Much Ado About Nothing

How do gender roles influence Much Ado About Nothing? Are there any quotes that support the answer?

The play is all about gender roles.  Men are much more flat than the women.  Don John is a flat character, Benedick is rounder, and Claudio is too dense for words.  But in Beatrice & Hero, Shakespeare has created an interesting study.  Beatrice is strong & witty; Hero is her polar opposite, quiet & milktoast-like. 

Beatrice's sharp words convey her active & intelligent mind (even if many of her barbs are directed at male oppression).  Conversely, the reticient Hero is pushed around, unfairly blamed for infidelity, & miserable.  Although audiences were not yet accepting of an unmarried woman, and Beatrice marries, Beatrice is still a postive female character.   

Here are a couple of quotes that help make the pointed difference between Beatrice & Hero:

In Act 2, Scene 1, Beatrice denounces Benedick to her uncle: 

"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him."

In Act 4, Scene 1, Hero is falsley accused of cheating on her would-be husband, Claudio.  Instead of standing up for herself as Beatrice would have, she simply tries, and fails, to defend her honor:

O, God defend me! how am I beset!
What kind of catechising call you this?

CLAUDIO
To make you answer truly to your name.

HERO
Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name
With any just reproach?

 

One of the best examples of the limitations of gender roles occurs after Hero is denounced.  Beatrice is despondent that she, as a woman, can not challenge Claudio for what he has done.  She wants to act out her rage at the injustice but her position as a woman and her weaker physical form limits her from doing so.  Here is the exchange between herself and Benedick:

BENEDICK
Is there any way to show such friendship?

BEATRICE
A very even way, but no such friend.

BENEDICK
May a man do it?

BEATRICE
It is a man's office, but not yours. 

BENEDICK
Is Claudio thine enemy?

BEATRICE
Is he not approved in the height a villain, that
hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O
that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they
come to take hands; and then, with public
accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour,
--O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart
in the market-place. (Act IV, scene i)

She clearly identifies the position of challenging Claudio as a "man's office" and, like Lady Macbeth, desires to be a man so that she can fulfill her wishes.