Day 15: Another veil bed trick

Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

(the 1993 film adaptation starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson and a bunch of other great actors is my favorite way to enjoy this play.)

Well I could spend many days just talking about this delightful comedy which has delay of recognition running through it about 8 different ways. But I am trying to stick to the veil tricks, so I will go back to the other parts on a different day.

Claudio is a love-at-first-sight kind of guy, and he loved the beautiful young Hero as soon as he laid eyes upon her and before he even had a conversation with her. . .. "in mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on." His friend Benedick teases him for his quick decision to make her his wife.

The night before their wedding, Claudio looks up to Hero's bedroom window and "sees" her entertaining a lover, and so he makes another quick decision based on first sight and publicly denounces her as a "rotten orange" at the wedding ceremony.

It turns out that the two lovers in the bedroom were a trick set up by rascal Don John, to deceive Claudio's eyes, and it takes the rest of the play for everyone to find out who was really making love in Hero's bedroom. The woman's face was veiled from full recognition by the dark night and her hair, but the it was enough for Claudio that the man was moaning Hero's name, and it was Hero's bedroom, and yes the lady had Hero's clothing on.

After the groom and the bride's dad knock her down and kick her around with disgust at the altar, Hero is announced to be dead of a broken heart and the public stripping of her honor. Really though, she is hidden by the friar in a safe place until her innocence can be proven, and when it is, Claudio recognizes how mistaken he has been with his hasty judgments of "She's an angel . . . .no she's a slut." He recognizes that he has been the cause of Hero's death and asks her father what he could do to make up for his mistakes. He agrees to marry Hero's cousin, and she shows up at the wedding with a thick veil. Obviously, he can't completely stop relying on appearances, because he does ask if he could see the girl's face before he makes the vows, but Hero's dad refuses that request. Claudio agrees to marry first and see what he gets later, as an attempt to put "first sight" in the back seat a bit more.

And if you haven't guessed by now, once Claudio vows to marry her no matter what she looks like . . . the lady is unveiled and Hero is before him. Everyone thought she was dead so you can imagine the surprise on the faces of the groom and the groomsmen. "Another Hero!" "Hero that is dead!"

Claudio and Hero were young immature lovers who were mostly in love with an ideal of being in love, so the two veil tricks were a necessary part of their story. By the end of the comedy, it seems that they both are learning to recognize each other as real humans rather than just the object needed to wear the tux or the gown for "my dream wedding."