preview

Essay on Compare and Contrast: Claudio and Benedick

Better Essays

Jamila Aberle
Tim Fairbairn
Shakespeare: Then and Now

Compare and Contrast: Claudio and Benedick

Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, is a play that follows a small group of friends from a high-class society in Massina. Two of this group are friends are Claudio and Benedick. In the beginning of the play they are seemingly similar, in that they both are of an upper-class upbringing and do their best to maintain their social reputation. The characters are made as to enhance their differences by the end of the play; they are foils to one another. Both Benedick and Claudio find themselves fooled by other characters in the play and have to decide what they are willing to believe is true and what is false, furthermore both …show more content…

Benedick is also concerned is his public image. He considers himself a ladies’ man of sorts and does not want to be tied down by any woman and would rather die than be wed because he does not trust women.
That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks. But that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor. (Much Ado About Nothing 1.1.229-237) As if that did not make his point, Benedick goes on to say that he would prefer then to be bound by holy matrimony. He tells his friends that if he ever does anything so ridiculous as to fall in love that as his friends they should shoot him for his follies. “If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and he that hits me, let him be clapped on the shoulder, and called Adam.” (Much Ado About Nothing 1.1.248-250) Because at this time Benedick truly believes that love is the worst fait for any man. In his attempts to find public acceptance, Claudio proves to be easily fooled into believing anything he is told despite obvious lack of proof of what he is being

Get Access