This Month's Much Ado Feature >>

As will be explained further in the second of the two essays that appear in the next section of this overview, there is a pervasive hypocrisy afoot in Messina. Artificial gender roles, deception, eavesdropping, and fashion are the stuff of which Messinian society is constituted. Granted, each of these themes is a source of amusement. Yet, at the same time, Messina is a weak patriarchy in which villains like Don John remain at large, Dogberry serves as the chief law enforcement officer, and the town fathers, notably Leonato, are all to easily deceived and disposed to judgments that could have tragic consequences. What prevent this is not a change of patriarchal policy, but the interventions of Beatrice and her female sensibility and of Friar Francis and his Christian (non-secular) wisdom.