New Paltz Shakespeare

The male characters in Much Ado about Nothing absolutely enrage me. Reading act IV scene I was practically unbearable. It's bad enough that Claudio decides to humiliate Hero at the alter rather than call off the wedding, but his sickening speech beginning on line 28 is outrageously offensive. He lacks the nerve to address Hero directly, so instead he tells her father “There, Leonato, take her back again./ Give not this rotten orange to your friend./ She's but the sign and semblance of her honour” (29-31). I understand that he truly believes that Hero has “betrayed” him, but he never doubts for a moment that the affair could be a misunderstanding. Claudio, and most if not all of the male characters in this play, are ready and willing to expect the worst of women. When Claudio accuses Hero of adultery, asking or rather demanding her to answer him “What man was he talked with you yesternight/ Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?” (82-83) she honestly responds “I talked with no man at that hour, my lord” (85) and still no one believes her. Hero appears to have no history of deceitfulness and up until this point in the play all the characters seemed to agree that Hero is virtuous and modest in manner. What is even worse than Claudio refusing to believe Hero and his insistence on her having “impious purity” is Leonato, her own father, immediately assumes Claudio is right. He can not fathom that Claudio is wrong, saying “Would the two princes lie? And Claudio lie,/ Who loved her so that, speaking of her foulness,/ Washed it with tears? Hence from her, let her die” (151-153). What kind of Father says “let her die?” speaking about his own daughter? I understand that this play takes place in a time where women had much less rights, but did not a bond between a parent and their child exist? Leonato seemed to be a loving father in the acts prior. The only defense Hero receives from the opposite sex comes from the friar. He observes Hero to have “A thousand blushing apparitions/ To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames/ In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,/ And in her eye there hath appeared a fire/ To burn the errors that these princes hold/ Against her maiden truth” (158-163). He dares Leonato to “Call me a fool” and to “Trust not my reading nor my observations/ Which with experimental seal doth warrant/ The tenor of my book. Trust not my age,/ My reverence, calling, nor divinity” (163-167). Leonato refuses to believe the Friar and still insists his daughter has sinned. It is unbelievable that Leonato is so certain of his daughter's piety that he disagrees with the words of a priest. This was a very frustrating scene to read and I felt a lot of sympathy towards Hero.