For more than 400 years, Much Ado has been one of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular comedies. The battle of wits between Benedick and Beatrice has provided the model for countless romantic comedies, including most recently, the film Anyone but You (2023), which borrows shamelessly from the original. But beneath its comic veneer, the fear of cuckoldry lies at the heart of Much Ado. The term cuckold derives from the cuckoo bird, which leaves its eggs to be hatched and fed in other birds’ nests. For audiences in Shakespeare’s day, it signified a man whose wife has committed adultery – thus, as an insult, a man who could not satisfy his wife. Such men became the butt of “horn” jokes – horns being a feature of the mythic cuckold – of which there are many in the play.

But if anxiety over being unable to satisfy a wife’s desires was played for laughter, it was also a deeper source of fear, especially for men in the aristocracy, whose first-born sons by tradition inherited their father’s title, wealth, and estates. Such men needed to be confident that their children were not fathered by someone else. As products of aristocratic families, Benedick and Beatrice, who once were in love, frequently play on such anxieties in their sparring. Benedick inveighs against marriage in his misogynist humor, disparaging all women as “horn makers” unworthy of him, with the exception of his mother. Beatrice, who, as a ward to her aunt Leonora cannot expect much of a dowry, blames Benedick for having once won her heart with “false dice” and therefore resigns herself defensively to a single life, finding no man a fitting candidate for marriage.

In contrast, Hero and Claudio are lovers in a more conventionally romantic mode, although their youth and innocence make them vulnerable – she in her belief that she will always have his trust; he in his willingness to believe that she has been unfaithful. Indeed, Claudio’s desire to know whether Hero is Leonora’s “only heir” suggests that his interest in her is mercenary as well as romantic, and his susceptibility to Don John’s plot to frame Hero as an unchaste “stale” is predicated, once again, on the fear of cuckoldy. This plot darkens the play as it moves toward its climax, only to be rescued by the amusing incompetence of a constable and his crew whose antics help to bring Much Ado to a satisfying comic conclusion.

By exposing the fallacies and dangers of a misogyny and gender stereotyping deeply ingrained in Elizabethan culture, however, Much Ado continues to resonate strongly with audiences today. In our production, the casting of women in some key roles written for men, such as Leonato (now Leonora) and the Friar (now the Abbess), provides a more contemporary perspective on female agency and encourages audiences to observe more keenly the damage inflicted by misogynist conduct.

-Jim Bulman