Much Ado About Nothing

    Much Ado About Nothing is, in my opinion, some of Shakespeare's best work. Count Claudio ends up falling in love with Hero, his host's daughter. Hero's cousins Beatrice and Benedict (the forever bachelor) are each tricked into assuming the other is in love with them. Claudio is deceived by a vicious plot and criticizes Hero as unchaste before they marry. She faints and is considered dead, but recuperates to be established innocent by a sudden discovery. Benedict wins Beatrice’s love by protecting her cousin’s honor, and to his amazement, Claudio is reunited with Hero, who he believed dead. 

    The chosen elements of comedy in this play were sarcasm and irony. They did work quite effectively, which can be proven in many cases. In Act Four Scene One, one of these cases says, 'And what have I to give you back, whose worth - May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?'. To explain, Claudio goes to the church to marry his fiancée but says this, which is full of sarcasm, trying to humiliate his bride. I think a benefit to this sarcasm is that the actor did not react to the fact that it was supposed to be a joke. She acted hurt, which gave you a reason to dig deeper into the line to create your own conclusion. Unfortunately, I don't think the performance was funny per-say. Yes, there were some jokes, but nothing made me giggle or laugh, at best, a smile just crossed my face. To me, this was expected though, because Shakespeare was not well-known for his ability to make an audience chuckle, he was known for the more serious times and lines. The performance was physical, though. They used props, moved around the stage, their facial expressions were on point, every actor knew where they had to be at that certain time, and more. This helped the wit be even more present because you were not focused on characters for long; they were always moving around. 

    Overall, I would rate this performance with 7/10 stars.