Much Ado

Examine Shakespeare's presentation of strong emotions in the opening of 'Much Ado About Nothing'

Shakespeare presents strong emotions such as love in completely different ways for the two romances illustrated within the opening of Much Ado About Nothing. He accomplishes this by making Beatrice and Benedick's romance seem to the audience to be a war of wits as they approach each other immediately with scornful and barbed comments in which sexual references are threaded within, this later develops into a humorous and witty marriage, in comparison Hero and Claudio's overall motif is that of love, however their attraction is primarily centred on image and appearance, and also showing the audience a glimpse of life for women in a patriarchal society in which Hero is involved in, as Claudio holds her in a courtly mannered form of love.

“I pray you, is Signor Mountanto returned from the wars of no?”

This quote develops an image of a battle of words between Beatrice and Benedick, as we question why she mentions Benedick in such a seemingly irrelevant interrogative, this suggests to the viewer that she is curious and concerned about Benedick being in war, therefore worried implying she cares about him, but she does this in such a way to make it seem to the Messenger and Leonato to be just a simple passing comment, Shakespeare does this by the use of phatic language employed in 'I pray you' this gives the exploratory sentence credence and innocence, which is then paired with the address term Beatrice uses, 'Signor Mountanto' mountanto is originally a fencing term meaning upward thrust this sexual innuendo suggests she sees him in a sexual way, but this address term also implies scornful respect for him on her behalf as in a patriarchal society it wouldn’t be expected for a women to speak aloud about a soldier in such a way, this interrogative shows us the beginning of jibes between Beatrice and Benedick. The fact that the Messenger and Leonato don't know who she is...