, the use of such a villain as a dramatic device is crucial.
Whilst only a brief episode in the play; the significance of the latter part of this scene is paramount to future events. The timing of the episode is most significant as Shakespeare distinguishes misunderstanding and misreport from deliberate and malicious deceit. We prepare ourselves for a potentially tragic consequence yet with the benefit of dramatic irony, remain optimistic that as the title suggests, this will again prove to be ‘much ado about nothing’.
