Marriage
Early modern English comedies traditionally end with one or more marriages, and Much Ado About Nothing is no exception. However, marriage appears in the play as more than a simple plot device. Marriage is central to the play's social fabric, and indeed Claudio intends to marry Hero almost as soon as he sees her. Still, other characters have a more playful approach to marriage, with the notion of fidelity becoming the butt of many of Benedick's jokes. Beatrice also has a unique stance, especially as a female character: she rejects marriage because she has seen too many women lose their autonomy once married. Thus, marriage serves as both an essential element of the play and an experience that affects each character differently.
Deception
Deception, lying, and otherwise manipulating are common themes in Shakespeare's plays. While in tragedies, deception tends to be the mark of a malicious or villainous character (think Iago in Othello), comedies that feature deception plots offer a much more ambivalent reading of characters lying to one another. In Much Ado About Nothing, deceptive behavior is at times malicious (as in the case of Don John's scheme to disrupt the happiness of Claudio and Hero) and at other times playful and benevolent. Consider, for example, how the friends of Beatrice and Benedick deceive them in order to bring them closer together. As such, the play prompts the audience to consider the utility of deception at the same time it encourages one to be wary of characters' particular motives.
Love
In a play with such a heavy focus on marriage, it is fitting that love would also play an important role. However, somewhat paradoxically, love is of secondary concern to the characters most of the time. Claudio and Hero, for example, are not necessarily in love: their marriage is presented as a dutiful formality, and their love a by-product of that ceremony. Even Beatrice and Benedick – who bicker like long-time lovers – only come to acknowledge their feelings for one another after being manipulated (successfully) by their friends. Thus, the play presents love as largely incidental; it is not the driving force behind characters' decisions but rather something that appears as a consequence of other plot developments.
Reputation
The characters in Much Ado About Nothing are invested in cultivating their own reputations and destroying others, but the play showcases how reputation is a fundamentally unstable concept. Hero's reputation, for example, is destroyed as quickly as it is created when Don John maliciously plots against her. Other characters are introduced to the audience through report (a common dramatic device on the early modern stage) that then turns out to be at odds with their true character. The play therefore emphasizes how reputation is more often crafted by others than by oneself, and therefore how it cannot be trusted in evaluating someone's character.
Gender
Gender plays a pivotal role in Much Ado About Nothing because of the unique way it establishes expectations for all characters, not just women or just men. Both female and male characters accept the expectation that a potential partner would be unfaithful (hence all the jokes about cuckoldry, or men whose wives have committed infidelity). Beatrice, who rejects marriage because of the expectations it would put on her as a women, in turn has her own expectations for the ideal husband. Thus, gender in the play often appears through a rather ironic lens, as the characters' expectations of one another suggest that gender is a prescribed social role.
Communication
Language and communication are always important elements of early modern drama, as the way characters communicate with one another dictates the plot development. In this play, however, communication is less central to the events than miscommunication: characters misread, misinterpret, and misunderstand one another throughout the play, and these mistakes are what catalyze the conflict. Furthermore, language is itself a means of hiding and deception; characters who use strong language in the play are almost always lying about their true intentions, attempting to masque the truth with rhetoric. Thus, the play endorses suspicion in the audience when it comes to characters' words aligning with their actions and beliefs.
Maturity
Early on, the play establishes a notable difference between the younger characters like Claudio, Hero, Benedick, and Beatrice and the older characters like Leonato and Don Pedro. The younger characters are immature and easily susceptible to wounded pride, naive to love and focused heavily on their own reputations. The older characters, by contrast, are presented as wise but also somewhat obsolete. Notably, the maturity of characters does not necessarily change over the course of the play, suggesting that immature behavior can often breed more conflict and more immaturity.
