response: Close reading a joke, due tue Apr 10

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All of Shakespeare's plays--but especially his comedies--are packed with verbal humor. Beatrice and Benedick are compulsive jokesters, as are most of the other characters in the play, either on purpose or accident. For this exercise, please choose a passage in Much Ado that you either find funny, or whose joke you don't understand. Try to unpack the gag, running joke, or quibble's layers of meaning, and see what you can find. In the end, is the joke serious? Is it insulting? Is it cosmic? Can you connect it with other jokes/themes in this play or others? Does your analysis make the joke funnier or does it change your understanding of the character, for better or worse?

Above all, have fun!