Merry Lies: Fiction as an Improvement upon Life in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing is a play in which its main characters and the plot they are involved in move forwards to an inevitable happy conclusion solely through deceit, lies, and fabrications of identity. Without lies, Much Ado would simply be a different play, and ironically the deceit makes the play a comedy, not a tragedy. There is a notion in Christian theology, and perhaps in general, that lying is a bad thing, but in this play lying serves mostly for the good of all. Not only does the plot in Much Ado requires stories and rumors (in other words, fictions) created and propagated by its characters, but the characters themselves use self-made versions of themselves and lies to achieve their own individual goals or to make themselves better.
The two main love stories -arguably the meat and potatoes of the play- have successful happy endings thanks to elaborate schemes. Benedick, a man that considers himself too picky to fall in love with any woman, wouldn’t have fallen in love with Beatrice if it he hadn’t eavesdropped on Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato talking about how much she is in love with him. This of course was planned by them and the lie was made up specifically for Benedick’s ears. The same goes for Beatrice, a seemingly fierce independent woman that decides to fall in love with Benedick once she overhears her cousin Hero talk with her servants Ursula and Margaret about how she heard from Claudio and Don Pedro of how much he is in love with her.
The secondary parties that try to make love happen here very much enjoy manipulating the other character’s lives, and in the case of Don Pedro and Hero, this is perhaps the only way they can control their environment. Don Pedro stays single throughout the play because he is already considered old, and is only too happy to help his fellow soldiers in finding a wife. Hero being a good friend of Beatrice is also more than glad to help her out, even if it is through a lie. Don Pedro and Hero are really bored with their lives and feel like they have to play tricks on people to have fun, they do it to improve life both for themselves and for others. This manipulation of the truth that Don Pedro and Hero’s crew indulge in is a way for them to escape the boring reality of their lives, they literally have to create a more exciting world for their own entertainment.
Hero and Claudio’s relationship has more obstacles in the play than Benedick and Beatrice’s. Still, both the complications and solutions are born from complex webs of lies. Early in the play they are betrothed, but Don Pedro’s bastard brother Don John intends to break up the marriage. At first he tries to convince Claudio in a masked ball that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself and not for his benefit (Claudio was pretending to be Benedick, interestingly enough). This is a lie that ends up not working to his advantage. Don John then tries to ruin Claudio and Hero’s marriage by using Borachio’s idea, that is of setting up Claudio and Don Pedro to eavesdrop Borachio making love with Margaret so that Claudio would think that Hero’s not a virgin (something incredibly important, arguably even today in certain religious circles). This plan works for a bit, and causes Hero to be publicly humiliated by Claudio and shunned by her father on the day of her wedding. The friar, a man who is supposed to follow God’s law and shouldn’t lie, recommends to pretend that Hero is dead, so that Claudio will feel bad about what he’s done and accept her back. The friar’s deceitful plan works and in the end Claudio does marry Hero.
Hero faking her own death deserves in itself a couple of extra conjectures. Perhaps one of the most neutral characters in the play, Hero is an obedient daughter who is ok with marrying whoever she is set up with. It would only be fitting for her that the only way she can achieve her purpose in life (getting married, of course, and to be happy) is by faking her own death. Hero in a sense is active in this deceit (as she was active in deceiving her cousin Beatrice), and though not her idea, she accepts it and agrees to lock herself up to not give away the scheme. She has to participate in the lie, that is, she has to literally be part of the lie to be able to move forward in life and avoid eternal shame for her and for her family. By pretending to be dead, she becomes, or makes herself a better person, that is by a sort of fictional return to nothing. The friar says it beautifully and states it clearly: “So it will 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 aparell’d in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she liv’d indeed.” (4.1.222-230)
Claudio later finds out that she was never guilty of what she was accused of, but the simple fact that the friar would think that for Hero to gain favor with Claudio she had to seem dead to the eyes of the world is extremely sad, -notice the shall sweetly creep into his study of imagination as the friar points out, her death re-creates her into a better woman- and shows how bad the situation of women could be in those days. The friar himself is an extremely interesting character, a character who is by his title supposed to follow God’s law, but breaks it without any fear or even reluctance to benefit his neighbor. It’s even more interesting to think about when this lie he is the defacto creator of, ends up effectively helping out the uncomfortable situation that Hero and her father Leonato faced. A lie once again, is ironically used to do good. The friar shows how good of a person he is by coming up with an extremely elaborate lie that everybody in the play that is not part of it believes. Fiction is here used to save the day, something that is not true, ended up making the final reality of the play a better place for Hero. Hero and the audience get the happy ending that is logically expected of the comedy.
