A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - J Is For Don John

 

This is what Don John causes. Public Domain.

Today’s Shakespeare character is Don John, the main villain from Much Ado About Nothing. 

He is not a deep or subtle character like Iago. Although, now I think of it, you do have to wonder about the subtlety of someone who ruins lives and destroys a marriage over a job! Still. 

Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. It’s a screwball comedy about Benedick and Beatrice, two wonderful, smart people who are constantly slanging each other off but are crazy about each other. More of that later, in M Is For Much Ado About Nothing.

But there is a part of the story about the other couple, Hero and Claudio, and how their lives are nearly ruined. 

Don John is the illegitimate brother of Don Pedro, a prince who is leading an army. The soldiers turn up in Messina, where the play is set, and proceed to party and be celebrated for their victory.

Everyone seems to be having fun except Don John. He hates everyone enjoying themselves and when Claudio, a young soldier and friend of Benedick, gets engaged to Beatrice’s cousin Hero, a sweet young thing, he decides he is going to ruin it for them. The thing is, there is no obvious reason  why he’d do that, other than jealousy of his brother and resentment of being illegitimate. What this has to do with Hero and Claudio is hard to see. But because this is a comedy and has to end happily ever after, there is no pile of bodies on the stage at the end.

His friend Borachio helps out by appearing in a window with his lover Margaret, one of Hero’s two women, who looks a bit like her, so that her fiancé thinks she is unfaithful and humiliates her at the altar.

Claudio gets his comeuppance for doubting his girl and humiliating her - more of that in my M post. 

So does Borachio, who makes the mistake of bragging about it in the presence of the klutzy policeman Dogberry, who arrests him. Don John doesn’t get away with it either.

The role has been played by the likes of Derek Jacobi, in a production with a much younger Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens. I have that on a vinyl boxed set from the old days before CDs and streaming services. 

Keanu Reeves played the role in the film with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. Who would have thought? 

A later version, directed by Joss Whedon, featured Sean Maher in the role(Serenity).

Elliot Levey played the role in the version with David Tennant and Catherine Tate. He seems to be best known for some stage productions with the National Theatre, including Coriolanus, in which he played Brutus, a tribune of the People. So I have seen him before, and also in the David Tennant production.

Which is available online. Here is a link.

https://archive.org/details/muchadoaboutnothing_202001

This, and the Branagh/Thompson version are the two best I have ever seen!