Chapter Synopsis and Commentary 1 of Much Ado About Nothing - Study Guide by William Shakespeare

This is ironic: Leonato is telling Hero to act according to his instructions, but he does not know what the situation really is. He is powerful in the sense that he can instruct Hero and expect her to obey him, but powerless in the sense that the Prince and Claudio have actually arranged everything. Leonato's role as the organiser of his daughter's marriage has been usurped just as he has retired from the battle-field, only able to utter aphorisms about war while no longer being able to actually take part in the fighting (see 1.1.8-9). Shakespeare has set up a dynamic between old and young in which the younger generation rises to overtake the elder. This, as in King Lear and The Tempest, exists in Much Ado About Nothing in the form that the younger generation succeeds by its vitality alone. Claudio and the Prince are in the wrong: they should not have by-passed Leonato in their plans for Claudio and Hero. Their lack of wisdom or experience becomes more serious as the play goes on. Act 5 Scene 1 shows Don Pedro and Claudio using brute force alone to show their superiority over Leonato and Antonio, who they describe as "two old men without teeth" (114-115). They refuse to hear Leonato's accusation that they have wronged Hero and mock the two old men who in fact deserve their respect. Don Pedro is using his social superiority and greater strength to ridicule Leonato; suddenly social codes of politeness are breaking down as the characters' allegiances become very clear.

Claudio has inherited traditional expectations and images of women: the woman he choses as a wife must be a virgin before her wedding and faithful after it. Don John, motivated by hatred of Don Pedro and Claudio, intervenes to thwart Claudio's expectations. He and his hench-man Borachio plan that Borachio will seduce Margaret, Hero's "waiting gentlewoman", and call her Hero while they are having sex. Don John will bring Claudio and Don Pedro to see them, with the aim that the Prince and Claudio will mistake Margaret for Hero and so think that Hero has been unfaithful. Because of Claudio's susceptibility to such slanders, the plan works perfectly and Hero is unjustly disgraced. Claudio choses to expose her at her wedding in language which shows his anger not just at Hero's disloyalty, but also at the way in which she has shattered his expectations. He calls her a "rotten orange", an "approved wanton", a "pampered animal / That rage[s] in savage sensuality" and Don Pedro calls her a "contaminated stale" (4.1.30- 64). Claudio's first lengthy speech in this scene is underpinned by images of illusion and reality. Hero is "but the sign and semblance of her honour"; she blushes "like a maid"; in fact everything in her external appearance suggests purity and virtue:

"Oh, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
Comes not that blood as modest evidence
To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear,
All you that see her, that she were a maid
By these exterior shows? But she is none;
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed.
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty." (4.1.31-40)

Claudio cannot see beyond what Hero seems to be to what she really is; the irony is that her appearance and her true character correlate exactly, and if Claudio had known her as a person and not just as an image then he would not have distrusted her. Worse still than Claudio's accusation of Hero is Leonato's compliance with it. Don Pedro, Claudio and Don John dominate the action until their exit at line 110, showing the tendency of the young people to take over even when they are in the wrong. After they have gone, however, Leonato moves into their role as the indignant accusers. He uses the same strong, cruel language as Claudio:

"Oh, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again
And salt too little which may season give
To her foul tainted flesh!" (4.1.137-41)

Leonato has brought Hero up to be the model of a virtuous young girl; he too is having his image of her shattered, and this provokes such a strong feeling in him that he says he would rather she died than live in such shame. Social expectation has created a situation where men are judging a woman for not conforming to a stereotype that they have created. The irony here is that Hero does conform to this stereotype and that she has never questioned the way in which she has been expected to behave. Social stereotypes, Shakespeare points out, are the combined product of those who set them and those who fulfil them. In Act 4 Scene 1 he makes his characters act not according to who they really are but