When Hero, a sweet young girl in the play Much Ado About Nothing is belied by her love Claudio for allegedly sleeping with another man, anyone with the utmost authority had belittled her. Starting with her father who degraded her, beat her, and pronounced his child dead when he belied she acted shamefully. Another male authoritive figure, Don John who committed the wrongful crime of untruthfulness, by hiring Borrachio to tell Claudio that Hero was being unfaithful. Hero might speak to the character Don John through Shakespeare’s Sonnet number XCIX.
“Thus forward violet thus did I chide: sweet thief, whence didst though steal thy sweet that smells” (XCIX 1&2). These lines resemble Hero telling Don John that she once had the love of Claudio in which they were supposed to marry. Don John was a thief and took that love away from her, by creating that fictional story of her. This is a critical scene in Much Ado About Nothing because this is when Hero’s affection for Claudio is being taken away when he leaves her at the alter after a public scene of humility, by revealing to friends and family that Hero was disloyal to him when they reached the point of saying their “I do’s”.
“In my loves veins though hast too grossly dyed”(XCIX 5). Hero is relaying this loss about Claudio. That Claudio no longer has love for Hero. When he heard from Borrachio that Hero was being unfaithful and sleeping with another man, Claudio was heart broken and lost all respect for Hero. Therefore, she says that the love that they once had is no longer running through his veins. His affection for her has died, and this is Don Johns fault. Although, we all know even when Claudio goes to Hero’s grave, that he is still deeply in love with her and his affection for her had never gone away because when he finds out that Hero was wrongfully accused, he is overwhelmed with happiness and his love for her becomes more clearly evident.
Don John successfully takes everything away from Hero that she prided herself over. How she was sweet and loyal and found love just from her compelling eyes. “And to his robbery anne’xd thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth. A vengeful canker eat him up to death.”(XCIX 11-13). This is Hero saying to Don John that he conquered the air and breaths she once breathed, he took the floor from beneath her feet. Now, Don John believes he has grown from his disloyal acts and has pride in what he has done by ruining the lives of such a fortunate couple, even though he cowered away from everyone, he still felt a sense of accomplishment in is actions. He put Hero to shame by mortifying her at her own wedding, ending with her supposed death. But with vengeance, may something get to the death of him. Karma will turn around and bite him and everything he stood for will turn on him despite the reasoning for his actions.
Hero’s emotions were once enlightened when Claudio was in her life. She used to see love and color surrounding her, reds were redder, blues were bluer and now she sees shades of grey because her love has been stolen from her. She used to see flowers appearing out of thin air and now they are slowly dying around her. For a girl that once had it all, just like that it was taken away from her. “More flowers I noted, yet I none could see. But sweet or colour it had stol’n from thee” (XCIX 14& 15). Hero tells Don John that he has taken all the color and scenery out of her life, and that is what most people live for, for that imagery. She tells him that that imagery is now deceased from her mind because he took the only person from her that created that image for her.
Hero’s speech reflects the feelings that she did not reveal to anyone around her. She solemnly keeps her emotions hidden and does not try to publicize her innocence. In this situation, I would not have done what Hero did in the film or in the play, I would explain to those who matter the truth and say it in the way that I related her true feelings to the sonnet.
In the Sonnet, Hero is trying to change Don John. She is trying to make it knows that he is an impostor and a thief. She is trying to relay the actuality of the predicament that she is in and trying to show Don Johns true colors. Luckily for her, his true colors are shown. Through her forceful perseverance, she let it be known that she did not commit the falsified act of deceitfulness to her lover Claudio.
This Sonnet directly coincides with the scene when Claudio disowns his potential wife and how she reacts to the humility. The sonnet explains her emotional spiral from ecstatic happiness to a form of agony. The same emotions apply to Claudio as well. He never wanted to lose is his love for Hero and he never did. Her innocence just needed to be proven in order for them to prolong their eternal love.
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