Like Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Beatrice and Benedick of Much Ado become a couple only after insult and attack. In this remarkably modern comedy, dazzling language becomes a mediating force between the fusty conventions of love and marriage and the complexities of extraordinarily intelligent and worldly-wise people. In Shakespeare’s stinging and thoughtful comedy of wit, victorious soldiers returning from war set their sights on the peacetime pleasures of clever banter and romance in a jaunty world of aristocratic artifice. However, when false information leads one proud nobleman to cruelly denounce his beloved on their wedding day, the verbal sparring sours into private warfare.
Like Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Beatrice and Benedick of Much Ado become a couple only after insult and attack. In this remarkably modern comedy, dazzling language becomes a mediating force between the fusty conventions of love and marriage and the complexities of extraordinarily intelligent and worldly-wise people. In Shakespeare’s stinging and thoughtful comedy of wit, victorious soldiers returning from war set their sights on the peacetime pleasures of clever banter and romance in a jaunty world of aristocratic artifice. However, when false information leads one proud nobleman to cruelly denounce his beloved on their wedding day, the verbal sparring sours into private warfare.