Shakespeare final

When I did my response project, I attempted to fiddle with the five act structure in Much Ado About Nothing. To try to do this, I removed conflicts and major characters in order to see if I could screw with the structure of the play. It failed miserably. Anything I did could be mended in a few stitches in the story and it would still be considered a Shakespearean classic. After the presentation, I thought to myself: is this really unique to this play? I began to test this with different books from different genres i.e. Robin Hood, Huck Finn, The Andromeda Strain and Flowers for Algernon. What I found is that in some books, you can do a lot without messing up anything, however, in other books, a minor change is enough to wreck the story. Robin Hood was likely a poor choice, considering that the story consists of multiple unrelated conflicts, but I was surprised that Andromeda Strain still retained its interesting story despite the changes I made. It made much less sense, but could still be construed as enjoyable. Flowers for Algernon fared poorly in this experiment. Some changes i made changed nothing, while others messed up the flow of the story and made the book no longer make sense. What I found is that when there is a large overarching theme or conflict, the changes made affected the story more than if there was not.

Shakespeare blog post 4

    The ending of Much Ado About Nothing most definitely points to it being a comedy. An obvious hint to this lies in the staggering number of characters that are still alive. If this play were a tragedy, multiple things would have occurred differently. Hero most likely would have actually died at the slandering, leading all the characters to despise Claudio and Pedro. This would continue with Benedick acting upon Beatrice's request and killing Claudio either in an honorable duel or an assassination, the former leading to Benedick being killed by Claudio's final dying strike and the latter leading to the execution of Benedick. Beatrice, upon being informed of Benedick's death, would likely off herself. Then Dogberry would go to Pedro with the news of John's plot and He, along with Leonato and Antonio, would mourn the loss of the others as the last ones standing. This play of course ends with everyone very much alive and some characters being newly married. The "problem person" is captured and everyone keeps joking as if nothing happened in the first place. These characteristics are the hallmarks of comedy endings, there is a wedding/pregnancy/party/feast and the "problem person" is killed/captured/exiled/unfollowed. All of these are present with Hero and Claudio getting married and the Benetrice ship setting sail all the while John gets himself captured. Much Ado About Nothing is most definitely a comedy, as you can tell by the ending.

Shakespeare blog post 3

There are many examples of dramatic irony in Much Ado About Nothing. For example in Act 2 scene 1, Don Pedro is putting the moves on Hero so that she and Claudio will marry. All of us in the audience knows Don Pedro is doing some serious trickery, but Hero has no idea. There are other, larger instances of dramatic irony, as we saw in act 2 scene 3 where Benedick is tricked by Pedro, Claudio and Leonato into believing that Beatrice is in love with him, and so he falls in love  with Beatrice. In act 3 scene 1, Beatrice is tricked by Hero and Ursula into believing that Benedick is in love with her, which at this point is not entirely untrue. In these scenes, Benedick and Beatrice are getting tricked by Don Pedro as he hatches his ultimate plan to get the two to fall in love. We all know that Pedro is matchmaking, as he points out that Benedick is hiding in a bush, and proceeds to ask Leonato about the “fact” that Beatrice is madly in love with Benedick. Leonato and Claudio were either previously informed of Don Pedro’s little idea, or they just took the joke and rolled with it. Either way, it worked fabulously. Hero and Ursula then played the same joke on Beatrice, and she proceeded to fall in love with Benedick. As all this happens, we know that Don Pedro is playing a intricately designed game of matchmaker, and Benedick and Beatrice being none the wiser. Next, it is Pedro’s turn to get bamboozled, as in act 4 scene 1 after Hero has been shamed, the friar hatches a plot of his own to get Claudio married to Hero. We know that Hero is pretending to be dead, but Claudio and Pedro don’t. From this, Claudio and Hero get remarried, John gets captured, and everyone lives happily ever after, well, except John. There are many examples of dramatic irony in this play, these are just a few examples.