In the play Much Ado About Nothing, William Sahkespeare shows us some of the stereo types of his time in the character Dogberry. Dogberry is precieved as a "stupid" character because he is obviously of the lower class. This is shown when Dogberry misunderstands the word tedious and unknowingly makes a fool of himself when he says "but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship" (III.5.17-19). Here Shakespeare is showing us that the lower class is uneducated by making this character the seemingly comic relief of the play so we can laugh at his mistakes. Leonato does what any upper class citizen would've done and forgets about the nonsense that Dogberry spoke.
Later in the play however, we discover that had Leonato taken the time to understand Dogberry, he would have stopped Don John's evil plan before it even started. If Leonato had listened he would have discovered that Hero wasn't cheating on Claudio and in fact loved him very much. Shakespeare is presenting us with a challenge to his ealier stereo type by telling us that sometimes it's worth it to take the time to understand those that we view as infierior. Shakespear is telling us that we shouldn't always judge a book by its cover because sometimes what doesn't seem so good on the outside can turn out to be what we've wanted all along.
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5 comments:
Wow kyle you're getting pretty deep here. I definitely agree with you that at first Leonato didn't take time to understand Dogberry all because he didn't sound too intelligent. But I also think it was partly because he was in a huryy to get to Hero's wedding. I think your title of your post really summed up a key topic Shakespeare explored in the play, which is never to misjudge.
Nice dude, I like your comments on Dogberry and how things could've stopped from unraveling if the rich folk had just stopped and listened to the man on tha streets. This fits into your whole "Dont Judge a Book by it's Cover" just because Dogberry looks, sounds, smells, and acts "differently" doesn't mean he is not to be taken seriously. So overall your thoughts were almost as good as mine. P.S. check yo spelling foo.
Nice Kyle. I did my post on Dogberry's foolishness too. I agree with the idea that Leonato did not listen to Dogberry or even take him seriously was because he was of the lower class, and as your title says, you should never misjudge smoebody because of their class.
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I totally agree. But to take the phrase literally...how do we get teens to pick up a good book when it has a bad cover??? :-)
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