Much Ado About Nothing

Synopsis

Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon, has not only forgiven the intrigues of his bastard brother Don John, who recently led an unsuccessful rebellion against him, but he includes him in his unit as he goes to visit Leonato, governor of Messina, together with two young noblemen, Benedick and Claudio, who have served him with great distinction in the recent war.

As Don Pedro and his group arrive, we meet Leonato’s daughter Hero, and his spirited niece Beatrice. Beatrice appears to have had some sort of prior relationship with Benedick, and when they meet again they begin their customary witty bantering and scornful repartee. Claudio is attracted to Hero, and tells Don Pedro of his love. The Prince offers to help Claudio in getting Leonato’s consent, and begins to personally woo the girl for her lover by impersonating him at a masked ball that evening. Two followers of Don John, Borachio and Conrade, hear of the plan and tell Don John who insinuates to Claudio that Don Pedro is faithlessly making love on his own account. This suspicion quickly evaporates, however, when the Prince and Hero appear with Leonato who consents to the young soldier’s suit and arranges for a wedding in a week’s time.

Don Pedro, an inveterate matchmaker, proposes to Leonato and Claudio that in the interim they undertake to make Benedick fall in love, in spite of his denunciations of marriage. Hero and her companions, Margaret and Ursula, concoct a similar plan with Beatrice.

Meanwhile, Don John’s malicious mind has turned upon the impending marriage as an opportunity to bring humiliation on his brother and Claudio who has gained military glory. Realizing how easily he can play upon Claudio’s nature, he lays a plot to bring Don Pedro and Claudio to witness what will seem to be an illicit meeting between Hero and a lover. Claudio is furious when he sees the woman he assumes to be Hero in another’s arms. In fact, this pair is actually Don John’s companion, Borachio, and his lover, Margaret who is an unwitting accomplice in the plot. In his fury, Claudio determines to be revenged in public for his damaged dignity, and Don Pedro consents to accompany him to the church where, as the ceremony begins, he harshly repudiates Hero before the assembled guests. Hero, stunned and hurt, drops in a dead faint into Beatrice’s arms whose cry of anger brings Benedick to her side as the others leave.

The level-headed Friar Francis strongly suspects Don John of villainy and suggests that Leonato give out the report that his daughter has died, and await developments. In the tense moments that follow, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love for each other, but the soldier in Benedick at first recoils in horror when Beatrice commands him to kill Claudio, his old comrade and constant companion. However, he soon arrives at Beatrice’s point of view believing that the man who broke the heart and smirched the honor of the innocent Hero must die, and seeking him out he challenges Claudio to a duel.

At this juncture, the sexton, knowing of Hero’s public disgrace, solves the whole problem in a trial where Dogberry, the local constable, tells an involved story of how he and his watchman having arrested Borachio and Conrade, Don John’s henchmen. Later, Don Pedro recognizes the men, and Borachio verifies the story of Don John’s vicious plot that the watchmen overheard him tell Conrade while drunk. Claudio, genuinely distressed, offers to make amends through any penance Hero’s father may prescribe, and accedes at once to Leonato’s request that he publicly demonstrate his belief in his dead love’s innocence by hanging an epitaph on her tomb in a ceremony of song which he vows to repeat yearly, and by marrying Leonato’s niece and heir who exactly resembles his lost daughter.

When Claudio is married the next day, he joyfully discovers his veiled bride to be Hero herself. Benedick, who has just asked the good friar to marry him to Beatrice, all but loses her through a sudden tiff, but love poems written by each of them are produced which cannot be denied, and they finally declare they are marrying out of sheer pity for one another. Gaily swinging the party into a dance, Benedick bids his Prince, Don Pedro, to get himself a wife, and put off until the morrow all thought of the punishment of Don John who has just been captured in his flight from Messina.

–The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Cambridge Edition, 1936