“Much Ado About Nothing” has a very similar style to our contemporary romantic comedy. And while the romance and obstacles to the union of Claudio and Hero form the main plot, the action in “Much Ado About Nothing” is mainly about Benedick and Beatrice, and their relationship. That sub-plot is about the “merry war” of the sexes between Beatrice and Benedick who “…are not teenagers, but possibly in their late twenties or older” (Lukacs 92). This “merry war” (“Much Ado About Nothing” I.i.56) between the two is given through their witty word play:

Benedick. What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

Beatrice. Is it possible disdain should die while she hath

such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?

Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you

come in her presence.

Benedick. Then is courtesy a turncoat. – But it is certain

I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I

would I could find in my heart that I had not

a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.

Beatrice. A dear happiness to women: they would else have

been troubled with a pernicious suitor. (“Much Ado About Nothing” I. i. 111-120)

The play suggests that Beatrice was in love with Benedick before the play but he had deceived her and their relationship ended. Benedick now claims that he will never get married. Beatrice is an intelligent girl. Meader asserts that “Most of Shakespeare’s lovers appear to fall in love at the first meeting” and that “Beatrice who has apparently been in love with Benedick before the action of “Much Ado About Nothing”, may have had formal courtship earlier” (Meader 82):

Pedro. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of

Signior Benedick.

Beatrice. Indeed, my lord, he lent it me a while; and I gave

him use for it, – a double heart for his single one:

marry, once before he won it of me with false

dice, therefore your grace may well say I have

lost it. (“Much Ado About Nothing” II.i.266-272)

Whenever Beatrice and Benedick come together, they seem to have a fight through their witty insults. They are as if competing in intelligence. Beatrice, like Benedick, does not want to marry which is because she has not yet found the right man and because she does not want to give up her freedom with marriage.

Home

According to Benedick, a man who gets married will “wear his cap with suspicion” (I.i.184), and will have doubts that his wife has once had other lovers. He says, if the Count marries, the Count will “thrust [his] neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays” (I.i.186-87) (Friedman 78).

Benedick speaks ill of marriage in the following lines:

The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible

Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull’s horns and

set them in my forehead; and let me be vilely

painted; and in such great letters as they write,

‘Here is good horse to hire’ let them signify

under my sign, ‘Here you may see Benedick, the

married man.’ (“Much Ado About Nothing” I.i.246-252)

He imagines himself with horns on his head. – Cuckoldry was very typical in the Renaissance – He is worried that he will be cheated by women if he gets married. Friedman explains it as:

Benedick’s fears of cuckoldry and emasculation through marriage tend to be confirmed by Beatrice, whom Don Pedro has picked out as “an excellent wife for Benedick” (2.1.329) … Beatrice speaks openly and sharply of her preferences in a spouse, which draws the disapproval of her uncles Leonato and Antonio, who complain that she is “shrewd of [her] tongue” and “too curst” (2.1.17-18). Beatrice … implies that, were she to marry, she would make her partner a cuckold, for she claims that she will have “no horns” only if God sends her “no husband” (2.1.23-24). (Friedman 81)