Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing’s title proclaims that sex is central to this play, as “nothing” was Elizabethan slang for vagina. There is indeed “much ado”—much consternation and uproar—around women’s bodies and sexuality in this play. Debates over who has sex with whom—and who is allowed to have sex with whom—produce much of the play’s drama, as well as providing fodder for its jokes. Above all, Much Ado’s central characters want to ensure that sex occurs within, and not across, socioeconomic class categories.

In Renaissance Europe, women’s reputations rested on the concept of virginity, the idea that women were different before and after having sex with men. Being perceived as a virgin meant a single woman could more readily access marriage, respect, and resources. This rule did not apply to men, who did not risk losing social or financial stability if society perceived them as people who had sex.

The idea of virginity idealized women who did not have sex by equating abstinence with purity, and sex with contamination. This equation had to do with class: families with money and high rank wanted to preserve and protect “pure” noble bloodlines, and to make sure everyone knew whose babies were whose. In Much Ado About Nothing, it is therefore a shock and a scandal if Hero—the daughter of a governor—so much as kisses someone before she is married. Hero’s maid Margaret, on the other hand, is free to do as she likes, because her sexual choices will not determine the transmission of power within a wealthy family.

Don John’s plot hinges on this sexual class distinction. Nobody faults Margaret for making out with Borachio at a window, but Hero must protect the appearance of her virginity if she wants to be acceptable on the upper class marriage market. If Hero were in fact unfaithful to Claudio, and if she were seen engaging in a sexual relationship, she would ruin her whole family, not just her own potential to achieve financial security by marrying. It is for this reason that Leonato seems on the point of killing her (or himself) when Claudio first accuses Hero, crying “Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?” (4.1.108).

Don John’s villainy may result from his world’s attitudes toward sex and class. The half-brother of a prince, he nonetheless has little status or power, precisely because he is a half brother, and an illegitimate son. It is not Don John’s fault that his father had extramarital sex. But because ideas of class were bound up with bloodlines, Don John suffers the consequences of decisions made before he was born. Those consequences are baked into his identity: Benedick even calls him “John the Bastard” (4.1.188). The play suggests that Don John’s resentment over his own insecure social position leads him to disrupt the other characters’ security in kind. In this world, sex is not just about romance or lust; it is about power. By manipulating how the people around him perceive sex and class, Don John exercises control that he has not had over his own life and status.