Is it love?

William Shakespeare Much ado about nothing

“Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent.”  - William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

 

Am I satisfied by the ending of the play? Yes I had already pegged Beatrice and Benedick as a couple from the start. I thought the relationship between Hero and Claudio was a filler and also an introduction for Beatrice and Benedick to consider the other side of what love has to offer because Hero was close to Beatrice and Claudio was close to Benedick. I don’t think really anything was lost during the translation if anything it was all over dramatized. I think that the relationship between Beatrice and Benedick was the one that Shakespeare wanted you to be the most focused on and in a lot of ways Hero and Claudio were the distraction. The trials that Hero and Claudio are put through are the common ground that Beatrice and Benedick meet on. It was during this most trying time that their true feelings were brought to light. Beatrice was afflicted the most and when seeing this affliction brought Benedick to his knees because it hurt him to see Beatrice this hurt. I think that both couples were much befitting for each other. Beatrice and Benedick Hero and Claudio were both very complimentary to the other. In the end I think that both women were satisfied in how everything ended up. I image that Beatrice will be happier only because I think that their love came from true feelings were as Hero and Claudio’s love came from superficial things. Both Beatrice and Benedick start off with the most negative aspect of love and getting married while Hero and Claudio were all too eager to enter into marriage. Shakespeare uses both ideas of marriage to almost poke fun at the idea and I think he was very clever in how he made sure all the characters came across to the reader/audience. This was a very short, sweet, to the point play there wasn’t much time to waste, therefore you lose all the fillers that maybe some people feel like is missing from the play.

I enjoyed watching the play a lot more than reading it. I felt like through it all I got way more out of watching the play than reading it. Plays are in my opinion always harder to read than to just watch and enjoy. When you have to pay attention to when someone leaves or someone enters it takes away for really getting into it. Also, my biggest compliant I have is that you lose so much from the characters when you are reading them. When you are watching and you have all of the facial expressions, movement, they way they say what they say all adds tremendous value to the overall experience of the play hence why you get way less when you are reading it. Shakespeare can also been hard to understand what he is exactly saying while reading it but in the play all of the other context helps the audience to know what it going on even when you might not understand a word.