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Courtship In William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

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In William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, he shows his thoughts on the courtship process. He feels that the process is complex, challenging and easily filled with rumors. These rumors come to women in the patriarchal society that the piece is written in. The ideas are shown through Beatrice and Hero. Shakespeare uses Beatrice to show his thoughts on the courtship process. Shakespeare believes that courtship is challenging and complex. This complexity is shown when Beatrice is trying to be struck with love for Benedick through a plan. This plan requires people to drop hints to both of the lovers to think that they both love each other secretly. The knowledge that they love each other must be a secret to them because they openly hate …show more content…

Don John, the Prince’s brother, creates a plan to show Count Claudio that Hero is impure. Unlike the plan for Beatrice and Benedict, this plan is less complicated because Don John is only trying to help Claudio and not hurt him. Shakespeare uses this concept to show that men trust men but will not trust women. It also shows that men in this time period are willing to not marry someone due to their virginity and shame them. This shaming is shown in the wedding scene when Claudio says no to marrying Hero at the wedding and then goes on a rampage of anger destroying the wedding pews and mocking Hero in front of everyone. He goes on the spree after only trusting Don John and he chooses not to confront Hero about the virginity in question. After Claudio leaves the wedding Hero Faints due to the shock and once she wakes up her father begins to berate her and hit her. He does this after only hearing the possibly irrational Claudio. Leonato, her father does this after only hearing Claudio because he is a man of great honor and whatever he says is true due to Shakespeare’s use of a Patriarchal society to show his thoughts on the courtship process. Shakespeare used women's roles such as Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing to show his thoughts of the courtship process in a patriarchal society. His thoughts, which consist of it being complex, filled with rumors and challenging are showed

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