Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599.[1] The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623.
The play is set in Messina and revolves around two romantic pairings that emerge when a group of soldiers arrive in the town. The first, between Claudio and Hero, is nearly scuppered by the accusations of the villain, Don John. The second, between Claudio's friend Benedick and Hero's cousin Beatrice, takes centre stage as the play continues, with both characters' wit and banter providing much of the humour.
Through "noting" (sounding like "nothing" and meaning gossip, rumour, overhearing),[2][3] Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other, and Claudio is tricked into believing that Hero is not a maiden (virgin). The title's play on words references the secrets and trickery that form the backbone of the play's comedy, intrigue, and action.
In Messina, a messenger brings news that Don Pedro will return that night from a successful battle, along with Claudio and Benedick. Beatrice asks the messenger about Benedick and mocks Benedick's ineptitude as a soldier. Leonato explains, "There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her."[4]
On the soldiers' arrival, Don Pedro tells Leonato that they will stay a month at least, and Benedick and Beatrice resume their "merry war". Pedro's illegitimate brother, Don John, is also introduced. Claudio first lays eyes on Hero, and he informs Benedick of his intention to court her. Benedick, who openly despises marriage, tries to dissuade him. Don Pedro encourages the marriage. Benedick swears that he will never marry. Don Pedro laughs at him and tells him he will when he finds the right person.
A masquerade ball is planned. Therein a disguised Don Pedro woos Hero on Claudio's behalf. Don John uses this situation to sow chaos by telling Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. Claudio rails against the entrapments of beauty. But the misunderstanding is later resolved, and Claudio is promised Hero's hand in marriage.
Meanwhile, Benedick and Beatrice have danced together, trading disparaging remarks under the cover of their masks. Beatrice knows who Benedick is under his mask, but Benedick does not recognize the mystery lady. Benedick is stung at hearing himself described as "the prince's jester, a very dull fool",[5] and yearns to be spared the company of "Lady Tongue".[5] Don Pedro and his men, bored at the prospect of waiting a week for the wedding, concoct a plan to match-make between Benedick and Beatrice. They arrange for Benedick to overhear a conversation in which they declare that Beatrice is madly in love with him but too afraid to tell him. Hero and Ursula likewise ensure that Beatrice overhears a conversation in which they discuss Benedick's undying love for her. Both Benedick and Beatrice are delighted to think that they are the object of unrequited love, and both resolve to mend their faults and declare their love.
Meanwhile, Don John plots to stop the wedding, embarrass his brother, and wreak misery on Leonato and Claudio. He tells Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero is "disloyal",[5] and arranges for them to see his associate, Borachio, enter her bedchamber and engage amorously with her (it is actually Hero's chambermaid). Claudio and Don Pedro are duped, and Claudio vows to humiliate Hero publicly.
The next day, at the wedding, Claudio denounces Hero before the stunned guests and storms off with Don Pedro. Hero faints. A humiliated Leonato expresses his wish for her to die. The presiding friar intervenes, believing Hero innocent. He suggests that the family fake Hero's death to fill Claudio with remorse. Prompted by the stressful events, Benedick and Beatrice confess their love for each other. Beatrice then asks Benedick to kill Claudio as proof of his devotion. Benedick hesitates but is swayed. Leonato and Antonio blame Claudio for Hero's supposed death and threaten him, to little effect. Benedick arrives and challenges him to a duel.
On the night of Don John's treachery, the local Watch overheard Borachio and Conrade discussing their "treason"[5] and "most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth",[5] and arrested them therefore. Despite their ineptitude (headed by constable Dogberry), they obtain a confession and inform Leonato of Hero's innocence. Don John has fled, but a force is sent to capture him. Remorseful and thinking Hero dead, Claudio agrees to her father's demand that he marry Antonio's daughter, "almost the copy of my child that's dead".[4]
After Claudio swears to marry this other bride, she is revealed to be Hero. Claudio is overjoyed. Beatrice and Benedick publicly confess their love for each other. Don Pedro taunts "Benedick the married man",[5] and Benedick counters that he finds the Prince sad, advising him: "Get thee a wife".[5] As the play draws to a close, a messenger arrives with news of Don John's capture, but Benedick proposes to postpone deciding Don John's punishment until tomorrow so that the couples can enjoy their newfound happiness. The couples dance and celebrate as the play ends.
