1. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
1598
William Shakespeare
1564-1616

2. THE PLOT
Leonato and his family
Welcome some friends: Don Pedro, Claudio and Benedick
Claudio falls in love with Hero
The lovers and their friends decide to play a game
Don John distrupt everyone’s happiness
Fake death of Hero
Discovery that Hero is really innocent
Punishment of Claudio
Double wedding

3. Leonato lives in Messin, with his daughter Hero, his niece
Beatrice and his brother Antonio.
At the beginning Leonato prepares to welcome some friends
from a war: Don Pedro,claudio, Benedick, Don John.
Claudio falls in love with Hero and they decide to be
married. Benedick and Beatrice make a war of witty
insult.
The lovers and their friends want to fall in love
Beatrice and Benedick.
Beatrice, Leonato and Hero
(Act I, scene I)

4. Claudio sees Borachio and Margaret, who looks like Hero, make love and he
thinks Hero is unfaithful and accuses her of lechery.
4. Hero accused by her tricked
fiance of having sex the night
before their wedding.
Hero’s family members pretend that she is died while they
wait that the truth come to light.
Borachio and Conrad, another of Don John’s followers, are arrested by local
police. Everyone laern that she is innocent and Claudio grieves for her.

5. Claudio, as punishment, must tell everybody that Hero is innocent
and he also wants to marry Leonato’s niece.
Claudio (Act V, scene iv)
Claudio, Pedro and Benedick
(Act II, scene III)
Claudio goes to marry a mysterious masked woman. Hero reveals herself as
the masked women. Than Benedick asks Beatrice if she will marry him.

6. CHARACTERS LIST
LEONATO
HERO
DON
PEDRO
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
CLAUDIO

7. BORACHIO
DOGBERRY & VERGES
MARGARET ANTONIO
URSULA
DON JOHN

8. ANALYSIS OF CHARACTERS
BEATRICE
Niece of Leonato and close friends with her cousin Hero, Beatrice
keeps up a “merry war” of wits with Benedick
Hero describing that Benedick is in love with her, she
opens herself to the sensitivities and weaknesses of love.
Beatrice is a prime example of strong female
characters

9. BENEDICK
Benedick is the willful lord, returned from the war,
who swear that he will never marry.
He falls in love with Beatrice after the
discussion between Don Pedro and Claudio.
He is the most
histrionic characters,
entertainer, indulging in
witty hyperbole and he
gives a great example It is not easy for us to tell whether he
of rethoric. has been in love with Beatrice all along or
falls in love with her suddenly during the
play.

10. DON PEDRO
He is the noblest character in the
social hierarchy of the play
Don Pedro has power and manipulates other
characters as much as he likes but in the interest of
his friends to bring them happiness
Don Pedro is sad at the end of a joyous comedy
The text does not give us a conclusive explanation and this helps to make him
one of the most thought-provoking characters in the play

11. A young soldier who fights under Don Pedro.
CLAUDIO Claudio falls in love with Hero. His suspicious
nature makes him believe evil rumors.
LEONATO
He is the governor of Messina and in his house
the play is set. Leonato is the father of Hero and
the uncle of Beatrice. He is second in social
power only to Don Pedro.
DON JOHN The illegitimate brother of Don Pedro; sometimes
called “the Bastard.” Don John creates a dark
scheme to brake the happiness of Hero and Claudio.
He is the bad of the play; his evil actions are
motivated by his envy of his brother’s social
authority.
The beautiful daughter of Leonato and the cousin
HERO
of Beatrice. Hero is lovely, gentle, and kind. She
falls in love with Claudio but when Don John
slanders her, she suffers terribly.

12. Hero’s serving woman, who helps Borachio and Don
MARGARET John deceive Claudio into thinking that Hero is
unfaithful. She is honest, but she has some conctacts
with the bad world of Don John: her lover is Borachio.
Margaret also likes to do jokes and teases.
An associate of Don John. Borachio is the lover of Margaret.
He conspires with Don John to trick Claudio and Don Pedro.
His name means “drunkard” in Italian. BORACHIO
One of Don John associates, entirely devoted to him.
CONRAD Several recent productions have staged Conrad as
Don John’s potential male lover.
The chief policeman of Messina. Dogberry is very sincere and
takes his job seriously, but he uses the wrong word to convey his
meaning. Dogberry is a middle-class characters but his desire to
speak formally and elaborately like the noblemen becomes an
occasion for parody.
DOGBERRY

13. VERGES
The deputy to Dogberry, chief policeman of Messina.
ANTONIO Leonato’s elderly brother, and Hero and
Beatrice’s uncle.
A waiting man in Leonato’s
household and a musician. BALTHASAR
Balthasar flirts with Margaret at
the masked party and helps
Leonato, Claudio, and Don Pedro
trick Benedick into falling in love
with Beatrice.
One of Hero’s waiting women.
URSULA

14. THE IDEAL OF SOCIAL GRACE
The play’s language is strongly laden with
Characters represents the ideal that metaphor and ornamented by rethoric.
Renaissance courtiers
“His words are
very fantastical
Benedick, Claudio, and Don Pedro banquet, just so
used witty language to draw many strange
dishes”
attention
The play pokes fun at the fanciful
language of love that courtiers used

15. DECEPTION AS A MEANS TO AN END
The plot is based upon deliberate deceptions,
some malevolent and others benign. Benedick and
Beatrice
In the play, it is sometimes difficult to
distinguish between good and bad deception.
the social institution of
marriage has little to do with
love.
The masking of
Hero and other
women.
In the end, deceit is neither purely positive nor purely negative

16. THE IMPORTANCE OF HONOR
In Shakespeare’s time, a woman’s honor was
based upon her virginity and chaste behavior
Leonato speaks of Hero loss of honor as an
indelible stain from which he cannot distance
himself
Unlike a woman, a man could defend his honor,
and that of his family, by fighting in a battle
or a due
Beatrice urges Benedick to avenge Hero’s honor
by dueling to the death with Claudio

17. The real conflict that is the basis of this “ado about
MAJOR CONFLICT
nothing”
Claudio, Don Pedro, and Benedick
share a suspicion of marriage as a trap but they also
in which husbands are bound to be deeply desire to
controlled and deceived, be married.
RISING ACTION Claudio falls in love with Hero Don Pedro woos Hero on
Claudio’s behalf
the perfidious Don John creates
the illusion that Hero is a whore.
Benedick who at the beginning of the
CLIMAX Claudio rejects Hero at the altar
play was opposed to women and love
sides with Hero and his futere wife
Beatrice
Leonato proclaims publically that Hero died of grief at
FALLING ACTION being falsely accused
RESOLUTION He is rewarded by discovering that his bride is actually Hero.

18. This project was realized
by
Ajò Alessandro
&
Petrò Simone