Don John In William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Are you lonely? Do you have two servants who like alcohol? Are you wicked? Well, if you answered ‘yes’ to all of these questions you have most likely experienced an event that lead to your utter defeat and capture due to your awful, and wretched wicked character! If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, or have no correlation to William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, you should be in good condition in a matter that your wickedness, much like the character Don John from Much Ado About Nothing, does not get you captured and trialed for sabotaging a young man’s wedding.

Furthermore, in Much Ado About Nothing, Don John is a exponentially formidable which can be justified by the way he acts around other characters. Other characters

within the story even acknowledge his heinous actions by calling him ‘the bastard’, which can be seen in Act 4, Scene 1: “The practice of it lives in John the Bastard, whose spirits toil in the frame of villainies.” Leading up to this scene, Don John fooled Claudio, a young man soon to be wed, that his fiancée is disloyal. During the wedding, Claudio denounces Hero, his fiancée, who proceeds to faint and leads everyone into believing she is dead. Benedick believes Don John is up to no good, for on the prior night his two servants were caught revealing his evil plan. This action will eventually lead to his capture, as he escapes shortly after this incident occurs.