Much Ado About Nothing

for man is a giddy thing

Much Ado About Nothing. Nothing or noting, does the play’s title truly mean much ado over nothing? Or, does it mean much ado about noting? That is the question the audience must answer, whether the play is about nothing or noting.

And since through the course of the play an innocent bride is slandered and maligned, a plan devised by a noted villain, well, Shakespeare is teaching audiences to learn how to take note, to properly perceive what’s happening around us. The play is about being rightly attuned to the truth in a time of slander, propaganda, and villainy. And of course, in the hands of our gifted playwright, the Catholic audience knows that an innocent and perfect bride is a symbol and stand in for the bride of Christ, the Church.

In England at the time, with the government slandering the Church, the bride of Christ, and in her stead propping up a State church and forcing obedience to this State church, it is no surprise that a frequent theme of our beloved Catholic playwright are innocent brides wrongly slandered. Spanning the whole of his cannon, from beginning to end, from Titus Andronicus to Much Ado About Nothing to The Winter’s Tale, the theme of an innocent bride wrongly slandered is used to teach and remind his kinsmen and countrymen to note what is happening to the Bride of Christ in England. She is innocent yet slandered, she is spotless yet maligned, she is pure yet wrongly accused. And Shakespeare asks us to note what is truly going on.

And so, in the key wedding scene, when Claudio is to wed Hero, instead of wedded bliss with his beloved, he being deceived by the play’s villain, publicly accuses her of being “an approved wanton” for she talked “with a ruffian at her chamber window” and proceeded with “vile encounters they have had a thousand times in secret.” Today’s slanderers call her the whore of Babylon, similar to an approved wanton.

Of course, Hero was innocent. She was framed by the play’s villain. And yet, Claudio and Don Pedro did not note what truly happened, only believed the insinuations and lies of Don John. Noting that deception was afoot, the Friar Francis offers his wisdom.

Hear me a little,
For I have only been silent so long,
And given way unto this course of fortune,
By noting of the lady. I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire
To burn the errors that these Princes hold
Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool,
Trust not my reading nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.

Moments later, the Friar offers the plan.

Pause awhile
And let my counsel sway you in this case.
Your daughter here the Princes left for dead.
Let her awhile be secretly kept in
And publish it that she is dead indeed.
Maintain a mourning ostentation,
And on your family’s old monument
Hang mournful epitaphs and do all rites
That appertain unto a burial.

The purpose of publishing her death was to change slander to remorse.

Marry, this well carried, shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse. That is some good.
But not for that dream I on this strange course,
But on the travail look for greater birth.
She, dying, as it must be so maintained,
Upon the instant that she was accused,
Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused
Of every hearer. For it so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth
Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,
Why then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio.
When he shall hear she died upon his words,
Th’ idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination,
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come appareled in more precious habit,
More moving, delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul
Than when she lived indeed. Then shall he mourn,
If ever love had interest in his liver,
And wish he had not so accused her,
No, though he thought his accusation true.
Let this be so, and doubt not but success
Will fashion the event in better shape
Than I can lay it down in likelihood.
But if all aim but this be leveled false,
The supposition of the lady’s death
Will quench the wonder of her infamy.
And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,
As best befits her wounded reputation,
In some reclusive and religious life,
Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.

Moments later he says,

Come lady; die to live. This wedding day
Perhaps is but prolonged. Have patience and endure.

There is so much more to this great comedy, and I would recommend you watch, read, or hear it. But what is written today should be enough to note the important theme often seen not only in Shakespeare but in the world, that the bride of Christ is at once spotless yet slandered, true yet lied about, pure yet maligned. Shakespeare wrote many comedies for his country so that they would learn to note the truth and may come to belief in Christ. Or, as Shakespeare states, “Serve God, love me, and mend.”

La Pietà by Michelangelo (1499)