Student Essay:
The Power of Nothing

The plot of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, as evident in the title, revolves around the concept of nothing. Shakespeare uses the word nothing to describe the concept of everything and anything outside the circle of reality, yet still in the realm of possibility. Furthermore, he uses the concept of nothingness to influence events inside the circle of reality. In the play, Shakespeare has the characters make practically all their decisions based on this nothing. This is especially true of their significant decisions, which lead to a variety of mixed-up results. This essay will examine nothing from the present, past, and future, concluding that decisions based on nothing negatively affect not only the characters in Shakespeare’s play, but also people today in our everyday lives.

Nothing is the concept of all things inside the realm of possibility, but outside the circle of reality, that impact our daily lives. As in Shakespeare’s play and in our present day lives, nothing generally has a negative impact. First, we spend too much time thinking about regrets from the past, and the nothings that might have happened had we made different choices. Second, we believe nothing in the present, which often unduly hurts our relationship with others. Finally, our minds are regularly occupied with nothing from the future, harming us through fears as well as unfulfilled hopes and dreams.

Nothing-from-the-past is everything that never in fact happened, yet could have happened. This tends to influence our current reality in the form of regrets and “what if’s?” We are negatively impacted by these nothings-from-the-past, because we spend time wishing we had acted differently. We wonder about what would have happened if we had. In reality, we do not know whether or how those things outside of the circle of reality, yet still in the realm of possibility, could or would have changed the present. But we still waste time lamenting our actions, even though the past cannot be changed.

We see this almost happen in Much Ado About Nothing, when Claudio learns that his beloved Hero, whom he believes he has killed, is actually innocent. When he hears the news, Claudio states, “I have drunk poison whiles he uttered it.” Claudio apologizes to Hero’s father Leonato, and says he will do whatever Leonato asks in repayment. At this point, the nothing that he mistakenly believed (that Hero was dead), could easily have turned to tragedy. Mirroring Romeo and Juliet, Claudio could have drunk literal poison upon finding out Hero was innocent. Or Leonato could have required that he do something terrible to atone for his daughter’s death. Thankfully, the purpose of Leonato’s deception was for good, not for harm. But we can see an equally likely scenario in which the lie of Hero’s death could have had horrible results: we see clearly that this nothing-from-the-past negatively affects the future.

The fact that the characters’ lives are negatively affected by nothing-from-the-present is readily apparent in Much Ado About Nothing. Don John uses nothing (again events outside of reality yet still possible) in the form of lies and deceptions to twice trick Claudio, who never quite seems to learn his lesson. Claudio first believes the lie that Don Pedro is trying to steal Hero from him, and later is deceived into thinking that Hero has been unfaithful to him. Both of those things are possibilities, however unlikely, but are not true, and hence nothing. We see this nothing in our present lives causing negative effects through false gossip, outright lies, and misunderstandings. We exchange words, written or spoken with someone, we misinterpret their tone or their response, and this changes how we act toward them because of our false perception of what they think. Or the inverse occurs, and others misunderstand us over nothing. Nothing causes a great deal of trouble in sixteenth century Messina, as well as in our present day lives.