Read and annotate to the end of Act 1 (p. 17) in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. Email (mrmontasmph@gmail.com) your answers to two of the following questions before class on Monday. (If you have misplaced your copy of the book, here is a reliable online edition of the play, but the line numbers do not match those below.)
1. When his brother is present, Don John masks his ill will. However, Shakespeare often gives his villains opportunities to confess their secret thoughts to the audience. Write a monologue for Don John (at least eight lines) that he might speak at the end of Act 1, scene 3, after Borachio and Conrad have left. Write it in the same prose style that Don John uses earlier in the scene.
2. In Act 1, we see Benedick the returning soldier, carefree and unconcerned with love. But is he? Write two entries from Benedick's diary: one written that evening, and one written after an earlier meeting with Beatrice before he went away to war. What does he really think of Beatrice? What are his thoughts after their latest "skirmish of wit" in Act 1, scene 1, lines 94-119?
3. This play has many powerful men: two princes (Don Pedro and Don John), a count (Claudio), a signor (Benedick), and a governor (Leonato). How do Beatrice and Hero cope with being around such potentially intimidating men? Why would Beatrice and Hero be so close when they have such different, even contrasting, personalities?
The preceding questions were adapted from the second edition of The Cambridge School Shakespeare edition of Much Ado about Nothing (2005).
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