Claudio and Hero are romantic lovers who 'live in a world of appearances and properties which are more important than personal relationships; Benedick and Beatrice are the true romantics. To what extent do you agree with this observation?

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Georgina Everington

Claudio and Hero are romantic lovers who ‘live in a world of appearances and properties which are more important than personal relationships; Benedick and Beatrice are the true romantics.

To what extent do you agree with this observation?

This essay will explore the characters and the nature of their love for each other in William Shakespeare’s play “Much Ado About Nothing”. The play is intriguing because it seems to be mainly concerned with fate and the theme of love conquers all. However when this play was written and based love did not come into family politics. The characters are linked together in ties between family, friends and lovers. This essay will be looking more closely at the relationships between the lovers, Hero and Claudio, Beatrice and Benedick and the effects their family and friends have on their love.

The opening of the play allows us to form our first opinions about some of the main characters. The character Claudio is introduced with the word ‘honour’; he is a perfect example of a ‘suitable’ Elizabethan man. Having just returned from war we, the audience are made aware that he has performed ‘in the figure of a lamb, the feasts of a lion’ implying that Claudio has exceeded all expectations of him. This immediately presents Claudio to us as being a true romantic and a desirable gentleman for the purpose of Elizabethan marital arrangements, being as gentle as a lamb yet brave like a lion. We are very soon into the play made aware of Claudio’s feelings for Hero, Signor Leonato’s daughter. Claudio’s way of winning the heart of Hero is very conventional of the Elizabethan time, although a modern audience might question the morality of the procedure, because as he refers to her later on in the play he thinks of her as a jewel, something nice to have ownership of and to look upon, he also describes her, comparing her to the goddess ‘Dian’. In an attempt to declare his feelings of  ‘love’ to Claudio he says ‘Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites’, Claudio does not make any reference to Hero’s personality, therefore indicating that his love is merely fabricated from physical attraction. To a modern day audience this may be considered unacceptable, shallow behaviour, but during Elizabethan times that would have been common practice and perfectly acceptable. The controversial treatment of gender issues in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ would have been central to its impact on Elizabethan audiences familiar with the role of women. Women were supposed to be silent, gentle, passive and submissive, very much like the character of Hero. Hero is calm, demure and submissive which makes her too a conventional character of her time, which along with her aristocratic background, wealth and pleasant appearance makes her to an attractive female of that time.

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In the defamation scene, we are immediately inclined to think that Claudio’s love for Hero maybe false. Claudio’s way of dealing with his accusation against Hero is very cruelly made public in front of the entire wedding congregation, this may also be frowned upon by a modern audience as Claudio shames and degrades his wife-to-be and rejects her in a very humiliating, degrading manor. Claudio mistrusts Hero, and therefore rejects her as easily as he seemed to fall in love with her and believes and trusts Don Jon over Hero. Both a modern and Elizabethan audience will be able ...

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