37 Days of Shakespeare, Day 35: Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing, first broadcast December 22nd, 1984

• When was it written? Probably 1598 or 1599, possibly his 17th play
• What’s it about? Soldiers return from war to a lovely palazzo in Messina, Italy. Young Claudio quickly falls in love with a young lady named Hero, and Benedick loves Beatrice too, but neither of them will admit it. Benedick and Beatrice’s friends trick them into admitting they like each other. Evil Prince John tricks Claudio into thinking Hero has cheated on him, which Claudio takes badly, so Beatrice makes Benedick swear to kill Claudio, but bumbling sheriff Dogberry eventually solves the case and all ends happily.
• Most famous dialogue: I’ll go with “Man is a giddy thing”
• Sources: Matteo Bandello’s Tales, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and others …but the Beatrice-Benedick romance seems to be original to Shakespeare!
• Interesting fact about the production: You may have noticed that these final plays are all bottom of the barrel, with the big exception of this one. If they were starting with the most appealing plays, how did it take them so long to get to this stone-cold classic? Well, the story is very interesting. They originally intended to start the entire series with this play and shot it with Michael York and Penelope Keith! (Yes, Margo from The Good Life / Good Neighbors!) For some reason that has been lost to time, the BBC decided they didn’t like the result and canned it, starting the series with Romeo and Juliet instead, which was originally supposed to be the second episode. After that, it just never worked out to reshoot it until they had almost finished the series, so here we get it as the antepenultimate episode. Hey, I’m not complaining, it’s nice to get one more classic in amongst all these forgotten ones.
• Best insult:
• Beatrice and Benedick say many cruel things about each other, and Claudio says many cruel things about Hero at the wedding, but somehow my favorite is when Benedick insults someone who is singing a song: “An he had been a dog that would have howled thus, they would have hanged him.”
• I’ll also note: “Scambling, outfacing, fashionmonging boys, That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, Go anticly and show outward hideousness”
• Best words: unhopefullest, vagrom
• Best production of this play I’ve seen: I’ve seen lots of great ones. The best one was probably at the Globe in London, with a bicycle-riding Dogberry zipping through the groundlings. But of course my heart lies with a Barbie-themed production wherein my daughter made her Shakespearean debut as Dogberry.
• Notable Names in the BBC Adaptation: Just Jon Finch as Don Pedro.

How’s the cast?

• They’re delightful. Robert Lindsay’s Benedick and Cherie Lunghi’s Beatrice do a good job keeping things effervescent until things darken, then they play the weightier scenes just as well.

How’s the direction by Stuart Burge?

• He does a great job eliciting strong performances and the show looks great too. This is the only episode of the ones I’ve seen so far with really gorgeous realistic sets. All shot indoors of course, but it seems to have 10x the budget of other episodes.

Storyteller’s Rulebook: Give Them Layers of Text to Play

My favorite filmed Shakespeare is the Kenneth Brannagh version of this play, so this had a lot to live up to. As it turns out, this is also excellent, but can’t compete. Most obviously because that one could shoot outdoors, but really on every level. The performances are all good here, but in the hands of all-time great actors like Denzel Washington and Emma Thompson, the parts shine a little brighter.

Brannagh finds little moments to add more kick to. When Don Pedro suddenly says to Beatrice “Will you have me, lady?” it’s usually played as just merry banter, but Washington and Thompson have a delicate moment. The two characters manage to both play it off as a joke but they both also recognize that it’s potentially serious, and the performers let that all play on their faces, lightning fast.

(The only element where this production is superior is Prince John. Keanu Reeves can be a great movie star, but Shakespeare is not his happy place.)

Rulebook Casefile: Look for Ironies

Benedick and Beatrice are always sparring whenever they meet each other. Their friends think they really love each other, deep down. So a group of men contrives to be overheard by Benedick saying that Beatrice is secretly in love with him, and likewise a group of women let themselves be overheard by Beatrice saying that Benedick loves her. As it turns out, that’s all it takes.

What makes it delightful is that this is an elaborate deception, but no one’s actually lying. The friends really believe that each loves the other already.

After hearing about Beatrice’s hidden feelings for him, Benedick is suddenly besotted and, when he takes his usual abuse, he sees nothing but hidden meanings …and he’s right. She is thinly veiling her love for him in her abuse. He has been deceived in a way that reveals the truth.

Straying from the Party Line: Does This Play Shoot Down Advice I Had in My Book?

In this post from 2013 (and in my first book) I complained about stories with couples who might say “We bicker all the time with rapid-fire, razor-sharp wit, but we really just want to jump each other’s bones!” I point out that screenwriters might cite His Girl Friday as their source, but they’re misreading that movie, because the man and woman there don’t just have conflicting personalities, they also have conflicting goals.

But of course, it now occurs to me that I should have pointed out that the real origin of such couples was this play. And this is more of the platonic ideal of the trope, because Beatrice and Benedick really don’t have conflicting goals, just conflicting personalities. As soon as they are tricked into seeing each other differently, they realize there’s nothing keeping them apart (yet).

So why does this play work so well, when I said in that post (and my book), that it shouldn’t? One key reason is that Beatrice and Benedick haven’t just met. They are reuniting after the war and resuming a quarrel they’ve had going for years. We don’t see the origin of this bickering, which may have once had a good reason that no longer exists.

In the negative examples I cite in that post (including Daredevil and John Carter), we see this dynamic emerge instantly between men and women who have just met.

But let’s try to find other exceptions. What about the “Cheers” pilot? That certainly falls into the category of “We bicker all the time with rapid-fire, razor sharp wit, but we really just want to jump each other’s bones!” and that’s a case where they have just met, but that script is great. But again, that’s a case where they do have conflicting goals.

I’m finding myself disagreeing with my old post. The basic point was sound: conflicting goals are stronger than conflicting personalities, but as this play shows, you can get great stories out of conflicting personalities. But just to be safe either give them conflicting goals (Cheers), or make it a long-time conflict (Much Ado) or both (His Girl Friday).