Much Ado About Nothing - Theme Summary Cards:

Marriage is front and center in Much Ado About Nothing. In the first scene in the first act, Claudio sets eyes on Hero and intends to marry her. (He moves fast.) The plot thickens: there’s scheming to marry Beatrice and Benedick, to un-marry Hero and Claudio, and then to actually marry Hero and Claudio.Marriage, though it’s the primary source of the drama, is treated like a necessary thing, otherwise the characters wouldn’t go through all the trouble it takes to get hitched. Still, though marriage is foregone conclusion, it’s also treated lightly as a constant source of jokes. Benedick only teases about marriage so much because it’s such an ever-present part of life. Another central component of marriage is the issue of deception; the butt of the marriage jokes is how everyone cheats on everyone.

Lies and cheating is ever-present in Much Ado About Nothing... but the characters never expect it. This is one gullible crew.Deception appears as the tool of villains to spread chaos and unhappiness. However, it’s also a device used by friends to improve each other’s lives. Everyone from scoundrels to nice daddy’s girls to clergymen use deviousness—so deception doesn’t come with a value judgment, it’s neither absolutely good or absolutely bad. Whether deception is okay or not depends on the intentions of the deceivers—if the intention is to promote happiness, then the deceiver is a good friend, but if the deceiver intends harm, then he’s a nasty jerk.

In a play involving so many schemes, language is an important tool (for both good and semi-evil, naturally).Characters’ feelings and intentions are hidden as often as they are illuminated by their language in Much Ado About Nothing. Total miscommunication—both intentional and unintentional—summons the drama llama, and when a character uses strong language there's a 99% chance that they're lying through their teeth.But even with everyone lying, most characters tend to take for granted that what others say is actually true... without considering other points of evidence. This, of course, leads to more troubles, and more Shakespearean comedy mayhem.

Love in Much Ado About Nothing is a super-complicated topic. First of all, none of the characters explicitly seek love out—love is always second to something else in this play. Love might be the inadvertent result of hatred, or the incidental fact of marriage. Though the play is about romance, the plot seems to highlight the fact that love is only one of many factors that goes into a love affair. Love often comes with difficulty or complication from outside circumstances (like a scheming villain), but it’s just as often thwarted by lovers themselves.

Reputations in Much Ado About Nothing seem to be easily made... and just as easily lost. The primary conflict of the play surrounds Hero, one of the female leads, unfairly losing her reputation as loyal and chaste woman. Much of the interesting drama action happens because reputations are in no way guaranteed to be accurate. What’s said or believed about a character (even though it’s taken as gospel) is as likely to be true as it is false. For example, we hear a report of Claudio before we meet him, and though the messenger praises Claudio’s maturity, Claudio proceeds to be immature for the remainder of the play.Finally, reputation also impacts how characters view themselves; characters who get wind that they have a bad reputation often attempt to improve themselves. Overall, reputation is not a reliable gauge of character in Much Ado About Nothing.

Transformation is kind of bizarre in Much Ado About Nothing. Ultimately, the good characters stay good and the villain remains bad. It's not like Don John is cuddling puppies at the end of the play, or Hero is getting in fistfights.There are, however, a lot of little changes that occur along the way, as the characters learn about themselves and each other. The largest transformations are characters moving from hating each other to loving each other... and vice versa. It’s also important that the characters begin their metamorphoses as a result of trickery or deception, both the mean-spirited and well-intentioned types. This deception tends to cause strong emotions, which ultimately drive the transformations.

Gender (always a loaded theme) is super-loaded in Much Ado About Nothing.A bunch of characters are subject to limitations and expectations because of their gender: Hero willingly submits to her father as his daughter, but she’s equally willing to submit to her husband as his wife. Still, more than in many of Shakespeare’s other plays, gender is often used as a cover or excuse. Benedick and Beatrice claim to be looking for impossible idealized forms of the other sex; but in reality, they’re likely just afraid of admitting they’re in love. In addition, both genders have the same expectations about each other in love—the men joke about being cuckolded (as if they expect women to be unfaithful) and the women are told they must put up with men’s deception too. In a play where a woman (Beatrice) is arguably the most interesting and strong character, gender limitations aren’t as central as the expectations each gender has of the other.

Pride is everywhere in Much Ado About Nothing—not because any of the characters suffer from pridefulness, but mostly because characters are made susceptible when their pride is wounded. Pride is damaged and preyed upon more often than it’s inflated in this play. Both Beatrice and Benedick are inspired to love each other when they’re accused of being too prideful to do so. Claudio and Leonato both suffer wounded pride when Hero is thought to be disloyal, and ultimately Claudio tries to rescue his pride by defaming of Hero. Though pride is not often an explicit motivation or end for any of the characters, it’s a powerful force that influences their actions and feelings.

Maturity operates in Much Ado About Nothing as a marker of age and veneration, but also of personal growth. The young characters—Claudio, Benedick, Beatrice, and Hero—are all immature in matters of love, because they have yet to figure out how to deal with it in a way that doesn’t compromise them. The older characters, like Leonato and Don Pedro, have the respect that comes with age—they’re wiser in the ways of the world—but they lose out because of their age too. When Claudio refuses to fight Leonato and Antonio, he says it’s because they’re old men without teeth.