#muchado

beatrice’s main flaw is that she’s judgmental and critical. she prides herself on her wit and her lack of involvement, the fact that she’s an observer rather than a participant in the culture of courting and familial duty. she considers herself above it, and she considers that a mark of her own wisdom and acuity. 

her aversion to marriage is founded in her aversion to being controlled. she does foster real relationships, though: she loves her cousin and her uncle genuinely and engages with them as equals, even as she exalts herself for being free of the system they perpetuate.

she values knowledge, truth, she thrives on being one who knows people, one who is trusted with sensitive information. she’s all about “i’ve a good eye, uncle; i can see a church by daylight” and “disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, misprising what they look on” and “he is now as valiant as hercules who only tells a lie and swears it.”

benedick’s main flaw is that he’s fickle in interpersonal relationships. he’s obnoxiously, vocally against forming any kind of romantic attachment, and though he seems to be loyal to his friends, his allegiance is fleeting: “he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.”

he’s also quite critical of people at times, but only insofar as they interfere with his own comfortable way of living. he judges hero harshly because she threatens his friend’s bachelorhood, not because he actually has anything against her. he trades barbs with beatrice because they’re too similar in all the wrong ways, and she threatens his solitude by being perfectly companionable.

his perpetual alienation isn’t for any particular reason to do with other people; it’s his own issue. he refuses to marry because he believes that he would never be happy or comfortable in a marriage, and he won’t subject another person to what he would become in that situation: “because i will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, i will do myself the right to trust none.”

and then when you put them together, you get beatrice’s shrewd judgment with benedick’s fear of attachment: “but that my lady beatrice should know me, and not know me!” you get the masterful manipulation of their insecurities to make them realize and admit their love: beatrice is said to be too judgmental to accept benedick’s love, benedick too prideful for beatrice. they say she will receive his love with criticism, and he will receive hers with mockery.

you get “i do suffer love indeed, for i love thee against my will” and “to bind me or undo me, one of them” and “a miracle! here’s our own hands against our hearts,” because this love goes against everything they profess and stand for, but it’s true and deep; they love each other despite themselves. the progression of their relationship is about beatrice learning how to let herself be vulnerable and benedick learning how to let himself care and be cared for. 

In this adaptation, Bee and Hana live year-round at Camp Dogberry, but during the summer their family runs the camp, and Bee (18) and her younger sister Hana (16) are among the counselors. Donald and Ben are one year older than Bee, just done with their first year of college, and unexpectedly back to work one more summer at the camp. Bee and Ben have not recovered from misunderstandings after having secretly hooked up the previous summer; Hana and Claudia (17, I think) have been flirting via text.

Claudia’s insecurity and inexperience lead to Donald talking to Hana to get them together. John’s motivations are a bit different from in the play: he is interested in Claudia himself, which is why he is so invested in breaking her up from Hana. He doesn’t “get it” when Claudia rejects him by being vaguely uninterested. He doubts that Claudia and Hana have actual feelings for each other and homophobically assumes that they’re just hooking up as a “typical” young female experimentation. The whole thing blows up into a public humiliation of Hana (who is still in recovery from a major depression after being dumped by a boyfriend a few months ago), but no physical violence and no actual condemnation by the parents. 

However, the rumors fly wildly among the kids, and Hana is condemned by nearly everyone as a cheater, with Claudia garnering sympathy as the one betrayed. Hana hides in her parents’ house instead of sleeping in the cabin with the kids, and stops teaching swimming like she normally does, and stops doing all the activities that normally keep her anxiety under control. Eventually there’s a public exculpation of Hana; most of the guilty parties apologise (John has run off by then; he only came back to camp because he wanted to date Claudia, though it’s possible his father also insisted) and Hana is happy to no longer be harassed. 

Partly because Claudia has suffered bullying herself at school for being queer (and does not appear to have supportive parents) and partly because she was tricked and actually had slightly more evidence than Claudio does in the play, her eventual reunion with Hana doesn’t feel as gross as it does in the play... but perhaps the main reason is that although Hana hadn’t cheated on Claudia with her ex-boyfriend, she had been texting him and hadn’t been honest with Claudia about that. 

Bee and Ben’s story unfolds a bit out of order--the story of the night they hooked up the previous summer is told gradually in flashbacks from their different points of view, and the story of how they finally get back on the same page this summer is a pretty faithful retelling of the play. Their backstories are delved into a little in the flashbacks (Ben’s stepfather is somewhat abusive; Bee used to try to run away from home when she was little because she felt so out of place [she was adopted and the only nonwhite kid in town], but her parents would always help her pack her backpack and put in a note saying how much they loved her and hoped she would come back, so she always did come back before she got very far), and the closeness that led up to their hooking up feels like a real loss in the face of Bee’s hostility to Ben, who clearly does have feelings for her. 

Bee’s close relationship with her sister is the best. The night when Hana (having failed to convince her parents to let her leave in order to avoid Claudia after the breakup) tries to sneak away to see her ex-boyfriend, she finds her backpack packed for her with a note from Bee saying how much she loves her. 

Celebrating 10 Years of NMTD 🦩🥭