Shakespeare and Much Ado About Nothing - Essay Example

Roman drama also reflected Etruscan influences, which emphasized circus-like elements and Atellan farces. The latter were short improvised farces with stock characters and costumes and masks based on domestic life or mythology burlesqued or parodied. The stock characters included Bucco: braggart, boisterous, Pappas: foolish old man and Dossenus: swindler, drunk, hunchback. Greek themes were romanised by the principal dramatists by introducing roman allusions into Greek originals. Other forms of stage performances like mime (verisimilitude) and pantomime (dumb play) were prevalent but roman comedy had certain characteristic features: all were based on Greek New Comedies, roman allusions, Latin dialogue, varied poetic meters and witty jokes.

The plays had short lines like a tennis match, the comedy was slapstick and songs were included. (Trumbull 2005) The plot of Much Ado About Nothing was melodramatic in the mould of roman theatre, with its scene of action set in Messina in Italy. The play's innocent female protagonist Hero was victim of mere slander; she was not really dead; she was united with Claudio at the end, which they might have been at the beginning - therefore the whole thing was much ado about nothing and resolved itself into lovely comedy with no discord left behind.

The play's characters were dense and colorful: the language laden with grandiose metaphor and ornate rhetoric. The characters that peopled the play spoke in witty banter that was adored in noble households. Benedick, Claudio's friend notes of his speech: "His words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes" (II.iii.18-19). The characters had to maintain their civility of speech even when they did not feel it: for e.g. when Claudio suspected Don Pedro was wooing Hero for himself and not for Claudio, he could not drop his civility.

Even the courtiers were expected to speak in highly contrived language.The play begins on a grandiose note with the hero Claudio a young soldier who won acclaim for his fighting prowess returning to Messina after a successful military campaign. He falls in love - at first sight - with the beautiful and virtuous Hero, daughter of Leonato, a respected, well-to-do and elderly noble. Claudio, too shy to express his love, seeks the help of the prince, Don Pedro under whom he was fighting as a soldier.

While the surrogate wooing is under way and about to blossom Don John, the illegitimate brother of Don Pedro weaves his intriguing web to separate the couple. He nearly succeeds when Claudio falls for his machinations and derides the noble Hero in coarse language on the eve their marriage in public in the church. Such is the devil's cleverness that he even convinced the lady's own father of her infidelity.Romanesque deception as an undercurrent plays a major role in the play; sometimes malevolent and sometimes benign: Don Pedro's proxy wooing of Hero for friend Cludio, and Benedick and Beatrice's ironical subplot in which the reluctant lovers were brought together by friends ending in happy proclamation of love, Don John's using Borachio and Margaret in his