This Month's Much Ado Feature >>

One of the most prominent symbolic motifs in Much Ado is fashion or clothing. In a world where appearance is as (or more) important that reality, clothes make the man. Beatrice recognizes this in one of her earliest jibes at Benedick when she says that he "wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat: it ever changes with the next block” (I, i., ll.75-77). Benedick returns the slur by calling Beatrice a "turncoat" and then, in Act II, he remarks that Beatrice is an infernal Ate in good apparel. Elsewhere, Beatrice asks Don Pedro if he has a brother since "Your Grace is too costly to wear every day" (II, i., ll.328-329), while Benedick contrasts the amorous Claudio with the man as he use to be: "I have known when he would have walk'd ten miles afoot to see a good armour, and now will he lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet" (II, ii., l.18ff). Indeed, attention is drawn to this motif by the relatively minor characters of Borachio and Conrade when they engage in a long, seemingly irrelevant, dialogue about fashion in Act III, scene iii (ll.108ff).