Much Ado--2

Well, Much Ado About Nothing is kind of a short play. I finished it today, after starting it yesterday.
It was great, and a great relief to read it. First, it is genuinely, really funny. Not all of Shakespeare's comedies are actually funny. Not in a way that will make you laugh. They have witty heroines and jokes about cuckoldry (your wife cheating on you, which for some reason makes you grow horns; I don't know, don't ask, but you can't understand Shakespeare without knowing that), and sometimes a clown. But, really, they're comedies because people get married at the end. Much Ado is a little different. The Benedick--Beatrice jousts are really funny, as are the scenes in which each is tricked into thinking that the other loves him/her. Second, there's only one anti-semitic joke in the whole play.
There is no character in Much Ado with the force of Shylock. No one who gets under your skin and feels quite that real and powerful. There is cruelty, though. Claudio and Don Pedro are cruel, and the most jarring parts of the play stem from the really weird jumps from love talk to killer talk. Claudio and Don Pedro, gulled by Don John, walk down the aisle for Claudio to marry Hero, then condemn her strongly enough that it is plausible that she might die. Benedick and Beatrice finally come together over an agreement to kill Claudio.
The way these conversations happen is remarkable. Love love love, KILL. We owe the books we read the most charitable reading we can muster, I think. The best way that I can make sense of these jumps in Much Ado is to guess that, in this play, love and violence/war are very, very close. The main guy characters (Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, et al) come directly from war to Leonato's house, where the wooing immediately begins. Benedick and Beatrice court through a war of wit, even all the way through the friar agreeing to wed them. The stronger example, though, is surely Benedick proving his love to Beatrice by promising to kill Claudio. Love is discovered, performed, and confirmed through violence.
And here's the thing: it is all much ado about nothing. I don't think either of these two things, love or war, lies particularly heavily on the minds of the folks in this play. Harold Bloom calls Benedick and Beatrice "splendid nihilists." There may be something in that.
There's a lot more to say about Much Ado, but I've finished it, you know? Maybe when I'm deep in Titus Andronicus I'll reach back to Much Ado for comfort. God, that'll be a slog.
Tomorrow I start Winter's Tale. I was going to do something different, but the high in Milwaukee tomorrow is 0. Yes, that's a zero. Wind chills reaching -30. So, I'm going to read A Winter's Tale.