Hero - "Feminism is hated because women are hated."

I come, at last, to the play's whipping post: Hero. Despite her name, she is submissive and passive, a foil to Beatrice and her fiery, decidedly un-ladylike temperament. Because of this, when her honor comes into question, it is a stunned silence that greets the accusations. To her, she had done everything in her power to acquiesce to the male-dominated and often misogynist society for her entire life, so her dramatic swoon is believable considering her world has just crashed down around her. This isn't the surprising, or disquieting, part, however. Leonato reacts to her supposed misdeed not as a father, but as a governor with a high standing; to quote noted poet and critic W.H. Auden in his work Lectures on Shakespeare, "Leonato's grief is not real - it is an expression of social embarrassment." Leonato is quick to believe Claudio's account of Hero's betrayal, but mainly because he is a count and Leonato makes a living brown-nosing royalty; why then does Don Pedro, a courtly and mannered prince himself, believe his half-brother's scheme? The answer is sexism. Hero's society is patriarchal, as shown by David W. Cole in The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare when he states that Hero is, "Submissive in a male-dominated world, she acquiesces to the Prince's anticipated suit and then quickly accepts Claudio's instead." Women were expected to go along with their man's wishes (whether that man be father or husband), but in particular are taught to be pawned off by their fathers onto a man he finds suitable. Hero's acceptance of Don Pedro's supposed offer might demonstrate an illusion of choice for women of the time, but this simply shows what was expected - no, required - of women: marriage and servitude to men.

Works Cited

Auden, W. H. Lectures on Shakespeare. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 116. Print.

Cole, W. David. The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Joseph Rosenblum. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005. 487. Print.

Don John - "Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"

The insidious Don John brings up one of the most important and often-asked questions in sociology: is it nature or nurture that most affects people's personalities? Shakespeare seems to answer this question himself by creating numerous characters who are at once bastards and villains, but to me this seems more a convention of the day than an opinion of Shakespeare himself. In Medieval Europe, sex out of wedlock was a sin, the product of which would be a bastard, who, being tainted at birth by this sinful behavior, would no doubt lead a life of misfortune. This, of course, is a ridiculous notion; it's not the sin that makes the poor bastards miserable, it's being treated as somehow less of a human being that creates such depressed and often villainous characters. Don John himself claims, "...it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love of any..." (1.3.18-19) The sentiment Shakespeare seems to put forth here is that a bastard's fate is to accept the world's contempt and to keep oneself out of society, so as not to "rob" anyone of their happiness. This alone might seem like an ample enough reason to resent society and desire to withdraw from it, but the mistreatment of illegitimate children in Shakespeare's time went beyond just stigma. As if to make certain their prophecy of the extramarital sin begetting sorrow in the offspring's life, bastards were not allowed any inheritance from their fathers. Indeed, the Latin phrase "filius nullius", which was their term for bastard, literally means "child of nobody", but, more importantly, "heir of nobody", creating  the stigma under which character's like Don John suffered. And a damning stigma it was; as British MP Joseph King wrote in his 1910 pamphlet Filius Nullius: Nobody's Child, the plight of illegitimate children was "a cruel injustice... silently borne, and... bitterly resented by the sufferers." It is clear to me that had Don John been raised more like his half-brother, Don Pedro, as a legitimate child with the promise of inheritance and common human dignity, he would not be the cold, calculating villain of Much Ado About Nothing.

Works Cited

King, Joseph. "Filius Nullius: Nobody's Child." Peasant Arts - Haslemere. 1 September 2012. Web. 5 December 2012. <http://peasant-arts.blogspot.com/2012/09/filius-nullius-nobodys-child-by-joseph.html>

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Jonathan Bate. William Shakespeare Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. 1st ed. Modern Library, 2007. 264. Print.

Dogberry - "To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune."

