Preview

Hero In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1010 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Hero In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
She is known as a high class individual because she speaks in even meter. Shakespeare uses language as a very evident clue into letting you know how important a character is in a story. In other plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Main characters speak in perfect rhythm and rhyme, while servants are left in choppy word fragments. We don’t know much about her mother other than a blunt joke at the beginning of the play Don Pedro said “You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your daughter.” As Leonato responds with “Her mother hath many times told me so.”Hero is a companion to each character, and never seems to take center stage although she has a major role in creating the plot in the play.She is to some extent intelligent because …show more content…
Shakespeare uses Hero to even stir up conflict through actions such as faking her death and even just the notion of her committing adultery. In the piece, Shakepherde made her to always be linked to conflict in a way. Hero is a character that shows characteristics of a well raised high class member. Being polite, gentle, naive, and a true innocent heroine. Beatrice shows completely different features such as being feisty, smart, cunning, and independent. In Hero’s entirety and relations to other characters, she always gravitates to being a perfect foil to the other heroine Beatrice. They bring out the best in one another, and highlight the best in each other with contrasting story plots and climaxes. Nevertheless, they always end up helping each other and pointing out each other’s flaws and splendors. Hero proves once more to be a perfect foil to Beatrice through her relationship ideals. This is possibly the ideology that connects Hero the most with the audience, being her desire to obtain a husband. However, Beatrice thinks completely on the other side of the spectrum by saying that she will never need a man, and that a man isn’t the thing that will complete her. Although times have changed a lot since the early 1600s, she still is identified as the less relatable character, making her even more intriguing for the time

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “You can tell an artist is excellent when he denies his own perfection.” (Shakespeare 78 -79) Based on the characters Beatrice and Benedick the conflict between the two is that they have trouble expressing their love for each other, throughout the book the foil insult each other until they realize they love one another. In Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, Benedick serves as the foil character of Beatrice by which Beatrice’s reasonable taste are illuminated through Benedick’s bearing thoughts; thus, compound the twist and conflict to the plot.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the play, “Much Ado About Nothing,” by William Shakespeare, Beatrice is distraught when Claudio shames Hero, and as a result she manipulates Benedick into agreeing to duel Claudio. She knows that Hero is innocent: “O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!” (4.1.155.133). She is furious with Claudio and wants him to pay for what he has done: “Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her!” (4.1.275-276.141). She wishes that she could get this revenge herself: “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place,” (4.1.320-321.143). However, she knows that she cannot do this on her own. For this reason, she tricks Benedick into agreeing to kill Claudio. Claudio and Benedick are best friends so when Beatrice first…

    • 227 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Benedick and Beatrice have close connections in the play, Benedick is portrayed to be a staunch bachelor, whereas Beatrice a combative character, also ironically, due to this being set in the Renaissance era, outspoken. Benedick is seen as very misogynistic.…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Now the contrast of Beatrice and Hero becomes rather intriguing. Taking Hero to be a reserved, silent, amiable woman -- the ideal woman, according to male writers of the time -- it may pique the reader’s interest to observe her as the women who is disgraced and slandered. On the other hand, Beatrice, a direct and facetious woman, is not put to shame and manages to find a content relationship with her new husband Benedick. Could it be possible that Shakespeare was conveying a message through his play to comment upon the issue of gender roles in society? Perhaps it was displayed as an artful interpretation to cause males to re-evaluate their opinions of women, and to incite social…

    • 1614 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Juliet’s personality and character is one of the most obvious and significant element that has been recontextualised. In Shakespeare’s play, Juliet is described to be more than just a pretty face; she’s smart, witty, determined and mature. She knows what she wants, and she gets it as it is Juliet who proposes to Romeo not the other way around. In the text, she is written to be thirteen years of age and begins the play as a naïve child who has thought little about love and marriage, but she grows up quickly upon falling in love with Romeo. Being a girl from a high social class family, she has none of the freedom Romeo has to roam around the city or climb over walls at midnight. However she shows amazing courage in trusting her life and future to Romeo, refusing to believe the worst reports about him and even willing to shut important people out of her life (nurse) the moment they turn against Romeo. "And when I shall die, take him and cut him up in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that the entire world will fall in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun." Juliet’s role in society is very minor and simple. She is the pretty, ‘prized’ daughter of the Capulets and is expected to be obedient of men in their families. In the novel, she receives little guidance and help from her family and is expected to marry Paris as her father decided. This gives a clear example of women’s role and its unimportance.…

    • 896 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Benedick is almost a match for Beatrice as a memorable Shakespearean character. His apparent misogyny and unwillingness to make a commitment to a woman are almost stereotypes early in the play. His use of language, especially in his "merry war" with Beatrice, prevents him from being the clichéd male who refuses to commit to a relationship.…

