The conflict between words and actions plays an important part in the final scene of the play, Beatrice and Benedick who were once all words these words covered up there emotions and it took them this long to realise there love, were now afraid of using words and preferred to show there love with actions. Claudio has to marry Hero and Claudio has not changed, he still expresses his feelings in words, this shows that Claudio and Hero don’t start there marriage on as firm ground as Beatrice and Benedick. The book ends with an action, and the audience may find the ending abrupt and unfulfilling, as there are no words; just a dance.
At the start of the final scene of the play, Claudio is going to be told who he should marry as a punishment by killing Hero, and he is willing to marry anyone, he is taking his marriage so lightly and does not care, about who she is “let me see your face”, he only care about superficial looks. When it turns out to be Hero he is happy to get married to her due to her looks but there is no trust in this relationship. Claudio and Hero will marry each other, and Claudio won’t have learnt his lesson for being so sexist and not trusting Hero. Hero will never trust Claudio due to what he did to her, Hero was very close to becoming a social outcast the friars said she should go to the nunnery secluded from the outside world, when Hero supposedly died. In the book, if she had lived she would have socially died, in a way it is symbolical that Hero died. It was only by chance that Hero could once again lead a normal life, but now she had to marry the man who she was killed by. Hero is too quiet and accepting in the book, and she does not have any self-esteem so she can’t speak out against what is right and what is wrong, these were the expectations of Elizabethan woman in society. Claudio will always be afraid of being cheated on, due to the lack of trust. Women were treated as if an item of a man, and if they cheated on the man, it was a sign of weakness, this would often cause much embarrassment to the man, and he would be looked down upon among society. As Hero supposedly cheated on him, and he still does not trust her, Claudio shall always be worried the Hero will cheat on him. There is no trust left in there relationship, Claudio is only marrying Hero because he promised Leanato that he would marry her niece whoever she is.
Claudio has a very loose meaning of marriage, as did society; the audience back then would have thought it normal to be marrying as a punishment, or for money. But society now finds this strange. Even Benedick, who is so in love, is interested that Beatrice is rich “horns tipped in gold”, and he will be able to have that money to himself. Society back then often treated marriage as a financial institution, for personal gain. The father would try and find a rich enough man for his daughter, so the daughter could have a comfortable life. The man would marry so he could have a wife as a possession. Society was at fault, the different ideals of the Elizabethan’s would be very strange to our modern day society, things such as children born illegitimately becoming social outcasts. This idea would have affected the child’s growth, and when the children grew up, they would have wanted to hate everyone who had made them invisible, this is why Don John is such a spiteful person, he can’t stand to see anyone happy, as he never got a real chance to be happy. This is why he made such an evil and cruel scheme to stop Claudio and Hero from marrying. He did not even have the goodness to admit it was him, instead he ran away.
Claudio was getting married with Hero and Leanato was happy to give away her daughter to the person that nearly destroyed her life, when Claudio and Leanato were talking before Hero was to be shown to Claudio, it was a formal occasion and Claudio and Leanato were talking as if Claudio was buying something from Leanato. I don’t think Leanato will ever be happy that he gave his daughter away to Claudio, they are certainly not friends, leanato is marrying Hero to Claudio, to stop her from being a social outcast and they are just trying to tie up the loose ends in the final scene of the play.
The final scene of the play manages to finish any unresolved issues, but it feels that there is more that can be said. The scene also does end abruptly; it does not feel like an ending. Claudio is a