Shakespeare's immediate source may have been one of Matteo Bandello of Mantua's Novelle ("Tales"), possibly the translation into French by François de Belleforest,[6] which dealt with the tribulations of Sir Timbreo and his betrothed Fenicia Lionata, in Messina, after Peter III of Aragon's defeat of Charles of Anjou.[7][8] Another version, featuring lovers Ariodante and Ginevra, with the servant Dalinda impersonating Ginevra on the balcony, appears in Book V Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (published in an English translation in 1591).[9] The character of Benedick has a counterpart in a commentary on marriage in Orlando Furioso.[10] But the witty wooing of Beatrice and Benedick is apparently original and very unusual in style and syncopation.[6]Edmund Spenser tells one version of the Claudio–Hero plot in The Faerie Queene (Book II, Canto iv).[11]
Date and text
According to the earliest printed text, Much Ado About Nothing was "sundry times publicly acted" before 1600. The play likely debuted in the autumn or winter of 1598–99.[1] The earliest recorded performances are two at Court in the winter of 1612–13, during festivities preceding the Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate (14 February 1613).[12] In 1600, the stationers Andrew Wise and William Aspley published the play in quarto.[13] This was the only edition prior to the First Folio in 1623.[14]
Analysis and criticism
Style
The play is predominantly written in prose.[15] The substantial verse sections achieve a sense of decorum.[16]
Setting
Much Ado About Nothing is set in Messina, a port city on the island of Sicily, when Sicily is ruled by Aragon.[17] Its action takes place mainly at the home and grounds of Leonato's Estate.
Benedick and Beatrice quickly became the main interest of the play. They are considered the leading roles even though their relationship is given equal or lesser weight in the script than Claudio's and Hero's situation.[18]Charles I wrote, 'Benedick and Beatrice' beside the title of the play in his copy of the Second Folio.[19] The provocative treatment of gender is central and should be considered in its Renaissance context.[20] This was reflected and emphasized in certain plays of the period but was also challenged.[21] Amussen[22] notes that the undoing of traditional gender clichés seems to have inflamed anxieties about the erosion of social order. It seems that comic drama could be a means of calming such anxieties.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Ironically, the play's popularity suggests that this only increased interest in such behavior.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Benedick wittily gives voice to male anxieties about women's "sharp tongues and proneness to sexual lightness".[21] In the play's patriarchal society, the men's loyalties are governed by conventional codes of honour, camaraderie, and a sense of superiority over women.[21] Assumptions that women are by nature prone to inconstancy are shown in the repeated jokes about cuckoldry, and partly explain Claudio's readiness to believe the slander against Hero.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". This stereotype is turned on its head in Balthasar's song "Sigh No More", which presents men as the deceitful and inconstant sex that women must abide.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
Infidelity
Several characters seem obsessed with the idea that a man cannot know whether his wife is faithful and that women can take full advantage of this.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Don John plays upon Claudio's pride and fear of cuckoldry, leading to the disastrous first wedding. Many of the men readily believe that Hero is impure; even her father condemns her with very little evidence. This motif runs through the play, often referring to horns (a symbol of cuckoldry).
In contrast, Balthasar's song "Sigh No More" tells women to accept men's infidelity and continue to live joyfully. Some interpretations say that Balthasar sings poorly, undercutting the message.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". This is supported by Benedick's cynical comments about the song, comparing it to a howling dog. In Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film, Balthasar sings it beautifully: it is given a prominent role in the opening and finale, and the women seem to embrace its message.[23]
The play has many examples of deception and self-deception. The games and tricks played on people often have the best intentions: to make people fall in love, to help someone get what they want, or to lead someone to realize their mistake. But not all are well-meant: Don John convinces Claudio that Don Pedro wants Hero for himself, and Borachio meets 'Hero' (actually Margaret) in Hero's bedroom window. These modes of deceit play into a complementary theme of emotional manipulation, the ease with which the characters' sentiments are redirected and their propensities exploited as a means to an end.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". The characters' feelings for each other are played as vehicles to reach the goal of engagement rather than as an end in themselves.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
Masks and mistaken identity
Characters are constantly pretending to be others or mistaken for others. Margaret is mistaken for Hero, leading to Hero's disgrace. During a masked ball (in which everyone must wear a mask), Beatrice rants about Benedick to a masked man who is actually Benedick, but she acts unaware of this. During the same celebration, Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio and courts Hero for him. After Hero is proclaimed dead, Leonato orders Claudio to marry his 'niece', who is actually Hero.
