Is Shakespeare's 'Much Ado' Too Misogynistic to Be a Modern Day Rom-Com?

All throughout the beginning of the play, both Beatrice and Benedick use sarcasm and hide their true feelings for each other, which is the first example of tricky in their relationship. Both of them have vowed never to marry anyone; Benedick stating: "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." (1.1.232–35), while Beatrice says, "No, uncle, I'll none. Adam's sons are my brethren, and truly I hold it a sin to match in my kindred." (2.1.59–60.) Their friends see that they are the perfect match for one another, and plan to trick them into confessing their love for each other. When Benedick is in the orchard, he overhears Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato talking about how Beatrice is in love with him but is afraid he will mock her if she tells him. Benedick believes them, saying, "This can be no trick." (2.3.217.) He then goes on to say, "I will be horribly in love with her." (2.3.230–31.) Later, Beatrice hears Hero and Ursula talking about how they can't tell her that Benedick loves her because she is a scornful person. After Hero and Ursula leave, Beatrice states:

Benedick’s attitude to love & marriage in ‘‘Much Ado About Nothing’’ In the play ‘‘Much Ado About Nothing’’ by William Shakespeare, the character of Benedick shows mixed emotions towards loves and marriage throughout. In the two extracts we studied, Benedick shows a large contrast of opinions: In Act 1 Scene 1, Benedick portrays strong feelings of contempt towards love and marriage, whereas by Act 2 Scene 3, Benedick has completely changed his views and he is prepared to make the commitment and marry Beatrice, a woman he appeared to dislike in the beginning of the play and who seemed to have mutual feelings towards Benedick. Act 1 Scene 1 portrays that Benedick has a very negative attitude towards love and marriage. When conversing with

Beatrice and Benedick are interesting due to Shakespeare’s use of language. Confusion is created as to whether they love or hate each other owing to their snide comments, such as Beatrice’s response “A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours” (1.1.104), notably continuing the reference to animals, after Benedick

On the other hand Benedick and Beatrice’s relationship is different; their relationship is not superficial but deeply rooted within them. They enjoy insulting each other as Benedick says to her ‘what my lady disdain! Are you yet living?’

In the play of Much Ado About Nothing, the characters of Benedick and Beatrice have a love-hate relationship. On the surface, it appears that their relationship is built on a war of wits and insults. However, in Benedick’s soliloquy, the reader discovers that at the core of their insults actually lie the true feelings of love. It is also apparent that Benedick even sees loving each other as a competition, in that he wants to love her to a point of outdoing her love for him. Not only is Benedick constantly warring with Beatrice, but he is also undergoing an internal struggle, which is made quite apparent in Benedick’s soliloquy in Act 2 Scene 3.

Beatrice and Benedict continuously throughout the play banter back and forth with insults until Benedict who is unable to handle a woman insulting him gives up. Beatrice refuses to marry because she wants an equal partner and is unwilling to hand over her control and freedom to a husband.He believes that once married all women become

the rest of his life rather than marry a woman. Beatrice in a way is

It is Beatrice who seems better suited as the male in a relationship between her and Benedick because of the control that she has over Benedick. When Beatrice decided to go after Benedick by insulting him, it shows similarities to Lady Macbeth in the play,

In this Shakespearean comedy ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ two similarly obstinate characters of Beatrice and Benedick are presented between the rather normal relationship of characters Hero and Claudio. Shakespeare presents Beatrice and Benedick’s obstinacy towards the rather obligatory act of marriage and also their particularly similar personalities that cause reason for their familiar act of squabbling; he does this whilst also presenting two characters that are completely interested in marriage and who are hardly intellectually capable of squabbling in a similar manner. As the play unfolds both characters remain combative with one another but as love becomes the better of them, they begin to reveal that somewhat secretive sensitivity

Although Beatrice and Benedick are not yet shown as in love, a Shakespearian audience would not have thought it usual for a woman like Beatrice to be speaking as she was about Benedick. However, today it is perfectly normal for Beatrice to be talking like she is, so at the moment, the two relationships are more satisfying to the different audiences. Beatrice and Benedick's relationship has another problem. They both like to use their wit and intelligence to try and outsmart people, and mainly themselves.

In this play Shakespeare presents love sickness literally. Both Beatrice and Benedick have either ‘toothache' or are ‘exceeding ill'. As well as the change in health Shakespeare presents a transformation in language and appearance as the side effects of love. They say that Benedick ‘rubs himself with chivet', he has shaved, washed himself and put make-up on, ‘when was he wont to paint himself'. Shakespeare shows the complete change that love brings upon Beatrice by changing her prose into alternately rhyming lines of iambic pentameter in her soliloquy. Shakespeare writes that

What distinguishes Much Ado About Nothing from other plays is its ability to clearly illustrate the sexual roles of the time period. It is apparent in the female protagonists how they are socially constructed by gender. The social world of Much Ado About Nothing is “precariously founded on a denial of its most pervasive anxieties” and the “repressed fear of all that a woman represents” (Cook). Throughout the play, Shakespeare implies the world of female economy through a pair of dissimilar characters on their respective journeys to love. Whereas Hero is supposedly bought and sold to Claudio as if she were currency, Beatrice

In the play the audience is also told in so many words that there has

1. In Act I, Beatrice and Benedick engage in a witty conversation, which Leonato describes as a playful battle: “There is a kind of / merry war betwixt Signor / Benedick and her. They never / meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (1.1.58-59). Beatrice insists that she does not like Benedick at all, and insults him relentlessly throughout Act I: “It is so indeed. He is no less than a stuffed man. But for the / stuffing—well, we are all mortal” (1.1.47-48). Beatrice even goes so far as to compare Benedick to a disease when she finds out he has taken up a new best friend, Claudio: “O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease! He is sooner / caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently

William Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing, is centered around two unconventional love plots. Although the play is about the picturesque love story of Hero and Claudio, the play’s underlying focus is on the idealistic love story of Benedick and Beatrice’s complicated relationship. “Love at first sight” is a trope that pervades throughout the play and a cliche of modern romance, but the trope was contemporarily popular in Shakespeare's life and can even be found as far back in the past to ancient Greek literature. Traditionally, the mid-first century Greek novels revolved around the romance trope of “love at first sight” due to the heroine fitting the archetype of a beautiful elite woman (Lindheim). However, William Shakespeare alters this idea as characters are constantly taking second looks at one another and to the idea of marriage – in sum their idea of love changes throughout the play. In one portion of the play, Benedick rants about and disputes the conventions of love, stating how they can make a young man leave the social world of masculinity behind (2.3.6-36). Benedick’s soliloquy, 2.3.6-36, subverts the trope of “love at first sight” by associating “sight” with the truth rather than love. Benedick "sees" the underlying truth of how “love” makes a man change his masculine ways to obtain a superficial love. In this way, he refutes the convention of “courtly love,” by instead stating how the convention causes a man to leave the domain of the male world and