Deception-trickery, concealment of one’s feelings Honor verses Shame-humiliation, violation of social expectations Love- Romantic and Filial (Duty to family) Gender expectations- roles of men and women Personal transformation-personal growth, enlightenment, rebirth

 Recurring pattern or repeated action, element, or idea in a work of literature. AS you read, track the following motifs:  Entertainment (spectacle, dance, music)  Expression of Grief (personal and public)

 Language and Wordplay (blank verse vs. prose, pun, double entendre, innuendo, malapropism, simile, metaphor, dramatic irony)  Noting- eavesdropping, observing, taking special notice of)  Pairing or juxtaposition of characters- (lovers, servants, brothers, villains, comics)

 Taming of that which is wild- (a metaphor for social taming)  Warfare- (figurative, in verbal confrontations and arguments)

 Language and Wordplay-  Noting- Take “note of” to notice something.  Pairing or juxtaposition of characters- Who ends up with who? Who is the antithesis of the other.

 A concrete object or place that has significance in a literary work because it communicates an idea. Keep track of how the author develops the following symbols in Much Ado About Nothing  Beards and beardlessness (especially in reference to Benedick)  Beatrice’s heart- what does it reveal, hide etc.

 Dance at the double wedding- What does it represent?  Hero’s “death” and “rebirth”

 A figure of speech that makes reference to people, places, events, literary or artistic works, or myths, either directly or by implication.  You should be able to identify allusions in this work and with the aid of some research, describe how those allusions complement the themes and motifs in the play.

 Cham’s beard  Cupid  Dian in her orb  Ethiope  Europa  God Bel’s priests  Hector  Hercules  Hyman

 Jove  Leander  Pharaoh’s soldiers  Philemon’s roof  Phoebus  Pigmies  Prester John’s foot  Saint Peter  Troilus

 Venus  Vulcan

 The introduction to the situation and the characters when the play opens.

 The “tangling” of the plot; setting up of conflicts; complications

 The turning point between the rising action and the falling action

 The unwinding of the plot toward its conclusion

 The denouement or ending; the final scene, in which the main conflict is resolved and order and stability are finally restored.

 Author’s use them to convey their intent to the audience or reader.  Track the following through out this play:  Antithesis- a figure of speech in which sharply contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in parallel phrases or grammatical structures.

 Dramatic irony- creating a specific scene on stage, when the audience knows something one (or more) of the characters does not know as the scene plays out.

 Pun- a form or wordplay that suggests two or more meanings by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or similarly sounding words, for an intended rhetorical or humorous effect.

 Iambic Pentameter- a pattern of rhythm; a line of poetry written in iambic pentameter is composed of five iambs, or “feet”; each iamb is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllabe.

 Blank Verse- unrhymed iambic pentameter. In Much Ado About Nothing, characters reflect moments of high drama or of more intense emotion through blank verse.

 Prose- writing without a regular poetic meter. In Much Ado About Nothing, characters speak in prose most of the time (with exceptions noted above under blank verse)