Much Ado About Nothing Guided Reading Questions for Act IV

Act IV/ Scene 1

1. How does Claudio reject Hero?

2. What does Don Pedro call Hero?

3. What fate does Leonato wish upon his daughter, Hero, after she swoons away? And what extreme measure is he willing to take to bring it about?

4. Did Beatrice sleep in Hero’s bedchamber the night before?

5. Who declares his belief that Hero is innocent?

6. How does Leonato interpret Hero’s facial expression?  How does Friar Francis?

7. Whom does Benedick believe to be the author of the slander?

8. What does Friar Francis direct Leonato to do?  What is his purpose for the deception?

9. What is the backup plan if Hero’s reputation cannot be salvaged?

10. How does the language change once Benedick and Beatrice are alone?  Why?

11. For whom does Beatrice weep?

12. Who confess their love for each other?

13. Whom will Benedick challenge?

14. How does Benedick’s decision to challenge Claudio represent a major change for his character?

Act IV/ Scene 2

1. Who is provided with a stool and a cushion?

2. Is Dogberry's examination of the prisoners direct and to the point?

3. Who moves the examination along and keeps it on point?

4. What does Dogberry whisper into Borachio's ear?

5. What is the testimony of the watch?

6. What is Dogberry's response upon hearing the watch testify that Count Claudio intended to accuse and refuse Hero?

7. Who leaves to show Leonato the examination?

8. Does the news of Hero's death upon wrongful accusation have any effect on Conrade?

9. What does Dogberry want everyone to remember?

Quotations for Act IV:  Note (a) who said it, (b) to whom did they say it, (c) explain how the quote relates to the events and/or characters in the play

1. “O, what men dare do!  What men may do!  What men daily do, not knowing what they do!”

2. “There, Leonato, take her back again: / Give not this rotten orange to your friend; / She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.”

3.         But fare thee well, most foul, most fair!  Farewell,
        Thou pure impiety and impious purity!
        For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love,
        And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,
        To turn beauty into thoughts of harm,
        And never shall it more be gracious.

4.         By noting of the lady: I have mark’d
            A thousand blushing apparitions
            To start into her face; a thousand innocent shames
            In angel whiteness beat away those blushes;
            And in her eye there hath appear’d a fire,
            To burn the errors that these princes hold
            Against her maiden truth.

6.         Two of them have the very bent of honour;
            And if their wisdoms be misled in this,
            The practice of it lives in John the bastard,
            Whose spirits toil in frame of villanies.

7.         Let her awhile be secretly kept in,
            And publish it that she is dead indeed:
            Maintain a mourning ostentation,
            And on your family’s old monument
            Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites
            That appertain unto burial.

8.         …for it falls out,
            That what we have we prize not to the worth
            Whiles we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost,
            Why, then we rack the value, then we find
            The virtue that possession would not show us
            Whiles it was ours.

9.         O that I were a man!  What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands; and then, with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour, --O God,     that I were a man!  I would eat his heart in the market-place.

10.       “Enough, I am engaged: I will challenge him.  I will kiss your hand, and so I leave you.  By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account.”