1. Much Ado: Moving on. Comedy and Marxism
12 July, 2019
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

2. Assumptions Knowledge of the plot
Understanding of the characters at the centre of the play – their relationships and their characters
Understanding of the basic themes of the play
An open mind which can assimilate ideas
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

3. Genre and its effect:
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

4. A comedy
Since 4thC BC, Comedy centres around a love story and the struggles of lovers to achieve a happy ending.
A typical plot revolves around a pair who suffer a tragic misunderstanding which leads to the heroine being wronged, before all comes out alright after vital information is discovered.
The plot turns on an element of “recognition” and is based on resolution of conflict.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

5. Recognition Easy to see this as “NOTING”
Make a note for yourself to explore and revise the elements of “recognition” or “NOTING” which bring about the reconciliation in this play.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

6. Who is it really?
In the “New Comedy” of Ancient Greece and Rome, plots usually hinge around mistaken identity.
Consider MAAN. How does Shakespeare introduce this element into the story of Hero and Claudio?
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

7. Complexity in Elizabethan England
Shakespeare wrote 16 comedies and took the conventions to the absolute limit.
Not content with a single pair of lovers. Here we see two contrasting pairs.
One pair meet in Act 1.1
The other know each other of old and apparently hate each other.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

8. Hero and Claudio The pair resemble traditional comedy pairs BUT:
There is no obstacle to their marriage from either her father or his patron/
Shakespeare introduces a “dark side” in Don John, who vows to ruin the wedding simply for sport.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

9. Journey to Darkness
Darth Vader: “You underestimate the power of the Dark Side”
If Don John is a prototype Vader he needs to act as puppet master for Claudio:
Does Claudio cross over to the dark side? To do so he needs to become jealous, uncaring, selfish, self- righteous…
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

10. Claudio and Hero as central
Claudio is “Light” - innocent and naïve- at first – find quotations to support this statement. Look in the first two acts.
After Boracchio’s “show” he becomes a Dark Character. Find evidence for his jealousy, cruelty and self-righteousness.
Act 4.1 and the opening of Act 5.1 is especially good ground for this.
NOTE WELL: All character essays need to show development of the character and the points at which the character undergoes a shift…
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

11. What changes? Claudio needs to learn a lesson and repent.
Look closely at the scenes in Act 4 and 5 where this happens. His meeting with Leonato and Antonio, then that with Benedick. Then the revelation. How does he react to this?
You will find evidence that he returns to the “Light”.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

12. Hero as heroine
An innocent girl, she meets her love early in the play.
He is duped and she is attacked.
She has to hide (the fake death) whilst “Darkness” is in the ascendancy.
She can return once the “Light” is restored, BUT Shakespeare respects custom in such comedy by playing out a scene in which identities are hidden.
Once order is restored, a happy ending follows. The two are reunited and recognise their love for each other:
CLAUDIO Another Hero! HERO Nothing certainer: One Hero died defiled, but I do live, And surely as I live, I am a maid.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

13. TWO TIER COMEDY
Alongside this mixture of convention and exploration of love, there is another strand of comedy: The high brought down by the low.
Dogberry, Verges and the guard are tiresome comics. Elizabethan puns do not render into modern minds with ease.
Shakespeare needed to write both for the educated wealthy and the uneducated poor in the pit
The “groundlings” are well served by the dirty jokes… Some education is needed to understand Dogberry’s puns
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

14. SO:
For a comedy to work, there should be a clash of status and a sense that the world is turned on its head.
Don Pedro’s sense of honour is piqued by Don John’s plot
Claudio humiliates Hero
All is revealed, not by the clever Beatrice, but by the stupid guard and their incompetent leader: Dogberry
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

15. Dogberry as a structural device:
He uncovers the plot
He is unable to clearly inform Leonato
He prevents the revelation until after the crisis
He increases the sense of dramatic irony
He prolongs the time taken to reach the denouement and thus heightens the comic effect.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

16. MARXIST THEORY… A bit more A level than GCSE, but…
We need to look at Dogberry through a different lens if we are to find any other useful material
Read your insert (next slide), courtesy of AQA LitB 4
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

17. A short digression to introduce the application of critical theory.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

18. Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

19. Ideas for Dogberry and the Watch…
Overt meaning: love story, romcom. Covert meaning: an exploration of a complacent bourgeoisie being embarrassed by a “stupid” working class man, resulting in a shift of power away from the elite.
Shakespeare was not of “high birth” and sought to imply a need for equality in his drama. This helps to allow a reading of Dogberry as the hinge for the class-struggle in the play
Comedy is essentially a genre of equality. Moreover, the essential message of the Dogberry scenes is on of an ill-educated working class group helping to destabilise a ruling elite. Dogberry is the leader of this group. As the monarch’s power becomes less “absolute” in the 16th and 17th century depictions of the relative unsuitability of the wealthy to govern, simply because they are wealthy become more common. Democracy replaces Plutocracy, albeit in the context of a system ruled by an hereditary monarch.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

20. Ideas, continued
Theatre attendance was utterly democratic was the sphere in which rich and poor rubbed shoulders. It is a chance to comment on strata of society.
A comment on metre: The rich deliver poetry in “high form”, the lower classes always speak in prose or in fragmented language. In this play, it is the lower classes who often make the most sense, even if their speech is muddled.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

21. So, Dogberry as a proto – Lenin?
Not really
BUT
Consider what he shows at a lower level:
He is a leader of men with an obviously more able sidekick (Verges) – ‘one rides behind’
He refuses to take advice
He needs the assistance of others – the watch, Verges and the Sexton in order to be triumphant, yet when all is said and done he is still “an ass”.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

22. Two level comedy
The ‘marriage comedy’ is a game invented by Don Pedro to pass the time – he has no idea how catastrophic its consequences will turn out to be.
Does he care?
A man of his status seems to view the rest of society as his playthings…
He cannot see the deceit being practised by his brother…
He is left isolated and unloved at the end of the play – even Leonato, the arch sycophant has turned on him in Act 5.1
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

23. AND, below stairs…
Dogberry has given his wildly contradictory instructions to the watch
They (not he) catch the malefactors
He takes command and ignores all those possibly better able to carry the information or lead the inquisition
He is obsessed with his honour – “He did call me ass” but he has little intrinsic honour
Is he a mirror of the world above stairs? A world in which the nobles are arrogant mischief makers without true ‘honour’?
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

24. Dogberry in brief The instrument of comic revelation!
Such a simple plot:
A couple vow to marry
A Dark character plants a seed of jealousy
A comic fool discovers the plot
All is revealed.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

25. Shakespeare’s genius Using Dogberry to delay his own revelation
Adding the comic Boracchio and Conrade to his Dark character
Stressing the social climbing of the world of the play through Leonato (find evidence for this statement)
Introducing a sub-plot that introduces two of the finest characters in any of his plays.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017

26. Much Ado:
Standard comedy plot requires a couple to split and re- join.
The heroine is innocent and is wronged
A dark force has to cause this split.
There should be a clash between upper and lower classes, in which the upper classes may learn something from the lower.
Jonathan Peel JLS 2017