How does Shakespeare use grief to manipulate audience responses in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘much ado about nothing’?

Shakespeare uses grief quite differently in both the plays to manipulate the audience’s response due to the genre of the plays. In act 4 scene 1 of ‘much ado about nothing’, Shakespeare presents his audience with Claudio’s, Leonato’s and Hero’ grief to manipulate the audience’s responses. Claudio’ grief and anger towards Hero is portrayed as calm, controlled and planned through his abrupt response: ‘no.’, the authoritative tone, ‘stand thee by, Friar,’ and sarcasm, ‘what have I give you back [that is} worth..this rich and precious gift’, interjected within his dialogues. The lack of disjointed sentences used in his dialogues gives the modern day audience the sense that he had planned the denouncement of Hero deliberately to be done in front of the whole church due to his vengeance, a feeling that both Romeo and him share, developing the audience’s aversion to Claudio. This is simply due to dramatic irony, in this case the audience knowing that Hero is still a ‘maid’ whereas Claudio does not. However this plan of Claudio’s might not seem as cold hearted or cruel to some Elizabethan audience because at that time, sleeping with another man before marriage was not just a major social shame to the family but also a ‘sin’. Shakespeare’s use of few exclamation marks in Claudio’s dialogues shows the character’s controlled anger, which emphasises his social status because at Elizabethan time a person of a higher status would be expected to be more emotionally controlled than the common man; like the prince in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, making the audience feel as tense as they would have been in Romeo and Tybalt’s fighting scene and also sympathy towards Hero; as the audience know that there is nothing she could do to defend herself against a person of higher social status ; such as Claudio. In addition to that, we also feel sympathy because of her gender, Shakespeare through his plays conveys quite clearly that women at that time had no power or authority relating to 4:1, in which Shakespeare uses the word ‘it’ to refer to Hero, dehumanising her and making her seem like an inanimate object; a possession.

Furthermore Shakespeare uses metaphors such as ‘rotten orange’ and ‘approved wanton’, which are very offensive words in Elizabethan era, which creates more sympathy for Hero as this would just add on more shame on her family and aggravate Leonato’s anger towards her, ‘death is the fairest cover for her shame’. In addition to the animosity the audience already have towards Claudio, in 5:1, Shakespeare presents a sorrowful Claudio who is not willing to accept that the accusation of Hero is not entirely his fault, ‘I have drunk poison whiles he uttered it’, ‘yet sinn’d I not’. This causes the audience to feel more rage towards him and making him the antagonist in modern day audience’s view; who gets more than he deserves, on the other hand, the Elizabethan audience might accept his ‘apology’ like Leonato, because of his social status. They might think that Leonato is lucky to even have Claudio just apologise to him, ‘chose your revenge yourself; impose me to what penance your invention can lay upon my sin.’ Through this, Shakespeare makes us, as the modern day audience to feel sympathy for Hero because she has to marry Claudio even after all the accusations of her losing her virginity, ‘she knows the heat of a luxurious bed’. Another thing which frustrates the modern audience would be the fact that Hero agreed quite happily to marry Claudio, ‘and when I liv’d I was your other wife; and when you lov’d, you were my other husband’, completely forgetting that he had just pelted insults at her a few hours ago. On the contrary, Elizabethan audience might feel no ambiguity about the marriage and feel blissful about it, which is what Shakespeare aimed for through this play since the genre is a light-hearted comedy.

In contrast to Claudio, Shakespeare presents Leonato’s grief as more of an uncontrollable outburst to the audience. He uses a lot of imagery, ‘into a pit of ink, that the wide sea..drops too few to wash her clean again’, metaphoring the stain in Hero’s reputation. Shakespeare also expresses Leonato’s grief through, ‘but mine, and mine I lov’d’, this causes the audience to feel sympathy towards Leonato because of the repetition of ‘mine’ in his dialogues which emphasises his love and pride that he had for his daughter. However this feeling changes when Shakespeare presents the Leonato who wants his daughter dead, ‘do not live, Hero, do not ope thine eyes’, modern day audience might perceive him as a gullible father who just believes whatever said about his daughter but however Elizabethan fathers would completely understand his grief and might even justify his actions. Leonato’s grief in 5:1, is