Much Ado about Nothing -Claudio-

In my opinion, Claudio is a fool, a happy fool, who is the most important character in “Much Ado about Nothing”. He might be “a pure person”, but we should not regard him as “a good man” when it comes to taking into consideration of his dreadful silliness.

The author of this tale “Shakespeare” often use this kind of stupid persons to make his stories more attractive and more complicated. Therefore, we would be able to assume that the jesters are indeed the indispensable icons for his creations. For example, in “Romeo and Juliet”, the friar plays the role in order to cause unnecessary trouble between the infamous families. In addition, the gifted novelist created the sensitive simpleton “Roderigo” in “Othello”. Without his foolishness and naive mind, Iago’s notorious scheme would have failed at the very beginning. Likewise, Claudio is the jester who greatly contribute to the comedy in various ways. However, unlike the other two, we can say he is really a happy fool because his ignorance did not take his loved ones’ life.

One of the most distinctive traits for those Shakespeare’s clowns is that they tend to jump to conclusions without deep consideration. For example, Claudio stupidly believed Don John’s story that Hero, who is the Claudio’s fiancé, had relationship with other man and cheated on him, even though he had been deceived by this bastard before. His foolishness severely tormented the innocent girl who did nothing wrong. This stupid man’s carelessness clearly remind us of Othello’s Roderigo. He is also quite gullible and Iago used him for money and plans against the moor. In terms of a false accusation, the situation, with which Hero had to face, is quite resemble to the one in which Desdemona in "Othello" was trapped. Interestingly, there is a prominent difference in the fate of the two female characters. One could survive, but the other could not. The Hero’s fame was threatened by her fiancé like Desdemona, but saved by a wise friar. “Come, lady, die to live. This wedding day perhaps is but prolonged. Have patience and endure.” (Act 4, Scene 1,252-253)

All in all, Claudio is a fortunate one who could amend his terrible failure. In addition, he luckily has many good and smart friends around him, which enables this story to become a comedy. One thing that we can learn from this play is that wisdom is always superior to cunning. Also, it is suggested that our minds are so weak that sometimes a tiny thing breaks our daily life completely. When there are many choices, some people, who have no confidence in themselves, tend to believe the more pessimistic one. I think the descriptions of those characters’ complicated psychological transformation evidently show Shakespeare’s acute insight into human nature.