In a comedy, one of the key goals of a playwright is to thoroughly portray character as a sort of mirror to the audience. This is in hopes that they will learn from the characters and have a good time doing so. Shakespeare does this by showing "the ugly and the ridiculous" by comparison. He creates distinct personalities, like the wise fool, who is silly yet knows most about human nature, and the courtly lover who is preoccupied with love, to build certain relationships. In the three comedies Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare uses strong-minded women and how they think and act and compares their way of thinking to the strong-minded men of the play. In each play he develops their relationships quite differently, yet shapes all of the women from the same character mold. Each of the women are introduced and played as headstrong and witty, but due to their circumstances, come together with their mates because of a change in !
             The play Much Ado About Nothing involves the two characters Beatrice and Bene*censored* who offer the comparison. Beatrice is a single woman who is purposely avoiding marriage. She deceitfully gets tricked into falling in love with someone equally as keen and egotistical as her. Her role as a woman in this play is not as controversial as others in that she brings her lover into submission by manipulation and an offensive manner. In the beginning of the play, both Beatrice and Bene*censored*'s egos are outrageous and get in the way of their want for a relationship. Beatrice says that no man is fit for her:
             "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: therefore, I will even take sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his apes into hell." (II. i)
             She makes it quite clear that she do
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