Much Ado About Nothing

Claudio is a young gallant, companion to Don Pedro and friend to Benedick. He is an accomplished soldier who is praised for “doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion.” However, he is more naïve in the affairs of love. Initially smitten with Hero, his feelings towards her abruptly change when he falls for Don John’s villainous scheme and sabotages his own wedding as a result.

Claudio enjoys a brotherly bond with both Don Pedro and Benedick, a relationship which has no doubt been strengthened by their time on the battlefield together. For example, in Act 1 Scene 2, Claudio asks for Benedick’s “sober judgement” on whether Hero would make a suitable match for him, demonstrating his regard for his friend’s advice. Benedick’s response is typical: he comments that “methinks she’s too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little for a great praise,” indulging in the kind of comradely mockery that makes Beatrice call him “the prince’s jester.” Claudio, however, is more solemn: in awe, he asks “can the world buy such a jewel?” This echoes the Petrarchan tradition of lauding a woman’s physical attributes using simile, and also reminds the audience that, as an heiress, Hero is a worthy financial match for the young count. In comparison to Benedick and Beatrice, Claudio and Hero’s marriage is not so much a love-match as an arranged union of two young, wealthy people, which is perhaps why he is so vulnerable to fears of cuckoldry.

 
From the beginning of the play, Claudio’s deep-seated cuckoldry anxiety renders him rather suggestible to rumour and gossip. As a strict adherent to social hierarchy, Claudio naturally believes that the prince, his social superior, will be better placed to woo Hero than himself, so asks him to approach her at the masque ball. However, this strategy proves flawed when he is told by Don John that the Prince wants Hero for himself. Here, Claudio consoles himself with a set of self pitying generalisations – “beauty is a witch / Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.” Like the archetypal cuckold, he seems oddly passive: he neither plots revenge nor takes steps to see if the rumours are true. This lack of agency is also present in the betrothal scene, where Hero is passed like a silent commodity from her father to the Prince, and only then to Claudio. While silent obedience on Hero’s part is to be expected of a woman, Claudio’s silence is perplexing. A nobleman about to be married should be assertively celebrating the occasion, not having to be prompted by Beatrice – “speak, count, ‘tis your cue.”
Apart from being timid and inadequate, Claudio’s hamartia is his failure to see beyond outward appearances. When he denounces Hero as unfaithful, he rails against her apparently deceptive looks – “she’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.” Ironically, he fails to see that his ‘reality’ is also mere “seeming,” a story constructed by Don John to ruin the wedding. Perhaps it is cuckoldry anxiety which makes him more inclined to assume Margaret must be Hero: deep down, he assumes he will inevitably be abandoned for a worthier sexual partner.

Even after Hero’s good name is restored and he agrees once again to marry her, his language is concerned with surface level appearances:

Claudio: “Good Hero, now thy image doth appear In the rare semblance that I loved it first.”

Unlike Benedick and Beatrice, Claudio has failed to progress from his initial worldview. Even his closing communication with Hero is brief and stilted, suggesting the continuation of his inadequacy into the apparently blissful world of marriage.