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I love Much Ado About Nothing and have watched a lot of adaptions lately. I have noticed a trend of trying to soften Claudio’s character, to make him appear more sympathetic, to make it seem like Hero is in love with him from the start, so we, the audience, root for them being together. I understand these choices because it is a “comedy” and performers want to give audiences a comfortable, happy ending. But personally I would prefer a raw, harder hitting adaption.
Much Ado About Nothing (1993) was my first introduction to the play and I remember how jarring the wedding scene was, how frightening Claudio’s rage, how heartbreaking Hero’s fear and despair, how I kept waiting for someone to intervene, for Leonato to defend his daughter, only for him to abuse her himself. And later, when you expect Hero to be given full apologies, she receives pittance, and it makes me ache, it is dissatisfying, and that is the point.
The play is not meant to be a cute romcom between Hero and Claudio. It is about men of power abusing and ruining the reputation of an innocent woman because of a perceived slight, about how powerless women are in a world run by men, how they are not believed.
We are not meant to root for Claudio and Hero. As far as the text goes, Hero has no feelings for Claudio before their engagement. It is the Prince who woos her and then she is handed to Claudio like a trophy. He makes no effort to earn her love, because he does not need to, the Prince and her father give her to him. She sets herself to loving him because that is what is expected of her, but she has no choice, and no amount of heart eyes can change that. Her father would have given her to the Prince if he wanted her.
Let us portray Claudio for what he is… emphasise his interest in Hero being Leonato’s sole heir, how he mocks Antonio and Leonato as two old men without teeth after learning of Hero’s death. At the wedding follow the 1993 example and show him for the true violent villain he is. He brought her to the aisle before everyone and denounced her as a wanton, called her rotten. It is no accident that the real “villain”, Don John says very little in this scene. It should not be dismissed that Claudio is set on publicly shaming Hero before he has seen proof of Don John’s claims.
Yes, it is Don John’s scheme, he is a villain too, but the point is how quick Claudio and Don Pedro are to turn, that they are not as good as they present themselves to be. I don’t condone Don John’s actions at all, but the point is he is exploiting those social inequalities, bringing to light what is already there. Imagine if there had been no plot, if Claudio and Don Pedro had witnessed Borachio and Margaret’s weird roleplaying fantasy and jumped to conclusions. Would we still feel sympathetic to Claudio’s “Sinned I not but in mistaking”?
I know it has been pointed out had Hero truly cheated on Claudio as he saw it then we would be rooting for him to shame her. It is a fair point, but public shaming is still cringe especially at a time when a woman’s wellbeing hinged on a good reputation. Claudio acts like a man denied something, he ensured Hero’s reputation would never recover. Hero had no choice in her marriage to Claudio, if she did love another then why would we not root for her as much as Romeo and Juliet against Paris, as Lysander and Hermia against Demetrius?
This emphasis on virginity is important at the time, but outdated now. So why not point at it and go “isn’t this ridiculous”. In fact, the ridiculousness placed on girls being virgins does prevail in today’s society. Slut shaming is still a huge issue with fatal consequences. Leonato threatens to kill, maim his daughter should the accusations against her prove true. Honour killing still happens today. So make the audience uncomfortable, make them think “this is not right”, because it’s not.
As for Claudio’s supposed repentance, how about a version of the play where like in the First Folio and Quarto (as cited by Cedric Watts: https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=1486), Claudio does not even do the bare minimum of reading the plaque at Hero’s funeral, but assigns this duty to an unnamed Lord. As he woos in proxy, so does he mourn in proxy.
How unjust it feels that after “murdering” Hero, he should be given “another” of her kinswomen, supposedly Leonato and Antonio’s surviving heir (how fortune for Claudio). Do not show Hero happy to be reunited with Claudio, show her resigned. She must now marry this man who wronged her to save her reputation. It is not that I want Hero to suffer, but I think it is an insult to what she does suffer to dismiss it in an attempt to save Claudio’s face.
Hero’s marriage to Claudio is not love triumphing over evil, it is a tragedy. So play it that way. Show Claudio for what he is. And then let Beatrice eat his heart.
Some time ago, I listened to the University of Oxford’s lecture podcast Approaching Shakespeare. The lecture on Much Ado discusses the fact that the window scene, where Claudio and Don Pedro are deceived, takes place offstage. The professor points out that most productions or adaptations that try to soften Claudio’s character will add an onstage/onscreen depiction of that scene, and make it as visually convincing as possible that Claudio and Don Pedro should mistake Margaret for Hero. The fact that Shakespeare doesn’t depict it onstage leaves us to question whether the trick was really convincing in the first place, or whether Claudio and Don Pedro were just too willing to believe it.
At any rate, it always mystifies me when someone cites Much Ado as the quintessentially “light, frothy, romantic” Shakespeare comedy, in contrast to others that have darker undertones. I want to ask those people, “Did you read the same play I did?!”
