Is co-education the right conclusion to draw from the exposition by the Poets of educational restraints and the relation of men and women to life?

What ideals of life as to Nature and Education must be included in educational schemes?  Why does the Play not end with as many marriages as there are lovers?  Is it possibly because Shakespeare did not mean to bring forward love between man and woman as if it were the only thing in life but as the typical experience of life that should open up the depths of knowledge not of love alone but of death and suffering in relation to it.

MUCH ADOE ABOUT NOTHING

The title of this Comedy broadly describes its character, and is based upon the double meaning of “Nothing.”  The events that constitute the plot are the result of “note-ing” or overhearing and so taking note of events which are deceptive in some way.  Hence, in all the “note-ing” that takes place, there is, after all “nothing,” and the whole amusing plot constitutes much ado about nothing.  The letter “h” in Nothing was often silent in Elizabethan pronunciation.  The “h” in “Moth” in “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is another example.

Noting or overhearing as a factor of the plot is introduced also in “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”  It is one of several links in workmanship with that Play and its use there may have suggested the production of a Play almost altogether built, as this is, on overhearing or taking critical notice such as Benedicke and Beatrice take of each other.

The part of the plot that is based on an already existent story does not develop this noteing element particularly.  For that reason it is the likelier that it is a device of Shakespeare’s to make up his Comedy.

ACT I

CLAUDIO NOTES HERO WITH FAVOR AND IS NOTED WITH DISFAVOR

The Story of Act I results, on the arrival of the Prince and his suite, in making it known that Claudio has noted Hero as “the sweetest Ladie” that ever he “lookt on.”  Show how it also comes out in Scene i that a noting of a severer kind has passed between Benedicke and Beatrice.  The two kinds of special interest—­the openly admiring noting of Claudio, and the captious notice of each other shown by Beatrice and Benedicke, initiate the two channels of action in which the plot will run.  The normal sex-agreement of the one pair of characters is varied by contrast with the more unusual sex-warfare that asserts itself humorously both in Beatrice and Benedicke.  Bring out pertinent examples of their defiance of love and marriage.  What is to be gathered of Hero and her point of view from this Act?  How much from others, from little from herself?  And how much from her of others?  Contrast with hers the witness given of herself by Beatrice.  Is Claudio taciturn, too, when compared with Benedicke?

What noting goes on in scene ii?  Is it in accordance with what has already taken place between Claudio and the Prince?  What additional noting comes out in Sc. iii.  Is this in accordance with Scene i or Scene ii?  Act I closes with a sense of some confusion which Act II is required to clear up.  In addition to the inconsistency, notice Don John’s enmity to Claudio, and its menace of disaster.