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Essay / Essay Much Ado About Nothing: The Character of Don John
The Character of Don John in Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy in which he uses one of his villains the more particular. The antagonist of this play is Don John, the bastard brother of Don Pedro. In this article I will discuss the role of Don John as well as his motivations and the character himself. I will also examine Shakespeare's use of Don John as an antagonist. I will compare Don John to other characters in the play as well as other villains in Shakespeare's works. Although Don John does not spend much time on stage in Much Ado About Nothing, he nevertheless plays a vital role in the play's plot. The plan he enacts is one of the play's two main stories (the other being the battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedict). Don John, as I mentioned before, is Don Pedro's bastard brother. His illegitimacy is one of the factors that makes him utterly despicable and hateful. He is bitter because of his social status and at the beginning of the play he is directly bitter and jealous of Claudio. We might find an explanation for why Don John hates Claudio by what he says when talking to Bararracho and Conrade in the first act. On discovering Don Pedro's plot to help Claudio win Hero's hand, Don John said: "Come, come; let us go: this might be nourishment to my great displeasure. This young company has all the glory of my overthrow : if I can thwart him in every way, I bless myself in every way." (Shakespeare 16) Although Shakespeare never actually distinguishes the specific motives for Don John's hatred of Claudio, we can infer one of two possibilities from his use of the word "overthrow." The overthrow he refers to could be a military overthrow...... middle of paper ... facing Don John. The character of Don John is not a very complicated character. He's also not a character who spends a lot of time on stage. However, you can't deny that he is one of the most wicked and twisted characters Shakespeare ever imagined. I think Don John is the perfect villain in every aspect of the word. Works Cited Hunter, GK William Shakespeare: The Later Comedies. Great Britain: Langman's Green & Co. Ltd. 1962Shakespeare, William. Much ado for nothing. Cambridge: At the University Press 1962Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York and London: WW Norton & Co., Inc. 1963Shkespeare, William. Much ado for nothing. New Haven: Yale University Press 1917 Spivack, Bernard. Shakespeare and the allegory of evil. New York: Columbia University Press 1958