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William Shakespeare 's Much Ado About Nothing

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Amber Kellmer
19 October, 2015
Brother Waddell
ENG373 Analytical Paper
TITLE
The presence and display of love in Much Ado About Nothing is very different depending on which character or relationship one focuses on. Benedick and Beatrice show their love for each other like a school boy, who picks on his crush to show he likes her. In contrast, Hero and Claudio’s relationship is much more innocent and simple. Shakespeare shows the themes of love, the difference between appearance and reality, and deception, through Hero, Claudio, Beatrice, and Benedick and their relationships with each other.
Benedick and Beatrice have a constant battle of wits with each other throughout the play, which is very different from the “bashful sincerity and comely love” (4.1.54) between Hero and Claudio. In act one scene one lines 58-61, Claudio says about Benedick and Beatrice, “There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them,” (1.1.58-61). Shakespeare uses this childish “skirmish of wits” between Beatrice and Benedick as a “foil” against the pure love that Claudio and Hero, to make Claudio and Hero’s love seem even greater. The foil technique originally came from when people placed a hard shiny metal underneath a gem to make the gem shine even brighter. One theme of the play, love, is shown by contrasting these types of love between the characters. The two kinds of love between the couples are vastly different: the heartfelt

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