Much Ado About Nothing (1993 film) to reach the mark set by Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet", made it one of the most financially successful Shakespeare films ever released. It was also entered into the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Having just crushed an uprising by his half-brother, Don John, Don Pedro of Aragon and his noblemen visit their friend Leonato in Messina. Accompanying Don Pedro is the witty Benedick, former lover of Leonato's equally sharp-tongued niece, Beatrice. Also present are Benedick's friend Claudio, a young count; and Don John who, despite his rebellion, has apparently reconciled with his brother. Claudio has been thinking of Leonato's beautiful
Much Ado About Nothing and proneness to sexual lightness". In the patriarchal society of the play, the men's loyalties were governed by conventional codes of honour and camaraderie and a sense of superiority to women. Assumptions that women are by nature prone to inconstancy are shown in the repeated jokes on cuckoldry and partly explain Claudio's readiness to believe the slur against Hero. This stereotype is turned on its head in Balthazar's song "Sigh No More," which presents men as the deceitful and inconstant sex that women must suffer. A theme in Shakespeare is cuckoldry or the infidelity of a wife. Several of the