Social Relations and the Social Order in Much Ado About Nothing

Summary

The distinction between appearance and reality is articulated as a theme in Shakespeare’s comedies in two distinct ways: (1) fortune, or some other external force, imposes on the characters some incorrect perception of reality, and, as the plot proceeds, that misperception rectifies itself (e.g. Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night’s Dream); or (2) some characters voluntarily create deceptions that impel the plot, initially by deceiving other characters about reality and ultimately by demonstrating the necessity of distinguishing appearance from and achieving useful knowledge about reality (e.g. Love’s Labour’s Lost, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, The Tempest). Much Ado About Nothing fits neither pattern, for the series of deceptions that compose the plot, although created by the characters, are lived through en route to other deceptions, and are not overcome; false perception characterizes rather than disrupts the norm of the society depicted in the play. The characters adopt superficial attitudes toward what, in other dramas, might have been metaphysical crises; their overt considerations never become epistemological, as will those of Hamlet, Troilus, and Othello-the latter two at least involved in similar plots but in radically different societies.