Much Ado about Theme

One major topic that has been discussed multiple times throughout my blog posts is one of the major themes; marriage. From the beginning of the play we see different views of love and marriage. Claudio enters Leonato’s castle, sees Hero, and states his intentions to marry her. Counterly, Benedick enters Leonato’s castle, sees Beatrice, and swears off marriage. By the end of the play, both of these couples had married(How many times have I said this).

One of the draft ideas about marriage throughout the play is that it is seen as a necessary thing. Claudio and Hero both seem to believe that one cannot achieve a full life without marriage, and while she appears tough Beatrice may be hiding her secret desire for a husband. One of the conundrums I had while reading the play was that throughout the duration love and marriage is mainly discussed using negative terms, however the entire plot comes back to the marriage between different pairs of characters. For example, Benedick describes himself as falling “horribly in love”(77) with Beatrice. Usually, one does not describe their love as horrible. Yet everything comes back to marriage. For Beatrice, marriage seems to be more of a trap. She has opportunities to marry, Don Pedro proposes to her, however she refuses, and it is almost as if she simply dislikes the idea of being a wife. We know that Beatrice is a bit of a feminist, and it isn’t extremely surprising that she finds the institution of marriage from the past as undesirable. Many different characters throw themselves into marriage, or swear it off, but the underlying idea beneath the skin of dialogue is the necessity of marriage to the characters in the story.

Tying directly into marriage is the theme of love. At different points in the novel it is clear that none of the characters desperately seek out love, it just sortof happens. It almost seems like love is secondary to marriage. As I mentioned previously, everything seems to come back to the importance of being married; where is the importance of loving? While Claudio and Hero fall in love quickly, they didn’t seek each other out, they just fell in love. As for Benedick and Beatrice, the opposite occurred. They attempted to escape from love, and seemed to battle each other with hatred. However, they too fell for eachother. So I guess the theme isn’t love a whole, it is the inevitability of love. You can swear it off, you can run from it, you can ignore it, but love always finds you.