Discuss the different kinds of humour in the play. Is it effective today?

Jordan Anderson

U5C

Much Ado About Nothing

Discuss the different kinds of humour in the play. Is it effective today?

What is its purpose?

Much ado about nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare. There are many kinds of humour in the play. The first kind of humour we come across is the skirmishes of wit between Beatrice and Benedick. Beatrice and Benedick are both sarcastic people and incidentally are sarcastic about each other. Sarcasm is a very good kind of humour, which is still effective to this day. Many people understand sarcasm and it’s a good way of putting a point across. The main purpose of sarcasm is probably mockery. Sarcasm is usually used when you say something that you don’t mean literally, the point of this particular sarcasm is to tell the audience that Beatrice and Benedick don’t exactly see eye to eye and basically mock each other.

Another kind of humour in the play we find as we go on is stupidity. This mainly is featured around Dogberry and Verges. Dogberry and Verges have a funny sort of relationship. Dogberry is the more intelligent of the two where as Verges is a little more on the dim side. The funny side here is that Dogberry isn’t as clever as he thinks he is. He often uses long complicated words which actually make no sense “is most tolerable and not to be endured”. In this quote Dogberry is talking about the watch talking and not paying attention to ...

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Another kind of humour in the play we find as we go on is stupidity. This mainly is featured around Dogberry and Verges. Dogberry and Verges have a funny sort of relationship. Dogberry is the more intelligent of the two where as Verges is a little more on the dim side. The funny side here is that Dogberry isn’t as clever as he thinks he is. He often uses long complicated words which actually make no sense “is most tolerable and not to be endured”. In this quote Dogberry is talking about the watch talking and not paying attention to their duty and so here he means to say intolerable. Again he says “you, constable, are to present the princes own person” this is funny again as he misses out a key part of the word in which he is meaning to say represent. This humour with Dogberry continues constantly through the play. It is still effective today because we have an understanding of what he means to say and so it comes across as funny where as in Shakespeare’s time it may not as been as funny as many people would have been poorly educated and so wouldn’t perhaps understand. The main purpose of this is just basically adding a bit of extra humour to the play.

The final kind of humour in the play is probably deceit. This is where towards the end of the play Beatrice and Benedick are fooled by their friends into believing that they both love each other. Margaret and Hero leave notes for Beatrice pretending them to be from Benedick telling Beatrice how much he loves her. Whereas Don Pedro and Claudio do the same for Benedick. They also leave notes for them both to meet up at the same time. Both Beatrice and Benedick start to believe it and change their views on each other. This is funny to the audience as they get to see how both Beatrice and Benedick ponder about these love letters they have received. It all comes out in the end however when it comes to them actually getting married and finding out that they have been deceived by their friends. This humour is effective because we as the audience can see what is going on when they are being fooled where as the characters cant and so start believing and reacting accordingly. The main purpose of this set up is again to add humour like the others but also its bringing two people who clash so often together which is even funnier to which they come to the point of marriage.