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The "Ado" begins when news reaches the city of Messina, home to its governor Leonato, his daughter Hero, niece Beatrice, and brother Antonio, that it will soon receive important guests. These are soldiers under the command of Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon, returning from a victorious military campaign. Soon the Prince arrives, accompanied by his villainous bastard brother Don John, Claudio, a young gentleman who has recently won renown in the wars, and Benedick, a distinguished soldier and wit. Amid the happy greetings extended to the guests, battle of a different sort immediately ensues, as Benedick and Beatrice fight another skirmish in the longstanding "merry war" of wit between them.
When they find themselves alone, Claudio confesses to Benedick that he loves Hero. Benedick, who is, like Beatrice, sworn never to marry, tries to dissuade his young friend, but Don Pedro approves of Claudio's choice and offers his help in making the match. Leonato celebrates his guests' arrival with masked revels. During the festivities, Don Pedro successfully obtains Hero for Claudio after some initial suspicion that he actually seeks her for himself.
With this match apparently safely established, Don Pedro undertakes a far more ambitious plan. With the help of the others, he swears to make Beatrice and Benedick fall in love.
Don John alone finds himself unmoved by the joy of peacetime Messina, and with the help of his confederates, Borachio and Conrad, seeks to mar the unfolding romance however he might. When his initial insinuation to Claudio that Don Pedro deals dishonestly proves fruitless, he agrees to a scheme to dupe Claudio into believing Hero is unchaste. Professing to have their honor at heart, Don John approaches Claudio and Don Pedro and offers to prove Hero's infidelity.
Meanwhile, Don Pedro's more benevolent design first ensnares Benedick. Benedick is encouraged to "overhear" the other gentlemen discussing Beatrice and him. They describe her great (and unmerited) love for him, and her justified fear of making her feelings known. While Benedick is left to stew over this information, Hero and her gentlewoman Ursula similarly bait Beatrice. Censured for pride and self-conceit but amazed at finding themselves so esteemed, Beatrice and Benedick fall into a love to which they are so constitutionally unsuited that it first manifests itself in making them ill.
Unfortunately, Don John's plot is at first equally successful. Offstage, he leads his brother and Claudio to observe his servant Borachio wooing Hero's gentlewoman Margaret by Hero's name. However, the inept watch, led by Constable Dogberry, the shrewdness of whose policing instincts is matched only by the accuracy of his diction, and his partner Verges, arrest Borachio when they overhear him boasting to Conrad of his part in the misdeed. But the next morning, the wedding day for Claudio and Hero, Leonato is too rushed to sift through Dogberry's news of the arrest, sending him off to report instead to the Sexton.
All arrive to witness the nuptials of the young lovers, but instead they see Claudio publicly shame Hero, backed by Don Pedro. Hero swoons, all her family is dumbfounded, and Claudio and his friends leave angrily. In order to turn slander to sympathy, the Friar advises that her friends circulate that Hero has died in her grief. Beatrice and Benedick, who notably remained behind when his companions departed, are left alone. The two wonderingly confess their mutual love. And Benedick agrees, for the love and trust he feels for Beatrice, to clear Hero's name by challenging Claudio.
After angry exchanges first with Leonato and Antonio and then with Benedick, Claudio and Don Pedro meet Dogberry leading Borachio and Conrad as prisoners. Claudio learns of his error when Borachio confesses that he plotted with the now-fled Don John, and he and Don Pedro promise Leonato to serve any penance he might assign them. Leonato demands first that Claudio publicly mourn the wronged Hero, and the next day to marry an imagined daughter of Antonio's, similar to Hero in every way.
Claudio performs the mourning rites demanded of him, and appears in the morning to marry Leonato's supposed niece. Meanwhile, despite their proved inability to woo conventionally, Benedick similarly prepares to marry Beatrice. Pledging himself to his veiled bride, Claudio is amazed and elated to find himself actually joined to the Hero he thought dead. And despite one last sally against their love, Beatrice and Benedick concede the battle lost and agree to marry as well. All the company celebrates the day, casting off care for tomorrow.
J. Ripp
© Joseph Ripp, 1998.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.