Much Ado: Notes (1)

• The two major plots: Hero and Claudio; Beatrice and Benedick
• The underplot: Dogberry and his watchful watch

Act 1, scene 1

• Before the action begins: war successfully concluded (Don John)

  "How much better it is to weep at joy than to joy at weeping" (1.1.27-28)

• The "merry war" and Beatrice's first query about Benedick
• Fashion and mutability (1.1.67)
• Entrance: the joke about Hero's birth [video]
• Beatrice and Benedick in their first battle: what kind of humour? [video]
• Hero's silence and the absent mother (Innogen)
  
  

  Enter Leonato gouernour of Messina, Innogen his wife, Hero his daughter, and Beatrice his neece, with a messenger                      (from the original Quarto)

  
  
• Exeunt. Manent Claudio and Benedick.
• Noting Hero; buying Hero; Benedick compares her to Beatrice
• Enter Don Pedro. Claudio's suspicion
• Benedick as "an heretic in the despite of beauty" (1.1.225). Misogyny and horn-humour
• Exit Benedick. Claudio checks his data, and the first plot is hatched.

Act 1, scene 2

• More "noting": overhearing, and mis-overhearing

Act 1, scene 3

• A "plain-dealing villain" (1.3.30)
• Motive?
• More overhearing

• Beatrice and the ideal man (2.1.6 ff)
• Leading apes in Hell [video]. Seeing a church by daylight (2.1.27 ff; 76-77)
• Cameos in the dance: Don Pedro, Balthasar, Antonio, Beatrice and Benedick [video]
• Don John and the plot with Claudio [video]
• Benedick infuriated
• The plot resolved; Beatrice "born in a merry hour"? (2.1.318)
• The plan to engage Beatrice and Benedick begins
• -- and in the following scene the second plot against Claudio begins