    • 366 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Humans fall in love in mysterious ways but sometimes humans act like cupid and do whatever they can to make others fall in love with each other. In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare tells two very distinct love stories. He gives many examples of trickery and deceit throughout his novel.…

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From a historical standpoint woman used to be treated with little importance. From the Elizabethan period to today’s society the role of woman, the definition of true love, and marriage has all changed exceptionally. Beatrice represents what all women should be, independent and self-assertive. Many years have past and the individuals who have seen “Much Ado About Nothing” can easily contrast and compare the Elizabethan society to today’s. Balthasar a musician sings, “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, but let them go”(2.3 lines 64-71). What he is basically saying is that the ladies ought to accept men as deceivers and that men will always be horrible. Beatrice understands this concept quite well but ironically still marries Benedict. For Hero it is a different story, she fakes her death to embellish the feeling of remorse into Claudio but states that, ”One Hero died defiled, but I do live, / And surely as I live, I am a maid” (Act 5, Scene 4). Hero’s fake death was used to simply purify her name which goes to show just how different society was back…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The relationship between Benedick and Beatrice can be interpreted as genuine regardless of the comedic nature of the play by the portrayal of them both being mirror images of each other when Benedick describes himself as having ‘cold blood’ and Beatrice refers to herself as having a ‘hard heart.’ The parallel structure demonstrated in this scene adds to the element of the genuine underlying feelings they have through the use of dramatic irony as the audience can identify connections and similarities between the two that they seem unaware of, this can be seen as a comedic element but their feelings are still rendered as genuine due to their matching personalities which suggests that they would be a jubilant match. As well as this, the continuous references to their objection of marriage, such as Benedick claiming that if he were to be married they may ‘pluck off a bulls horns and set them in his forehead’ and Beatrice saying she ‘could not endure a husband,’ can be seen by the audience as Beatrice and Benedick covering up the feelings for each other which lay beneath their ‘merry war’ of conflict. However it can be argued that the relationship between Beatrice and Benedick is superficial due to its comedic element of gender reversal in Beatrice as women at the time did not have this attitude and mainly remained seen and not heard, any sort of banter from a woman was unexpected and misunderstood as shown by the Messenger taking Beatrice’s sarcasm literally when she refers to Benedick as ‘Signor Mountanto.’…

    • 382 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Much Ad About Nothing

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare presents an interesting relationship between the characters of Beatrice and Benedick. We can compare their relationships with the poems ‘Sonnet 130’, ‘Sonnet 43’ and ‘Salome’ and the relationships presented in them. Although Shakespeare includes a conventional relationship between Hero and Claudio, he also decides to involve a different affair between Beatrice and Benedick.…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beatrice and Hero are complete opposites to each other. One of the ways is by their personality, Beatrice is known for her fiery personality and happens to be outstandingly loyal, whilst Hero is quiet and doesn’t seem to care about much. “Sweet Hero! She is wronged, She is slandered, She is undone” (Shakespeare 75). Beatrice was outraged by Hero’s shaming so much that she started crying. Beatrice was so uneasy about this that she went as far as to order Benedick to kill Claudio. Beatrice is very…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    At the start of the play Hero is presented as a typical woman of the time, modest and demure – she says little. In fact, Shakespeare's first words describing Hero, ‘Is she not a modest young lady' announce her essential qualities of modesty and decorum. In this period, these were vital qualities to have in a wife and Hero possessed them, unlike Beatrice. By contrast, Shakespeare portrays Beatrice as an untypical woman, being outspoken, independent, witty and unconventional – she is always participating in the conversation even with the men (especially Benedick), which Hero never does.…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hamlet As A Tragic Hero

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the play Hamlet, written by Shakespeare, the main character Hamlet is often described as a hero. There are 6 criterion for a Shakespeare play to be considered a tragedy; the hero is a man of outstanding quality, the hero has a tragic flaw, the hero’s downfall is a result of his own choice, the audience has a “sad sense of wasted human potential”, the hero has an increase in awareness and a gain in self knowledge, and the audience experiences a cycle of good and bad emotions towards mankind. Hamlet is a great example of a tragic hero, one of his greatest attributes is also his biggest downfall.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A hero is someone of exceptional courage and strength. A ¨ tragic¨ hero is a great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat. ¨Romeo and Juliet¨ is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. Juliet is the tragic hero of the story because she fits all the criteria of one.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An example of Claudio grieving for Hero after he learns of her death shows his over-reaction to a situation based on false trickery. He soon learns that a second chance awaits him when Hero reveals her masked self. Claudio realizes that he must not be quick to judge. On the other hand, friends make Beatrice and Benedick believe that each of them is the secret passion of the other, and entangle both Benedick and Beatrice in a plot. By overhearing conversations, each of them writes a note to the other. It is not until later, that reveals the notes signify an aspect of what they wish. However, it is the actions of Dogberry and Verges who arrest the villains and obtain a confession that set forward motion to both couples in discovering the truth about…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays