cbr17bingo – play
(spoilers aplenty ahead)
I hate Claudio. I feel like that shouldn’t be my takeaway from this play, but here we are. The play centers largely on Claudio and Hero, who early in the play are engaged to be wed. Beatrice and Benedick are the secondary enemies-to-lovers couple, but I can certainly see why some productions of the play choose to emphasize their role because by modern-day standards, the Claudio/Hero relationship is somewhat unpalatable.
Claudio is a favorite of the prince Don Pedro, so the prince’s hateful illegitimate brother Don John decides to cause trouble by tricking Claudio and Don Pedro into thinking that Hero is cheating on him the night before the wedding. Claudio waits until the ceremony the next day to publicly denounce Hero, who faints. At first her father Leonato bemoans her immoral ways, but when the friar says he believes Hero, Leonato comes around. Because heaven forbid a parent believe the daughter he’s raised, but I guess he’ll believe it when a man says it? Everyone agrees that Hero will pretend to be dead to see if that softens Claudio, but Claudio could not possibly care less when he finds out. It’s not until it’s revealed that Don John lied that all of a sudden Claudio is like “Oh, my poor sweet Hero!” And then he and Hero get married because it’s 16th century England and this is a romantic comedy play, so they have to have a “happy” ending.
On to the good stuff, though! Beatrice and Benedick enjoy sniping at each other. It’s implied that they were romantically entangled in the past. They are each tricked (spot a theme?) into thinking the other loves them, and they admit their love for each other. Yay! Also, Dogberry the constable is successful in spite of himself. He provided quite a bit of comic relief because he misspeaks a lot.
It had probably been about 25 years since I saw and read this play. I enjoyed the re-read, but I think it’s really time to re-watch it, preferably one of those productions that puts Beatrice and Benedick front and center. They were the couple to watch.