Converting All Your Sounds of Woe Into Hey Nonny Nonny

Much Ado About Nothing is my all time favourite Shakespeare play. It's not his best work, it's not his most popular work, but to me, it is a work that is perfectly Shakespeare. In that it's basically a bunch of dirty jokes strung together to please a paying audience. I know the Bard is high culture now, but let's not kid ourselves, back in the day if his stuff wasn't getting people to pay the penny entrance - or three pence for a seat - then it wasn't worth the stage time. At the time, Much Ado was wicked popular because it was exactly what people wanted to hear. Bawdy jokes and a ludicrous plot that they could laugh at and forget the hardships of the day. Not really so different from our common denominator comedy movies, really.

Now, I could sit and talk about the vile sexual politics present in the play but frankly, Joss Whedon's low cost production that he did in his off time while filming The Avengers does that far better than I ever could. Claudio and Pedro are complete arseholes, and there's no two ways about it. Oh, Pedro has his vague redemption in which he does actually learn but... not so much for poor, stupid Claudio. No, I want to talk about the pair who have always been the favourites when it comes to this play - to the point in which entire operas have been set around them (Béatrice et Bénédict, from 1862. Fan fiction of... something that was probably fan-fiction already).

Yeah, I'm talking about Beatrice and Benedick, the ultimate will-they, won't-they, of course they will couple. The snark knights who we love because they throw amazingly witty word play back and forth, addressing each other on an equal level, and seeing both parties allowing themselves to return a love they believed not there is just heart warming. We know there's a past between these two, we know that Benedick won Beatrice's heart and then somehow broke it. When we first meet them in Much Ado, we're not really seeing their first meeting, we're seeing the third act, the rush towards the climax.

Out of all the couples he wrote, it is often thought that Beatrice and Benedick were the most likely to have future happiness. Why? They were: "too wise to woo peaceably." Or to put it in modern terms, they're more than willing to take delight in pointing out their own and each other's flaws. It's part of the reason that they are perfect for each other, and that when everyone else around them seem to have completely lost their minds, they find themselves seeking each other's company.

But here's a thing. There's been numerous versions of this play. We're told that both of Team B (yeah, I'm borrowing it from the web-series Nothing Much to Do, another great version of this play) were not born under a rhyming star. They're sarcastic, they look at traditional wooing methods and laugh their asses off at how ridiculous they are. So, please, please tell me: why is it whenever they read the love letters from the other, they melt as if it is the most romantic thing they've ever seen?

That is not the actions of the two sarcastic assholes we've loved throughout the play. It's as if they're suddenly replaced by genuinely romantic figures who like the idea of love poetry. Who find the idea of receiving a letter penned by their love, containing their truest feelings to be just oh so special to them. Come on, that's how the idiot Claudio would react, not the smart Beatrice and Benedick. And yet, every version I've seen has insisted that the two most sarcastic characters in the Shakespeare canon would happily melt at a love letter from the other.

... No. Wait. Not every version.

Gifs credit to invisiblerobotgirl on tumblr, who I believe also made this point...

That right there? That is taken from the Tennant and Tate version of Much Ado, available for purchase from Digital Theatre. This was also released in 2011, a few months before Whedon's project came out and so... probably got over-shadowed, but honestly? It's my honest opinion that this is the one production that gets the reaction absolutely right. They would be horrified by the other's romantic writings, and just want to dispose of any evidence of it as quickly as possible. This production, directed by Josie Rourke, seems to understand Beatrice and Benedick on a level that I genuinely haven't seen anywhere else. Catherine Tate gives us a Beatrice who you can genuinely believe has woke herself with laughter. David Tennant's Benedick is both a fool and an admirable person. A man to a man and a lord to a lady, as one solider says.

It's a version that doesn't get enough praise, and really it should. Yes, it reshifts the focus away from Claudio and Hero, but you know what? Considering that Hero takes back the sexist, racist idiot who very publically slut shamed her? I can't really say I blame them. Let's focus on the two who actually make see the absurdity of the world and meet each other on a level playing ground. Because even when they hate each other, Beatrice and Benedick respect each other. And for a romance, that's the most important factor that needs to be there.

So please, go and watch this version. Laugh yourself silly at how they stage it, and how they manage to throw out over the top performances at the right times, and then bring you to tears when they need to.

And enjoy the dirty jokes, the Bard enjoyed writing them, after all.