Much Ado About Nothing: Love, Hate & Marriage - an Analytical Essay O

Much Ado About Nothing:   Love, Hate & Marriage - An Analytical Essay on the
Relationship of Beatrice & Benedick


    In William Shakespeare's comedy "Much Ado About Nothing", the characters
Beatrice and Benedick are involved in what could only be called a "love/hate"
relationship.   The play is a classic example of this type of relationship, and
allows us to view one from the outside looking in.   This gives us the chance to
analyse the type of relationship that at one time or another we all have been,
or will be, involved in.
    Both Beatrice and Benedick are strong-willed, intelligent characters, who
fear that falling in love will lead to a loss of freedom and eventually
heartbreak.   This causes them to deny their love for each other and it is only
through the machinations of other characters in the play that their true
feelings emerge.   When these feelings are finally acknowledged, both characters
are changed, but the changes are subtle.   They are neither drastic nor
monumental.   Both remain who they were before, but now they the two are one.
They gain everything and lose nothing.   Whether or not their love would have
bloomed without the help of their friends, we will never know.
    In the beginning of the play, Beatrice and Benedick do not seem to like
each other very much, if at all.   This can be seen in Act I; Scene I, (line 121-
131):

    BENEDICK:     God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some   gentleman
    or other shall 'scape a predestinate     scratched face.
    BEATRICE:     Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such   a face as
    yours were.
    BENEDICK:     Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.
    BEATRICE:     A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.
    BENEDICK:     I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and   so good a
    continuer. But keep your way, I' God's name; I have done.
    BEATRICE:     You always end with a jade's trick: I know you of old.

Were the reader to judge the relationship... [continues]

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