The story of the love between Hero and Claudio, and the cruel deception that disrupts it, is based on an old story told by many sixteenth century writers. The more benign deception practised upon Benedick and Beatrice has no known source and may well be Shakespeare’s own invention.

But the stroke of genius was to combine two plots so different in tone and mood in the one play, creating two contrasting love-stories, which reflect back and forth upon each other to create one of the most profound and entertaining explorations ever written of what it means to be ‘in love’, and of the difficult and often painful road towards mutual trust and sincerity.

Hero and Claudio are the more conventional, ‘romantic’ pair of lovers. Critics never fail to point out that they speak to each other exclusively in verse, whereas Benedick and Beatrice converse in prose. More importantly, unlike Benedick and Beatrice, who are so voluble that they might ‘talk themselves mad’, Hero and Claudio barely speak to each other at all. In fact, Hero hardly ever opens her mouth in the presence of any man, although when we hear her alone with her women-friends, she is both articulate and witty. And Claudio does not even woo Hero in person: Don Pedro does it for him – something that causes great confusion all round, as Leonato, Antonio and Benedick all assume that Don Pedro wants her for himself, and it needs little persuasion for even Claudio to think the same.

These misunderstandings and confusions, so brilliantly symbolised by the disguised couplings and re-couplings of a masked ball, are fairly easily resolved, but the lack of trust and mutual understanding that is revealed goes to the heart of the play. It is hardly a surprise when Claudio and Don Pedro are so easily tricked into doubting Hero, for neither of them has taken much trouble to understand or get to know her.

Benedick and Beatrice are mistrustful of each other for a different reason: they know each other only too well, but they do not know themselves. They have a prior history – Beatrice says that once before he won her heart ‘with false dice’ – and the mistrust and resentment stemming from that experience has poisoned their relationship not only with each other but with the whole opposite sex. Even after they are tricked into realising their true feelings for each other, they remain ‘too wise to woo peaceably’, and the hurt of previous betrayals remains tangible. It is not just Claudio’s rejection of Hero that makes Beatrice demand that Benedick prove his love for her in the most extreme way imaginable, but also Benedick’s own previous rejection of Beatrice, and the constricted role in life to which her gender condemns her.

But this is a comedy, not a tragedy, and providence is on hand to provide a happy ending. And happy endings don’t come much more providential than this one, for it is supplied by the most incompetent policeman in all literature, the bumbling Dogberry and his equally hapless Watch, who foil the plot and unmask the villains without ever quite realising what they have done.

The ending of the play is one of the most joyous in all Shakespeare: there is no Malvolio or Jaques to cast an acerbic eye on the celebrations, and all the ado ends as it began: in that most elemental of mating rituals – a dance.

Steve Fitzpatrick