Much Ado About Nothing Character Analysis

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Samantha Rogers April 29, 2014 Much Ado About Nothing: Paper #2 As planned, Much Ado About Nothing explores the themes of love and honor through communication, but also miscommunication. By focusing on two relationships throughout the play, this production displays how social rules are influenced by gender and how these gender stereotypes lead to biased notions. From seeing what the production team planned before producing Much Ado About Nothing, I think they achieved their desired ideas about gender roles, marriage, morality, and identity. The first relationship is between Claudio and Hero, in which the female Hero is shy, and compliant. Claudio, who is the male in the relationship, is a young nobleman. This relationship is a typical patriarchal relationship where the woman is pushed around. Before their wedding, Hero is unfairly blamed for being unfaithful to Claudio and Claudio is close to marrying another woman when he thinks that Hero is dead. This shows that Claudio had control over the relationship and Hero did not say much, just obeyed what Claudio said. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio is actually a female dressed up as a male and Hero is a male dressed up as a female to fulfill the roles. Hero being played by a male shows that there are preconceived ideas of how women are supposed to behave. By playing the role of the opposite gender, the stereotypes and social pressures of each gender will be very evident to the audience. On the other hand, the relationship between Beatrice and Benedick is very different from Hero and Claudio. Beatrice is a very outspoken, and witty woman with masculine features. Beatrice and Benedick are in love throughout the play, but are scared to admit it. They continuously insult each other in... ... middle of paper ... ... it was obvious enough from the set design to know it was during a modern time period, but I do think they did a good job at creating multiple locations on one stage. The last part of the scenic design that they did not achieve very well was the inclusion of a stairway from the ground floor of the studio up to the balcony to allow the balcony to be part of the playing space. There was a step or two leading up to a platform but it was unclear that it was supposed to be a balcony. As a part of the audience of Much Ado About Nothing, I think majority of the production was accomplished as planned. Some parts of the production could be improved as I stated above, but the overall development was impressive. Exploring the stereotypes and social pressures of gender was a great achievement in the production here at JMU, as well as displaying the themes of love and honor.

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