Another motif is the play on the words nothing and noting. These were near-homophones in Shakespeare's day.[24] Taken literally, the title implies that a great fuss ('much ado') is made of something insignificant ('nothing'), such as the unfounded claims of Hero's infidelity and that Benedick and Beatrice are in love with each other. Nothing is also a double entendre: 'an O-thing' (or 'n othing' or 'no thing') was Elizabethan slang for "vagina", derived from women having 'nothing' between their legs.[6][25][26] The title can also be understood as Much Ado About Noting: much of the action centres on interest in others and the critique of others, written messages, spying, and eavesdropping. This attention is mentioned several times directly, particularly concerning 'seeming', 'fashion', and outward impressions.
Examples of noting as noticing occur in the following instances: (1.1.131–132)
Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,
Do it in notes. Balthasar: Note this before my notes:
There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. Don Pedro: Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks –
Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!
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Don Pedro's last line can be understood to mean 'Pay attention to your music and nothing else!' The complex layers of meaning include a pun on 'crotchets', which can mean both 'quarter notes' (in music) and whimsical notions.
The following are puns on notes as messages: (2.1.174–176),
Claudio: I pray you leave me. Benedick: Ho, now you strike like the blind man – 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.
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in which Benedick plays on the word post as a pole and as mail delivery in a joke reminiscent of Shakespeare's earlier advice 'Don't shoot the messenger'; and (2.3.138–142)
Claudio: Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of. Leonato: O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?
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in which Leonato makes a sexual innuendo, concerning sheet as a sheet of paper (on which Beatrice's love note to Benedick is to have been written), and a bedsheet.
1985: A Tony Award Nomination for "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play" was received by Sinéad Cusack.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
1989: The Evening Standard Award for "Best Actress" went to Felicity Kendal as Beatrice in Elijah Moshinsky's production at the Strand Theatre.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
The title track of the 2009 Mumford & Sons album Sigh No More uses quotes from this play in the song. The title of the album is also a quotation from Act 2 Scene 3 of the play.[5]
A version of the 1967 National Theatre Company Production, directed for television by Alan Cooke. The play was originally directed for the stage by Franco Zeffirelli. With Maggie Smith (Beatrice), Derek Jacobi (Don Pedro). Music by Nino Rota
In 2012 a filmed version of the live 2011 performance at The Globe was released to cinemas and on DVD.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". The same year, a filmed version of the 2011 performance at Wyndham's Theatre was made available for download or streaming on the Digital Theatre website.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
In 2015, Owen Drake created a modern movie version of the play, Messina High, starring Faye Reagan.[50]
The 2023 romantic comedy Anyone but You, directed by Will Gluck and co-written by Ilana Wolpert,[51][52] is a loose adaptation principally set in contemporary Australia. It stars Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as analogues of Beatrice and Benedick.
Television and web series
The 1973 New York Shakespeare Festival production by Joseph Papp, shot on videotape and released on VHS and DVD, includes more of the text than Branagh's version.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". It is directed by A. J. Antoon and stars Sam Waterston, Kathleen Widdoes, and Barnard Hughes.
In 2005, the BBC adapted the story as part of the ShakespeaRe-Told season. This version is set in the modern-day studios of Wessex Tonight, a fictional regional news programme. The cast includes Damian Lewis, Sarah Parish, and Billie Piper.[54]
The 2014 YouTube web seriesNothing Much to Do is a modern retelling of the play set in New Zealand.[55]
There are several young adult novels adapting Much Ado About Nothing. Lily Anderson's 2016 novel The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You is about Trixie Watson and Ben West, who attend a "school for geniuses".[57] In Speak Easy, Speak Love (2017) by Mckelle George, the play's events take place in the 1920s; it is focused around a failing speakeasy.[58] In Nothing Happened (2018) by Molly Booth, Claudio and Hero are a queer couple, Claudia and Hana.[59]Under a Dancing Star (2019) by Laura Wood is a modernized version set in Florence. Two Wrongs Make a Right (2022) by Chloe Liese is another contemporary version.[60]
I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
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Jensen later explained that this was a reference to the censorship imposed after the German invasion of Denmark in 1940.[61]
See also
Margaret (moon), a moon of Uranus, named after the character from Much Ado About Nothing
↑See Stephen Greenblatt's introduction to Much Ado about Nothing in The Norton Shakespeare (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997 Template:ISBN), p. 1383.
↑See Gordon Williams A Glossary of Shakespeare's Sexual Language (Athlone Press, 1997 Template:ISBN) at p. 219: "As Shakespeare's title ironically acknowledges, vagina and virginity are a nothing causing Much Ado."
↑ abcdefghijklmKathryn Prince, "Performance History", in Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Peter J. Smith (Bloomsbury, 2018).
↑F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964, pp. 326 f.
↑ abGertrude Carr-Davison, "Beatrice and Hero", The Theatre (1 December 1881), p. 331.
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