Welcome to Shakespeare's Twisted Mind

     Shakespeare is the king of dirty jokes. There has hardly ever been, in history, a writer who so artfully wound together lyrical lines that could make your heart sing, and the absolute bawdiest, most profane phrases. Much Ado About Nothing, seeing as how it is one of Shakespeare’s most juvenile, most rom-com-y plays, is absolutely no exception. It is one of my favorite things about the play, honestly! Even the title, Much Ado About Nothing is a play on Elizabethan slang. In Elizabethan times, “nothing” or “no-thing” was slang for woman's genitals making the title of this play essentially Much Ado About Vagina. This really sets the mood for some really serious Shakespeare, doesn’t it?

      One of the bawdiest, and most unexpectedly nasty interactions happens betwixt Margaret, Hero, and later on, Beatrice. Act 3, Scene 4 gives us the gift of the longest and wittiest of the erotic inter feminine dialogues. Margaret has no shame, and while discussing Hero’s upcoming nuptials she asks, “Is there any harm in ‘heavier for a husband?’”(3.4.34-35). Margaret is essentially saying, there is no problem with having sex with your husband! She is clearly one of the most forward thinking ladies of the play, and this definitely reflects Shakespeare’s ideas of how women should really always express what they truly think. It’s fantastic! Their entire dialogue up to line 91 is so chock-full of sexual innuendo that I can’t even tell them all in five hundred words.

     It is so exciting after seeing a bunch of scenes that really read like boy’s clubs, with all the cuckold and bull's horn jokes, to get a glimpse of how the women really are just a dirty as the men! Just like in real life! It is just so exciting! It makes me so happy! All the aforementioned jokes are kind of confusing though, so I’ll explain them in at least one context. In Act 1 Scene 1, Benedick is referred to many times as the bull (1.1.256, 1.1.257), which, according to my very academic journal (it is actually a textbook, this isn’t a joke), Shakespeare’s Bawdy by scholar Eric Partridge, is “a man regarded as a habitual copulator” (73). Clearly, Bendick really got around. Seemed pretty harmless, didn’t it? Nope, Shakespeare is all about sex. Cuckold is actually a very simple term, but it’s really important to define in order to understand half the things that the younger men in this show say. A cuckold, as a noun, is a married man to whom his wife if unfaithful. As a verb it means to either be unfaithful to your husband, or to seduce the wife of another man.

     Shakspeare is all about sex, especially in Much Ado, and when it is not recognized it is an absolute crime. I really hope that when you. my dear reader, take a little peek at this blog post, it will reveal the absolute glory of how dirty Shakespeare is. Hope this was fun!

Hero is a Perfectly Fine Character, Leave Her Alone!

Upon first reading of Act III Scene I of Much Ado About Nothing, Hero seems to shed her ingenue persona completely in favor of a catty, malicious facade. She busts out almost cruel criticisms of  her cousin such as “...she is too disdainful./I know her spirits are as coy and wild/As haggards of the rock”(3.3.35-37), and “So turns she every man the wrong side out/And never gives to truth a virtue that/Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.”(3.1.72-74). These comments seem out of place for a girl whom has been described as nothing but kind and sweet up until now. But why should we consider this girl to be so one dimensional?   I personally consider some of Shakespeare's women to be very well written, multi-faceted characters, so why should Hero be any different?

While it is true that we do not hear Hero speak very much in the first two acts, what we do hear is telling.  She makes jokes at the party, even going so far to expressly say that she will only like a man if she likes his face.  This is interesting, because she most likely knows that this is the man her father has told her she must marry, and yet here she is, sassing a man who may very well be her future lord.  She is very smart, in that she knows how to behave and when to behave that way.  Around her father and his friends, she is well behaved and amiable.  Around her future husband, she is flirty. However, when left alone, she’s actually a very real person.  And very much a young woman at that.  

Honestly, Hero is one of the most normal characters, and Act III just confirms that.  If it weren't for the scene quite honestly, I would doubt whether Shakespeare had ever actually known a teenage girl.  They gossip.  They harbor unkind feelings towards those they are jealous of.  Hero is most likely no older than 17.  Why should we criticize her for normal teenage behavior?  When we expect her to act like someone who she is not, we’re simply being unrealistic.  Let teenage girls be teenage girls in literature! Stop taking Shakespeare so seriously! Appreciate characters for what they are instead of trying to make them something they’re not and hating them because they don’t fit your ideas!  Let Shakespeare be fun!