*******I have shown above how Lies and Fictions literally control every aspect of the plot of the play, but what about the characters themselves? Are they all what they pretend to be? How do the characters in this play portray themselves as something they are not because what they are not is better than what they really are? It seems obvious that if the plot is driven by a bunch of fictions created by the already fictional characters of the play, that the characters themselves create fictional versions of themselves.
For example, Dogberry, the chief of the Watch, tries to talk as a highly educated man, but fails terribly, making of himself an extremely laughable buffoon. It’s apparent to the reader and to the audience of the play that Dogberry is conscious that he is not educated but that he tries to seem so, because if he was educated he would be more socially acepted. Here is the crucial part in which miscommunication happens (but in a slightly deconstructive side note, is communication possible?) between Dogberry and Leonato:
DOGBERRY. One word, sir. Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examin’d before your worship. LEONATO. Take their examination yourself, and bring it me. I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you. (3.5.45-51)Dogberry’s trying to be a sophisticated speaker ends up being an important factor in the way the plot fleshes out, for if he had been understood by Leonato, Hero would not have been humiliated by Claudio. Though a relatively small and unimportant character of the play, Dogberry’s attempt at being a well spoken person keeps the plot of Much Ado moving forward.
But Dogberry isn’t alone in pretending to be someone he is not. The romance between Beatrice and Benedick had to be sparked by rumors because otherwise it simply would not have happen. Both Beatrice and Benedick from the beginning of the play cite numerous reasons as to why they would rather be single, and they do so using very sophisticated language. Benedick says this about women in the first act of the play: “That a woman conceiv’d me, I thank her That she brought me up, I likewise give her most Humble thanks; but that I will have a rechate Winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an Invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me.” (1.1.238-242) And Beatrice says express her dislike of men in a funny short remark: “Lord, I could not endure A husband with a beard on his face, I had rather lie in the woolen!” (2.1.29-31)If these lines show something about the characters who speak them, they show that Benedick and Beatrice seem to be very independently minded people, not caring of what society may say about them. But it is easy to see that they act likewise because they are older than the other characters of the play and because they refuse to accept their single condition. That is, they have to create that rebellious persona for themselves, because accepting what they are and whine about it would be just sad. What they pretend to be, coupled with their excuses, places them in a better position, within society and within their own mind (Once again, fiction always beats reality). Ann Barton says it better in her introduction to the play: “Both Beatrice and Benedick, for all their surface gaiety, their scorn of the married state, are essentially lonely people.” (Barton 363) and a paragraph below: “For all its surface aggression, its deflationary quality, their wit is really defensive: a way of protecting a self that they know to be vulnerable.” (Barton 363)
The story of Much Ado about Nothing thrives on the spying, eavesdropping, and deceiving that its characters love to act on, but in an even more tangible level, there are clues within the play’s inner structure that point to a preference of what is not real over what is real. For one, though a highly common thing back in that era, the mask ball scene says a lot about the play and its characters. Everybody in the mask ball scene pretends to be someone they are not, and both a good scheme (Don Pedro’s) and a bad one (Don John’s) have their roots in that scene. Therefore, the masked ball scene is not merely part of the structure of the play, but it is an image for what the whole play is about. The song that is sung by Balthasar in Act 2 also is another sneaky commentary on the play itself, men are deceivers and have been so “since summer first was leavy” : “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in the sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny nonny. Sing no more ditties, sing no moe, Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy…” (2.3.62-73)
The fact that the song itself is not a really important part of the plot makes it easier to see as an even more explicit commentary on the themes of lies, deception, and fabrications that pervades the whole play from beginning to end. Another part of the play’s structure, the title, also comments on the play-though a little obvious, it is worth mentioning-. The title is revelatory: Much Ado about Nothing is exactly what its title proposes, a bunch of people that are too bored with their lives and their way of making their life better is by creating situations for themselves, because life can’t do that for them. The much ado is quite literally over things that are really all made up and become real within the character’s minds and eventually in their own respective realities. Nothing in the title refers to something inexistent, and something that only exists in a character’s mind only exists within his mind, or is only real in the realm of thoughts and ideas (which are not tangible in our plain of existence), until those ideas, thoughts, lies, deceits, schemes, etc. are put into action by means of language (words) and action. Once that happens, the tangible reality of the characters improve (Dogberry’s case being a sad but funny exception), it’s as if both what is real and what is not real need each other to create a better whole.
Whether it is Dogberry feeling inadequate and having to make this up by trying to be a well spoken sophisticate, or Hero pretending to be dead to redeem herself and therefore becoming dead in Claudio’s and the rest of the men’s minds, or Benedick and Beatrice showing an outwards disdain towards marriage that is based on a lack of love (which in turn inspires their friends to make up rumors so that they fall in love), the play’s plot evolves not from what happens to the characters, but from the situations the characters create for themselves. Much Ado about Nothing is an exploration of how men turn to fiction to make their lives better, and the ultimate human objective, to reach happiness.