Dogberry is, in many ways, the antithesis of Don Pedro. Where Don Pedro has a mastery of persuasion and language, Dogberry struggles to string together coherent, let alone elegant, sentences, and comes across as rather slimy, as opposed to the dashing personality of the prince. But Dogberry is also Don Pedro's opposite in terms of class. One might argue that Dogberry has made something of his low - or at least common - status by becoming head of the watch, but Shakespeare purposefully writes him as inept and bumbling as a representation of the citizen-police of his day. In some ways, Shakespeare could certainly be accused of perpetuating the very stereotypes and prejudices that his characters, sometimes comically, portray. Dogberry is perhaps the only character truly aware of the class system in place; where others follow unwritten laws of tradition (honor, loyalty, fealty) without so much as a thought, Dogberry must constantly and consciously try to behave in a manner befitting a higher class. As David W. Cole writes in The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare, "(Dogberry) is aggressively aware of his social status, but everything he says and does to assert his material and intellectual advantages advertises instead his limits to his betters, if not to his peers." One way in which Dogberry is like to Don Pedro is that he achieves his goals in questionable ways, but the outcome is positive. Dogberry and his inept watchmen had no intention of arresting anyone that night, let alone the conspirators Borachio and Conrade. Dogberry tells his men that if a man does not stand in the Prince's name, they shall "...take no note of him, but let him go, and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of the knave." (3.3.19-20) And yet the watchmen capture the plotters and Dogberry is able to foil Don John's dastardly scheme, ending up with a happy result much in the way of the manipulative Don Pedro.

Works Cited

Cole, W. David. The Greenwood Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Joseph Rosenblum. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005. 487. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Jonathan Bate. William Shakespeare Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. 1st ed. Modern Library, 2007. 280. Print.

Don Pedro - "The world is my oyster."

Don Pedro and his band of bachelors represent the elites in their society, earning their status through warfare while retaining the ascribed statuses of royalty. Their rank in society is evident through the language used by Leonato as they approach his estate, stating, "Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace... but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave." (1.1.67-69) I find the use of "your grace" to be particularly telling, showing Leonato's deference to the Prince of Aragon. After settling in for their stay and discovering Claudio's infatuation with Hero, Don Pedro uses his clout to insist upon wooing Leonato's daughter himself. His intentions seem consistently pure, but his ascribed status in society provides him with the means to get his way (which he seems quite adept at getting). As if on a flight of fancy, Don Pedro manipulates Benedick into finally falling in love with Beatrice orchestrating this clever ruse by letting Benedick overhear a mock conversation between himself and Leonato. Benedick defers completely to his prince, so when he hears Don Pedro's claims of Beatrice's love for him, he doesn't hesitate to believe him. Once again, though his intent is to bring happiness to his subjects, he does so without their permission and seemingly on a princely whim, treating ordinary people as no more than pieces on a chessboard.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Jonathan Bate. William Shakespeare Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. 1st ed. Modern Library, 2007. 260. Print.

Society Sucks, Just Ask Shakespeare

It is frighteningly easy to draw parallels between the societies of today and those of the past, which we now view as so backward and draconian. It disturbs me how quickly Leonato and Claudio are ready to abandon - and even harm! - Hero after her fall from grace, crying out, "Death is the fairest cover for her shame that may be wish'd for." (4.1.115-116) Leonato seems to view Hero more like malfunctioning property rather than a misbehaving daughter, shedding an ugly light on the latent misogyny permeating their patriarchal society. I believe Dogberry to be another victim of stratification, even if his plight is rather amusing; the way he constantly strives to speak at a higher level and be addressed appropriate to his imaginary status belies the longing of many to rise above their rank and to an elevated societal level.

In Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing, there is very much ado about social status. The issue of stratification simmers throughout all of the rather more obvious sexual tension, with some characters, like the charismatic Don Pedro, having the world at their fingertips, while others, like Hero and Don John, struggle to rise above the burden of their ascribed statuses. On an even lower rung on the social ladder is Dogberry and his watchmen, whose delusions of grandeur and many malapropisms reveal a desire to be more like Don Pedro with his honeyed words and higher education.

In the end, why not write about all of that juicy, romance-novel stuff? Isn’t Shakespeare’s message clearly about the healing power of love and not the chains of stratification? I only began really thinking about stratification and class systems when I entered my Sociology course that I'm currently taking under Professor Don Mack. Since, my eyes have been opened to reality, in which caste systems are still in some instances very much in place and classism and sexism are still rampant. I believe social status to be relevant to everyone and is much more important in the grand scheme of things than love and lust. The majority of the world's people - whether you live under the thumb of a medieval monarchy or a modern monopoly - is discontent with their rank. Where one prospers - Don Pedro, Leonato, Claudio - others struggle - Hero, Don John, Dogberry. As Peter Collier stated in his 2007 book The Bottom Billion, "The real challenge of development is that there is a group... at the bottom that are falling behind, and often falling apart."

Works Cited

Collier, Peter. The Bottom Billion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. Jonathan Bate. William Shakespeare Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. 1st ed. Modern Library, 2007. 287. Print.