How Is Love Presented In Much Ado About Nothing

In Shakespeare’s theatrical career, he often critiqued or commented on the playwright’s ability to handcraft a play and manipulate characters and settings. This was often delineated through a play within the play, however there are multiple ways to express the playwright’s capacity to play puppet-master with the characters.
While Shakespeare’s well-known comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, does not have a play within the play, it exposes characters attempting to control the consequences of other character’s futures. Initially, the play proposes the idea that life itself is a planned experience through scenes that magnify character’s lofty ideas to interfere with love and play the part of Cupid. However, the final scene in which two couples are married and the antagonizing character is caught confirms that the outcomes of life and love cannot be controlled or manipulated by human means or efforts. Also, it suggests that there is a higher power that exists that controls human fate, which is analogous with …show more content…
Ideas of an omniscient higher power that controls life and love manifest in Benedick’s sung verse as well as his spoken soliloquy. As depicted in Much Ado About Nothing, no amount of human interference can change the fated outcomes of love determined by a higher force. While addressing philosophical questions of fate and religious questions of monotheism, Shakespeare additionally addresses the similarity of the relationship between humans and a higher power, and the relationship between characters and a playwright. Since the play connotes that humans lack power in regard to controlling their futures, it is possible that Shakespeare is endorsing the power of playwrights. While Much Ado About Nothing presents itself as a classic Shakespearean comedy, the play explores deep questions concerning the fate of