mucha ado

First of all, it is important to bear in mind that by the time this play was written (around 1598 and 1599), “England had already become a Protestant country. In this patriarchal society, women were educated to believe that men were superior women and that the aim of women was to become obedient housewives and mothers of the new generations” (Benet). “Women were expected to rule the house, which became their “queendom”, to bear children and to educate them” (Manuel). Therefore, women were always subjected to men’s authority. In the first place, they belonged to their fathers, or to the brothers (in case that the father was dead). And after that, the father normally arranged a marriage, so women then belonged to the husbands. “Regarding females in this way allowed the males to use a woman as an item to bargain with as well as a symbol to reflect to outsiders their family’s status, power and reputation. The role of women in the 16th century was very much a case of being seen and not heard. Women were regarded as possessions, initially by their fathers and eventually to their husbands” (Wells). In any case, they were in a situation of total inferiority. As regards Hero, she belongs to her father, Leonato, and at the end of the play her ‘master’ becomes Claudio. Now we are going to consider the play’s process: since the very beginning, Hero is presented as the ideal woman of Elizabethan times. Some adjectives that Claudio uses to describe her are (all in Act 1, Scene 1): beautiful, modest young lady, the sweetest lady, a “jewel”. All these adjectives connote meekness, submission and mildness, three important features that men looked for in a woman. It is obvious that ‘shrewish’ and rebellious women, like Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew were badly regarded. Hero would be more similar to Katharina’s sister, Bianca.

Beatrice is undoubtedly one of the strongest female characters Shakespeare has ever created. She is the niece of Leonato, a wealthy governor of Messina and she obtains a close relationship with his daughter Hero. The contrast between the polite and quiet Hero and Beatrice, who is a very feisty and sharp lady, is highly noticeable throughout the whole play. Although the play’s main theme is that of the innocent Hero being falsely accused of adultery, Shakespeare is definitely showing us through the character of Beatrice how a woman should be able to behave. The society in Messina is structured very much like the Elizabethan one, which first witnessed the play. In Shakespeare’s times it was normal for the father to chose his daughter’s hand in marriage. It was the father who decided who she would marry, always considering the wealth and the money involved. Love was not important, and neither was the woman’s free will. A renaissance woman back then did not have a free will. It was a male society with oppressive institutions vested in elderly male authority, property rights – and proprietorial rights in women. We can clearly make this out of the play, like when Antonio, Leonato’s brother, says to Hero: “Well, niece, I trust you will be rul’d by your father.” (II.1,442-43). Throughout the play Hero hardly says a word, her father Leonato and the other members of her family speak for her. She is being suppressed. Hero is a girl wholly constructed by family and society, without one spark of individual will. It is her father who controls her present life and her future. Only when Hero dies and is reborn, she finds her tongue for the first time, a tongue which Beatrice has never lost.

Beatrice is a woman who openly defies male subjection. “Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust, to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I’ll none: Adam’s sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.” (II.1, 451-55). She rebels against the unequal status of women in renaissance society. “Is ‘a not approved in the height a villain that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured, my kinswoman? O that I were a man! What! Bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and then with public accusation, uncover’d slander, unmitigated rancour – O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.” (IV.1, 1951-57). When Hero has been humiliated and accused of violating her chastity, Beatrice explodes with fury at Claudio for mistreating her cousin. Here, she means that if she were a man, she could take vengeance on the man that slandered her cousin. But she is a woman, so she cannot defend her in her honour whilst a man can by fighting in a duel or a battle.