R+J and Much Ado About Nothing Research

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Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing are both love stories, but their portrayal of love is very different. In Much Ado About Nothing Claudio and Hero fall in love, break apart, and then fall in love again, while at the same time, Beatrice and Benedick are being tricked into loving each other. This is very different from Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet are in a constant struggle for their love. Shakespeare’s plays Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing both contain the elements of; love at first sight, manipulation of love and a detailed love story, but the portrayal of love in Romeo and Juliet much more fast paced and reckless than it is in Much Ado About Nothing. Three important aspects of love are written in each play but are portrayed in completely different ways. Both Romeo and Juliet, and Hero and Claudio experience love at first sight. But the level of love they experience is dependant on the book. In both books, love is somehow manipulated, but it is manipulated in different ways for dissimilar purposes in the different books. Finally, the whole crazy journey of love is radically different for Benedick and Beatrice than it is for Romeo and Juliet.
Love at first sight is a simple concept. However, it can be experienced at many different levels of love. In Romeo and Juliet, the moment Romeo sees Juliet, he immediately devotes himself to her. He says “The measure done, I’ll watch her place stand/ and touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. / Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, / for I ne’er saw true beauty till this night” (Shakespeare 53). Shortly after Romeo meets Juliet, he immediately woos her and kisses her, forgetting entirely about Rosaline, his previous love. Their experience of love at firs sight was so intense that they forgot to even tell each other their names. Claudio and Hero’ experience of love at first sight is not quite as spectacular. When Claudio is talking to Prince about Hero he says “O, my lord, / when you went onward on this ended action, / I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye, / that liked but had a rougher task in hand / than to drive liking to the name of love. / But now I am returned and that war thoughts / Have left their places vacant, in their rooms / Come thronging soft and delicate desires, / All prompting me how fair young Hero is…” (Shakespeare 25) Here, Claudio says that he had liked Hero before, but now he is ready to make a move, he likes her but he does not go crazy about her. He doesn’t really know what to do though. So Prince offers to woo her sometime soon in the name of Claudio while wearing a mask. Romeo is clearly much more vigorous and reckless than Claudio, who is much more conservative and thoughtful. The drastic difference in Much Ado About Nothing is that Hero does not even know that Claudio loves him at all until that night. Pace of the love is clearly different in the two plays. Romeo and Juliet’s experience of love at first sight is much faster paced and intense, While Claudio and Hero’s is much more laid back and careful. Love at first sight is only one aspect of love that is in both plays.

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The manipulation of love is a common thing in both plays. In Much Ado About Nothing, almost all the main characters participate in a scheme to get Benedick and Beatrice, who are bitter enemies, to love each other. Prince says, “I will teach you how to humor your cousin /, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; / and I, with your two helps, will so practice on Benedick that, / in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, / he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this, / Cupid is no longer an archer: / his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods” (Shakespeare 69) Prince, Hero, Leonato, and Claudio try to make Benedick and Beatrice love each other by telling each that the other is crazy about them. This makes them look upon the other in a new light and eventually love. Also in Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio is fooled by Don Jon to believe out Hero has been cheating on him, Friar tries to makes everything better by faking Hero’s death to make Claudio realize how much he loved Hero and to feel bad about how he treated her so that they could get back together when Hero is “resurrected”. In Romeo and Juliet, Capulet tries to manipulate Juliet to love Paris when she already loves Romeo. “Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, / But fettle your fine joints “gainst Thursday next / You go with Paris to Saint Peter”s Church, / Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither” (Shakespeare 167). While Capulet’s strategy is to force Juliet to the wedding, believing that she will be happier when she gets married and gives her no choice in the matter and Capulet’s plan fails. Friar Lawrence in is in a similar predicament as the friar in Much Ado About Nothing, he tries a similar plan for Juliet except for that he is trying to fool everyone but Romeo. This way Paris will think that Juliet is dead and will give up trying to marry her. Again, in Romeo and Juliet people are given no choice in the manipulation of their love. Again the plan fails. In both plays the lovers have to ask their parents if their love is permissible, to do this they have to manipulate their love to seem acceptable. Claudio asks Leonato politely and in the traditional fashion if he could marry his daughter Hero. Leonato accepts and is overjoyed to marry his daughter to such a man. While on the other hand, Romeo and Juliet decide to skimp on the courting process and get married right away. Their marriage ended in tragedy. It seems as though the brute force strategy of love manipulation does not work nearly as well as slowly convincing people that it is for the greater good. Another example of how love in Romeo and Juliet is fast paced and reckless. Not just the little aspects of love in the books are different, entire love stories are also perfect examples of the difference between the two books.
The love stories of Benedick and Beatrice and Romeo and Juliet are radically different. Benedick and Beatrice are tricked from hating each other into loving each other. It is the same case for Romeo and Juliet; their families hate each other also. But there are many differences between the two couples. First of all Beatrice and Benedick have a bona fide love between them, they even write love poems to each other as proof of their love at the end of the play. Benedick and Beatrice must be coaxed out of their hate for each other in order for them to love each other. But after this process they actually love each other instead of hate. Benedick carries out his love for Beatrice in a traditional way.

