Source: "'Much Ado about Nothing'." in The Use of English, Vol. XVII, No.3, Spring, 1966, pp. 223-27.
[In the excerpt below, Crick addresses Hero and Claudio as a conventional hero and heroine in an unconventional society, a milieu in which Claudio's shortcomings are brought to the fore .]
Conventional people and societies often relish the unconventional as a safety-valve for repressed instincts. In a society such as Messina's, where the instincts for life are in danger of being drained away in small talk, Beatrice and Benedick offer this outlet. Their conventional role is to appear unconventional. Where the normal fashionable marriage is based on economic interests, and is ironically the end-product of romantic notions of love centred on physical appearance, a 'partnership' of antagonisms and verbal bombardments will offer a vicarious satisfaction to onlookers. Beatrice and.....
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