The early modern bedchamber, in life and literature She leans me out at her mistress’ chamber window, bids me a thousand times goodnight.” 4 The competing accounts of what did or did not transpire there make Hero’s bedchamber a contested space. The evidence is unclear, however, for although Don John promises Claudio the sight of Hero’s chamber being entered, what he confesses to Dogberry and Verges is simply a farewell at the window: “now that I have tonight wooed Margaret, the Lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero.

2 Don John’s subsequent proposal to Claudio and Benedick pushes further the promise for ocular as well as aural proof: “Go but with me tonight, you shall see her chamber window entered, even the night before her wedding day.” 3 The implication, of course, is that not just the window, but Hero’s body has been entered. Borachio, confident of the waiting gentlewoman Margaret’s affection toward him, is equally confident that “at any unseasonable instant of the night”, he can “appoint her to look out at her lady’s chamber.” 1 As Borachio fine-tunes the plan, he proposes that the lords will see him at Hero’s “chamber window, hear me call Margaret ‘Hero’” and her call him Claudio.

4 Much Ado About Nothing, 3.3.144 – 8 (emphasis added).ġ In William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Borachio and Don John seek to disrupt the impending marriage between Hero and Claudio with a complicated plot.

3 Much Ado About Nothing, 3.2.15 – 106 (emphasis added).

All references to Shakespeare’s plays are from (.)

1 Much Ado About Nothing, 2.2.16 – 18 (emphasis added).

Harold bloom much ado about nothing