Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare: A Tragedy in Disguise
Much Ado About Nothing was one of the plays, written by William Shakespeare, who was well-known as a British playwright, poet, and author. Even he had lived between the late 16th century and early 17th century, no one can deny how great he was at writing stories through his literary work as some of his plays or phrases are still used until today. A genre of this play is comedy. This play were criticised that it is a tragedy in disguise by many critics because they did not agree that this play is comedy. A tragedy in disguise means something that is tragic but it pretends or fakes to be something else. Thus, it can be said that a state of “a tragedy in disguise” literally means a tragic play pretending or faking to be a comedic play for the critics. Therefore, how this play is comedic and how this play is tragic will be discussed.
Characters including Benedick, Beatrice, Dogberry and Verges in this play are reasons why this play is comedic because this play would be really intense and tragic without them. Existing of their characters decrease tension and make audiences sense comedic of the play.
Benedick and Beatrice are characters decreasing tension and making audiences sense comedic to the play because of their self-confidence, speech, hate-love relationship and belief. The audiences can sense that they hate each other since act I because they always have arguments whenever they meet each other until act III. They have strong self-confidence that they can live as a single and they also state that they will never get marriage with anyone. Nevertheless, after they are tricked by Don Pedro’s plan from act II, then they start to fall in love with each other and think about each other immediately and they get married in the last act. These scenes make the audiences laugh since once Benedick and Beatrice stated strongly that they would never get married from the act I. According to the act I in a scene that Claudio asks Benedick how he thinks of Hero, Benedick has a strong perspective that love is blind, so he said that he will live a bachelor. Dogberry and Verges are also reasons why this play is comedy. These characters occur at the first time in scene III of act III. These characters’ characteristics are funny, so they reduce the tension of the play. In addition, these characters are funny because of misusing of words, so it makes them look funny and it also makes their conversation are funny too. According to scene V in act III, Dogberry and Verges try to report Leonato that they arrested Borachio who tricked Claudio to believe that he had sex with Hero. However, Leonato cannot understand what Dogberry and Verges want to report because both of them misuse of the words. Hence, these characters are the reasons why this play is comedy.
A relationship in a family, violence, and guiltiness, are reasons why this play could be a tragedy because these dramatic elements also occur in this play as well as comedic parts. The relationship in the family between Don John and Don Pedro are one of the elements that make this play is tragedy. According to scene III in act I, the audiences can see Don John’s hatred toward Don Pedro, his half-brother. Since Don John is bastardy, so he did not get good things or he was not praised like his half-brother. This causes him envious and upset, so he wants to discredit his half-brother in every way. For example, he tries to ruin Claudio’s wedding because Don Pedro is the one who helps Claudio to get married with Hero. The violence is also one of the elements making this play is tragedy too because the audiences can see Claudio and Leonato’s violence toward Hero and Beatrice’s violence toward Claudio in scene I in act IV. According to this scene, rejection of Claudio’s toward wedding affects everyone relating to Hero so much. Claudio dishonours Hero is violent because it makes Hero die inside and he breaks Hero’s heart coldly. Furthermore, Leonato wants Hero to die badly because of her blot after asking Beatrice that she was Hero’s bedfellow or not last night. Then, Beatrice wants Benedick to kill Claudio because she believes that Claudio belies Hero. The guiltiness is one of the elements that make this play is tragedy. According to scene I in act V, the audiences can see how Claudio is guilty toward Hero’s death. He is sorrowed after knowing the truth about Hero. He even let Leonato punish him in any way, so he has to marry with a girl who he is not in love with to atone. These pieces of evidence prove that this play is also tragedy.
In conclusion, even there are many critics said that this play is tragedy in disguise, this play is comedy. This play is comedy because existing of Benedick, Beatrice, Dogberry, and Verges. It means that this play could be completely tragic if this play does not have these characters. Moreover, this play ends happily. In my opinion, I think this play is tragicomedy because this play has both tragic and comedic parts as well.
