The Soldiers Return & First Deceptions
The Soldiers’ Return
Much Ado About Nothing opens with news that Don Pedro and his soldiers are returning to Messina after a successful military campaign. The Messenger describes the soldiers’ valour, and Leonato prepares to welcome them into his household. This opening establishes the world of the play: men returning from war into a domestic space governed by women, wit, and social performance.
Claudio’s first response to peacetime is to fall instantly in love with Hero. He tells Benedick: “In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.” The language is visual — “eye,” “looked on” — suggesting that Claudio’s love is based entirely on appearance. This is significant for AO2: Shakespeare establishes from the very start that Claudio sees Hero as an image, not a person. His love is shallow, and it will prove dangerously fragile when that image is challenged.
Claudio falls in love with Hero through sight alone, using visual language throughout. This foreshadows the central crisis: because his love is based on appearance, it is destroyed when Don John manipulates what Claudio sees at Hero’s window.
The “Merry War”: Beatrice vs Benedick
Before the soldiers even arrive, Beatrice asks after Benedick with barely concealed interest: “I pray you, is Signor Mountanto returned from the wars?” The name “Mountanto” is a fencing term (an upward thrust), mocking Benedick as a show-off. Yet the fact that Beatrice asks about him first, before any other soldier, reveals an obsession she tries to disguise as contempt.
When they meet, the insults fly immediately. Benedick declares: “I would my horse had the speed of your tongue”, comparing Beatrice’s wit to something wild and uncontrollable. Beatrice responds with equal force. Leonato describes their exchanges as a “merry war” and a “skirmish of wit.” Shakespeare uses martial language to frame their relationship: their love is a battle, and their words are weapons.
Later, Benedick complains: “She speaks poniards, and every word stabs”. The metaphor of poniards (daggers) turns Beatrice’s speech into physical violence. For AO2 analysis, note how Shakespeare consistently associates love with warfare for this couple — a structural parallel to the military campaign that opens the play.
Beatrice and Benedick speak almost entirely in prose, while Hero and Claudio tend to speak in verse. This is a deliberate structural choice by Shakespeare. Prose suggests informality, wit, and equality — Beatrice and Benedick are intellectual equals having a genuine conversation. Verse suggests formality, convention, and emotional distance — Hero and Claudio follow the rules of courtly love without the spontaneity of real connection.
Significantly, Benedick switches to verse in Act 5, Scene 2 when he tries to write a love poem for Beatrice and fails miserably: “I can find out no rhyme to ‘lady’ but ‘baby.’” The switch from prose to clumsy verse is comic, but it also shows the depth of his transformation — he is genuinely trying to express love in a language that does not come naturally to him.
Claudio’s Courtship: Love or Transaction?
Claudio does not woo Hero himself. Instead, he asks Don Pedro to approach Leonato on his behalf. Don Pedro agrees: “I will assume thy part in some disguise, / And tell fair Hero I am Claudio.” This arrangement — one man wooing a woman on behalf of another, wearing a disguise — immediately introduces the theme of deception into the love plot.
Shakespeare is making a point about Elizabethan courtship: it was already a kind of performance, a social ritual conducted through intermediaries and negotiation. Claudio never has a meaningful conversation with Hero before the engagement. He asks Benedick, “Is she not a modest young lady?” and enquires about her inheritance: “Hath Leonato any son?”. If Leonato has no son, Hero inherits everything. Love and economics are inseparable.
Claudio asks whether Leonato has a son — meaning whether Hero will inherit her father’s wealth. This reveals that even his “love at first sight” is entangled with economic calculation. Shakespeare exposes the transactional nature of Elizabethan courtship through Claudio’s apparently romantic pursuit.
The Masked Ball (Act 2, Scene 1)
The masked ball is the play’s first major set piece of deception. Characters wear literal masks, allowing Shakespeare to explore what happens when identity is hidden. Don Pedro woos Hero while disguised as Claudio. Beatrice insults Benedick to his face while pretending not to recognise him — or possibly knowing exactly who he is and enjoying the cruelty.
The scene generates the play’s first act of malicious deception. Don John tells Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. Claudio believes him at once, and alone on stage he says: “the Prince woos for himself.” His trust is so fragile that a single sentence from a known villain destroys it. This is a structural mirror of Act 4: in both cases, Claudio believes the worst about someone he claims to love based on minimal evidence. Shakespeare is showing us that Claudio’s love, whether for Hero or for Don Pedro’s friendship, is built on surfaces.
In the same scene, Beatrice delivers one of her most famous lines: “There was a star danced, and under that was I born”. This is a moment of lyrical self-definition that contrasts sharply with her usual aggressive wit. The imagery of a dancing star suggests joy, energy, and cosmic specialness — Beatrice claims she was born under a sign of celebration, not romantic love.
Yet the line also reveals vulnerability. Beatrice is explaining why she is unmarried: she was simply not born for the conventional path. There is a wistfulness beneath the bravado. Shakespeare gives Beatrice layers that a surface reading might miss — she is not merely “anti-marriage” but a complex woman navigating a society that offers her limited options. This is excellent material for AO1: a personal, exploratory response that looks beneath the obvious.
The First Deceptions: Seeds of Disaster
By the end of Act 2, Shakespeare has established two parallel tracks of deception. The benign deceptions — Don Pedro wooing Hero in disguise, the upcoming gulling of Beatrice and Benedick — are playful and ultimately lead to love. The malicious deceptions — Don John’s lie about Don Pedro, and his emerging plot against Hero — lead to destruction. Shakespeare structures the play so that audiences must constantly ask: which kind of deception am I watching? The play’s title, “Much Ado About Nothing,” reminds us that all of it is built on illusion.
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, / Men were deceivers ever” — Balthasar’s song, performed just before the gulling scene, functions as a thematic chorus. It warns that men are inherently untrustworthy, that their promises of constancy are lies. The song foreshadows Claudio’s betrayal of Hero and, ironically, is performed in a scene where men are about to deceive Benedick into genuine love. The song’s message is both true and false — like everything else in Messina.