The Role Of Double Villainy In Much Ado About Nothing

Double Villainy in Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing features a villain who echoes his dramatic predecessors, such as Richard III, in his willful, unashamed declaration of his own malevolence, yet Don John, in spite of this common sentiment, is not the same scheming Machiavellian we see in the earlier plays or, indeed, in the later Othello. The most immediate difference to be noted between John and these other figures lies in the nature of the play he inhabits – a comedy rather than a tragedy – and some would argue it is this that excuses his apparent lack of motivation, that this less ‘serious’ genre can get away with supplying a depthless villain simply because a villain is re-quired. John, however, is not without motive, is not so depthless as he might at first appear. The more fundamentally unique factor in the villainy of this play is its distribution – that is to say, Don John, alone, is not a successful vil-lain: without Borachio he is impotent, and Borachio, without John, is wasted. A ‘splitting’ of the villain has occurred that leaves the motivation and malevolent intent with one man and the intellect to execute this intent with another, result-ing in a tragicomic symbiosis that reveals the limitations of both men. Though John himself does not, and perhaps cannot, articu-late his motivations beyond his unapologetic …show more content…
He is the villain-ous impulse, where Borachio is the villainous design, each necessary to the treachery that an integrated villain, like Othello’s Iago, could achieve alone. This separation might provide us with an interesting look at Shakespeare’s other villains, at a Richard or an Aaron or an Iago, the forces at work within them and the balance that allows them to succeed where they