I am looking at the play from a modern viewpoint, so my opinions of the characters in `Much Ado About Nothing' differ from those of the Elizabethan audiences for whom Shakespeare intended the play. During Shakespeare's time, there were social and literary traditions to do with romance and marriage that may seem alien to us today: wooing was often done with a `go-between,' men and women were rarely left alone to get to know each other before they married, and a formal betrothal and settlement of a dowry were expected in upper class marriages. A marriage was as much an alliance between families with financial benefits as it was a union of two people in love, evident in the play when Claudio asks Don Pedro, `hath Leonato any son, my Lord"' Although Claudio's apparent concern with his future wealth and status seems distasteful to us now...