Vortragende Person/Vortragende Personen:
Dr. Bailey Sincox (Princeton)

Building upon past feminist approaches to Much Ado, in this paper I frame its Claudio and Hero plot in terms of consent. My main point is that the play’s operative term for consent is “goodwill,” a word that, like “consent,” conflates affective and legal discourses. I argue that early scenes establish the expectation that Hero’s goodwill must be “got” for a marriage to proceed. Because Hero’s consent to Pedro is reported rather than staged––and because Pedro is exchanged for Claudio––this moment parallels the notorious window scene in which Claudio reports that he has seen Hero exchange her betrothed for Borachio. Via these parallel scenes––and in contrast to the Beatrice and Benedick plot––I argue that Much Ado exposes “goodwill” predicated on a logic of exchange to be an unstable, patriarchal fiction. In so doing, I argue, the play dramatizes the limits of coercion.