Much Ado About Nothing: A Tragedy in Disguise

The well-known Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy about two young lovers whose love is disrupted by a series of misunderstandings brought about by the bitter, sly and manipulative Don John.

For me, the play has always had a large question mark hanging over the 'comedy' part. Yes, it does follow the conventions of a comedy: two young lovers, longing to be together, are kept apart by some form of authority figure, and are eventually able to come together by the end, and they get married and everyone is happy. But many people, especially feminist critics, would question whether the ending was in fact happy.

To give a brief overview of the plot, Claudio and Hero are in love, and intend to marry. But Don John stages a scene for Claudio to 'overhear' so that he thinks Hero is being unfaithful to him. The gullible young Claudio is swindled, and chooses to confront Hero, not privately, but on their wedding day, utterly shaming her until she faints from shock. Claudio then proceeds to leave her, disgraced, at the alter. Hero's family decides to tell Claudio that Hero has died, and when the news of her innocence is announced, Claudio grieves for her. Luckily, it is revealed that Hero is not dead at all, and the two get married and live happily ever after.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, I feel have to add: 'Or do they?' Hero, being the traditional, submissive woman in this play appears to have no pride. She seems to simply accept what Claudio has done to her. Apparently it's okay that he publicly humiliated her and accused her of lechery on rather unsubstantial evidence, because he is very, very sorry. I do not consider this play's ending a happy one, as Claudio in no way pays for his misguided and thoughtless actions, although it is hardly a tragic ending, as there is no death. However, the lack of death does seem to be the one thing that stops this play from being a tragedy. Therefore, I believe Much Ado About Nothing to be a tragedy in disguise.

After some studying and research on the subject of tragedy and comedy, I have discovered a way to make Much Ado About Nothing, the comedy, into The Tragedy of Claudio and Hero with only a few small changes.

First things first, in order to keep with the format of the Aristotelian tragedy, Claudio must be of a high status. As he is a nobleman, he is already of fairly high status, so no changes required there. Very importantly, as a tragic hero, he will need a tragic flaw. Again, no changes needed, as we can call his naïve and influential tendencies a tragic flaw, as well the fact that he is clearly short-sighted and severely judgemental.

The scene in which Don John tricks Claudio into believing Hero is unfaithful could remain wholly intact, and act as the pivotal point where Claudio begins his descent. He shames Hero on their wedding day, again, no changes necessary, and again, Hero's family later tells Claudio that Hero has died as a result of his heartless verbal onslaught.

Here is where the changes must begin (note how late in the play the changes become necessary): Claudio, grieving for Hero, laments the consequences of his actions, but his pride and sense of honour convince him that he did the right thing in confronting her for her misdeed. When it is revealed that Hero is innocent, Claudio, overcome by grief and regret for his grave error of judgement, takes his own life, tragically, before the news reaches him that Hero is not really dead. Hero, bereft at the death of her lover, follows suit and takes her life as well. Curtain.

Note how, with so few changes, all of them towards the end of the play, this comedy becomes a tragedy. The main differences are that Claudio is punished for his cruel actions, after his descent from a noble, if shy, young lover to a cold, unforgiving 'murderer' as it were. Unfortunately, Hero still does not receive a happy ending, but as a tragedy, it is more fitting, whereas it seems unfair that Hero gets no form of compensation for the terrible experience she has had to endure at her new husband's hand, in what is supposed to be a comedy.

Obviously, this is only my opinion, but I feel that the play would have worked better as a tragedy, as it has always bothered me that Claudio avoided the consequences of what I consider to be a terrible thing to do to someone, particularly to the woman you supposedly love, and none of the other characters seemed to find this unjust. What is very interesting, I find, is that if Claudio simply took a minute to think things through before openly insulting Hero, things would have run much more smoothly, whereas the tragic hero Hamlet suffered dearly for thinking things through too much. Shakespeare's heroes need to learn to find a happy medium, I suppose.

Unreliable Narrators

WARNING: This post contains possible spoilers for the following books: Frankenstein, The Woman in White and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Proceed with caution.

"Since you have preserved my narration... I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity." - Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

There are a number of texts which touch on the idea of unreliable narrators. They could be biased, they may not have all the information, they may be recounting events which they never witnessed, and are therefore only speculating. In some cases, narrators have a completely different view on events, as in the case of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, in which the narrator is autistic and reports on the events around him quite differently, with very specific details on things which other narrators would likely pass by. There is also the possibility of the work itself being tampered with if, for instance, the frame of the story is that of a diary or a series of letters, they could have been altered by another character within the story. When studying Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, my English teacher encouraged us to question the validity of Marian's recount through diary extracts as, at the end of her entries, the villain, Count Fosco, writes in her diary. We were led to suspect that her diary had been altered, possibly with entire passages removed by Fosco in order to protect him from being exposed for the crimes he committed.

When characters recount events in which much dialogue takes place, I have always been sceptical as to whether or not the narrator would really be able to take in all the information at the time and report it back perfectly, word for word. If I were to write down a conversation that took place several hours before, I probably wouldn't use quotations and instead use flimsy phrases like 'he said it was a bad idea' because I would be unable to remember his exact wording. Then again, people in real life rarely have the ability to speak so eloquently and with such rich subtext as many novels will have you believe, so some suspension of disbelief is required. Referring back to The Woman in White, Marian's recounts through her diary entries are somewhat justified in having the dialogue flawlessly replicated by her natural gift of a photographic memory, but many other texts seem to imply that characters just remember exactly how every event happened. Apparently they were that impacting and memorable. Or perhaps I'm going prematurely senile.

When reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein I started to wonder, as the story progressed, how reliable this narration was, as these events were being recounted by more and more narrators. To clarify, at one point in the story, the monster is telling Frankenstein his tale, which Frankenstein dictated to Walton, who was writing the tale in the form of a letter to his sister. Then later, during the monster's tale, he begins retelling the tale of Felix and Safie. I reached the point where it just started to seem ridiculous. I couldn't know at this point if any of the narrative would be accurate as I was reading it, because it had been through three different narrators before it got to Walton's letter, which I was supposedly reading. My suspension of disbelief was strained at best. Then I read a passage in the last chapter in which Walton explains how Frankenstein amended his account, to fix any mistakes, to ensure that the correct story would go down in history. Despite it not being a particularly pressing concern, this did make it seem more believable. Luckily Shelley is a good enough writer that it didn't bother me enough for me to be distracted all through the novel.

So next time you're reading a book, think about what it is that you're actually reading. How reliable do you think your narrator is? Is it a first-person narrative, in the form of a recount, or a third-person narrative, from the point of view of a seemingly omnipotent observer? Perhaps it is told from a random onlooker's perspective, and we only see their interpretation of the events. Or maybe the narrator really is that good at remembering the tiniest detail of every person they encounter. Mind you, some characters seem striking enough to leave enough of an impression that you could never forget that subtle birthmark just above his full, shapely lips, surrounded by just a touch of stubble on his strong, chiselled jaw.

But don't take my word for it, I just escaped from a mental asylum. And I'm a compulsive liar.