i love productions of much ado where the prince is serious about proposing to beatrice.
a big reason why is that it opens the door to a reading where the “mountain of affection” plot is born out of spite. he doesn’t ACTUALLY expect it to work, he just wants to get back at beatrice for turning him down and maybe benedick too (after all, since pedro doesn’t know john was involved, he has no reason to assume it wasn’t benedick’s fault with all his Obstinate Heresies that claudio misunderstood his intentions toward hero). his real goal is to embarrass them–it’s not his fault they’re actually wildly compatible. i think this adds to the way the masked dance functions as the whole play in miniature; it shows how don pedro is capable of being callous towards anyone he perceives as having slighted him and the real harm he might do with that stubborn streak
i also love this staging because at the end the prince gets told “go get a wife, loser” by the guy who married the woman who rejected him and that’s so fucking funny