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Benedick asks Leonato, Beatrice’s uncle for Beatrice’s hand in marriage and the friar to help him “But for my will, my will is your goodwill / May stand with ours, this day to be conjoined / in the state of honorable marriage- / in which, good Friar, I shall desire your help.” (Shakespeare 222). But Romeo and Juliet just have the power of lust on their side. Friar exemplifies this by saying “Young men’s love then lies / not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes” (Shakespeare 89). WhenRomeo sees Juliet, he totally forgets his hate for her family in his lust, and the same goes for Juliet. Romeo and Juliet clearly rush through things a little too fast and should have been more careful, considering how their marriage ended up. Finally the end of their love journey is also radically different. Beatrice and Benedick have a happy ending and live put their lives as a happy couple. They took their time and made sure that they had done everything right before they tied the not. But yet again, Romeo and Juliet rust through the dating, the proposal, and the marriage, and look how they ended up. Rushing through a love affair will clearly end up in disaster, as Romeo and Juliet’s example shows. They should have been more like Beatrice and Benedick.
Romeo and Juliet is a book of two teenagers who, in their lust, rush through an affair, marrying each other within only days of meeting each other. Their love ends in their tragic deaths. But Much Ado About Nothing is about two couples who take their time and take their love on the traditional path. Their love ends in happiness. Shakespeare’s plays Romeo and Juliet takes a much more radical and rushed than in Much Ado About Nothing. This is shown by when Romeo and Juliet Experience love at first sight they automatically start kissing. But Claudio and Hero also experience love at first sight but they take their time and don’t even talk to each other until that night. Also, in Romeo and Juliet many people try to manipulate love through brute force, giving people no decision in the matter, all attempts ended in disaster. But in Much Ado About Nothing the attempts to manipulate love included presenting a situation and the people making up their own minds about their love. These ended in success. And finally, throughout the whole love story of Romeo and Juliet, the rush, but Benedick and Beatrice take their time. Again the slow and steady approach is successful. Rushing always leads to disaster, therefore, slow and steady wins the race.

Although the young lovers Hero and Claudio provide the main impetus for the plot, the courtship between the older, wiser lovers Benedick and Beatrice is what makes Much Ado About Nothing so memorable. Benedick and Beatrice argue with delightful wit, and Shakespeare develops their journey from antagonism to sincere love and affection with a rich sense of humor and compassion. Since Beatrice and Benedick have a history behind them that adds weight to their relationship, they are older and more mature than the typical lovers in Shakespeare’s comedies, though their unhealthy competitiveness reveals them to be childish novices when it comes to love.
Numerous comparisons can be made in characters, plot, and speech between Romeo and Juliet, which is a tragedy, and Much Ado About Nothing, which is a comedy. First, corresponding characters in both plays include villains, lovers, and friends in addition to characters who provide comic relief. These works have a similar villain.

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Tybalt of Romeo and Juliet is similar to Don John in Much Ado About Nothing in that both characters do not approve of the lover‘s relationships and wish to break them up. Furthermore, Romeo and Juliet are similar to Claudio and Hero, who are the leading couples in each play. The comic relief in each play is the watch in Much Ado About Nothing and the servants in Romeo and Juliet. Also, Mercutio and Benedick are both scornful of love. However, Benedick does finally fall in love with Beatrice. Additionally, each male young lover has his group of friends in each play. However, in Much Ado About Nothing, Hero also has her group of acquaintances; Juliet does not. Also, several similarities in plot exist between Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing. In each of these plays, a romance between young lovers includes a false death of the female character, which the male character believes to be real. In Romeo and Juliet, there is a fatal ending; in which both of the lovers kill themselves because they would rather die than go on living without each other. However, in Much Ado About Nothing, the false death is discovered before there are any real deaths. Both couples do end up together, although one is in life and the other in death. In addition, similarities in speech occur in these works. Of course, the same Shakespearean language is in each work. Both of these plays have apparent oxymorons about love. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo says of his crush at the time, “O brawling love, O loving hate” (Shakespeare, 1.1.181). And in Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice asks Benedick, “But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?” (Shakespeare 5.2. 63-64). Suffer love is an apparent oxymoron because it consists of two dissimilar terms. Also, the much overused rhetorical poetry is present in both of the plays. Additionally, the rules of Shakespearean addressing are used in both. In conclusion, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing can be compared in characters, plot, and speech. These comparisons are made between two different categories of plays; comedy and tragedy.