Persephatta

My favourite quote about Shakespeare is that "his plays are good, despite all the people saying they are good."

benedick confessing his love to beatrice while she’s sobbing bc her cousin is disowned/has to fake her own death to win back her fiancé who publicly denounced and abandoned her during her wedding vs. mr darcy insulting every member of elizabeth’s family and calling her poor during his proposal to marry her. fight.

Benedick challenging his best friend to a duel to avenge your cousin's honour vs. Mr Darcy preserving your sister's honour by assuring her marriage

Idk where this murder mystery renaissance started, but I'm glad it's producing a story about a flock of sheep that are obsessed with the genre trying to solve a murder. Just. Peak cinema tbh

Lovely to see we have spaces where you can gain access to so much literature!

one other thing that is important to the dynamics of much ado btw is that hero is 1) leonato’s only heir and 2) a woman. that is SUPER important because it makes the wedding scene not just catastrophic for hero who now in the eyes of everyone is ruined and unmarriageable but ALSO for leonato whose only heir is ruined and this heir crucially is a woman. he wants a man in the picture of his family’s fortune. that’s just a lot more stable. best next thing to having a son. and now he’s not only not going to have Claudio who he likes a lot and trusts (friend of Don pedro’s) but now all his money is going to hero who will NEVER marry because she can’t after what claudio says publicly about her. claudio isn’t just ruining hero but also her father and he does know that. her being leonato’s only heir comes up quite a few times (bc it’s important!). this also is why leonato is so distraught like yes socially this is mortifying but also it’s ruinous economically for their family and it’s all hero’s fault (or so he is led to believe)

something I like about emma thompson’s beatrice is that she gets the underlying melancholy that’s in a lot of the lines especially when she’s talking about the double heart for his single one stuff. it’s easy to capture beatrice’s quick wit bc it’s right there explicitly in the text and it’s easy to make her teasing and funny but beatrice really can be very sad and jaded about herself and about benedick and about trusting people and that’s also WHY she’s so quick witted and funny. it’s because she’s hiding that. and she’s hiding her feelings about benedick and others a LOT. this has gotta come through at least a little bit