In these lines, Claudio is rejecting Hero at their wedding because he is under the impression that she laid with someone else the night prior. This disgust is a mixture of both her “cheating” on him, and also the fact that she is no longer a virgin. Hero was an innocent and pure by being a virgin, which was a favorable trait during the Elizabethan Era and a main reason why Claudio liked Hero so much. Claudio calls Hero a “rotten orange”, and no longer wants to marry her. The use of “rotten orange” takes something that is supposed to be fresh and sweet and turns it bad and sour, similar to how Claudio now feels about Hero. This is a major shift from the “head over heels” attitude Claudio had for Hero previously, which inevitably makes you feel sorry for Hero because of Claudio’s accusatory tone. Shakespeare makes the point here about how brittle society’s views were, and how hearsay could shift societies opinions drastically.