William Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" is a romantic comedy which tells the love stories of the main characters Claudio and Hero, and Beatrice and Benedick. The play is classified as a comedy for a number of different reasons. The humour is in the fact that their particular search for love takes many paths and contains many misunderstandings - the pains of love. There is also a darker humour where other characters try to sabotage their relationships until they finally meet up at the compulsory happy ending, where all the characters, except for the villain John the bastard, are all redeemed and all the people are forgiven. The play also involves two pairs of lovers. At the time Shakespeare wrote this play, at about 1599, Elizabeth I was queen of England. His plays in London were performed in the Globe Theatre by the River Thames. All the parts including the female roles would have been played by men. There is a lot of dramatic tension in this scene, which leads up to the crisis point in the story. .
The scene is written in blank verse, which is important, as Shakespeare only used this form of writing for important characters or speeches. This form of writing is used up until the end of the second section of the scene where it is changed to prose. This could mean that the last section of the scene is not so dramatic. Even so during the conversation in which Benedick and Beatrice declare their love Beatrice tells him to prove his love for her by killing Claudio. Also, this crisis scene is specifically placed. To make the whole play seem not too serious Shakespeare has placed it in between two scenes with Dogberry, one of the less developed characters who is in the play to relieve the tension. In this particular scene there are three parts: when Claudio denounces Hero, the friars plan, and Benedick and Beatrice declaring their love for each other.
During the course of the scene the women are given a lower status than the men who are in control of the situation involving Hero and Claudio and do not believe Hero when her groom accuses her of sleeping with someone else.
