Read this if you…
- want the classic "couple who hate each other slowly realize meant for each other"
Skip this if you…
- aren't willing to go slow, read notes, look up analyses of famous passages (only way to "get" shakespeare)
- foolishly think shakespeare is overrated
- don't like his comedies compared to his tragedies
The 
Take
Great one, good schemes, some great pithy lines that are SO TRUE. The idiot watchmen were funny too
The lineage through Much Ado About Nothing
- Metamorphoses by Ovid. Much Ado About Nothing built on it. - The classical wit flying between Beatrice and Benedick is stitched from Ovid — the Hercules and Omphale gibes draw directly on the *Metamorphoses* - Even 'Hero' is an Ovidian name, pulled from his tradition of the abandoned woman - Shakespeare read Ovid in Latin and in Golding's 1567 translation; reading the *Metamorphoses* first lets you hear how deep that classical seam runs under the comedy
Depicted in Art
The church scene: Hero collapses at the altar as Claudio repudiates her, while Beatrice rushes to catch her and Benedick stands stunned.
Alfred Elmore, 1846
Beatrice crouches behind foliage in the orchard, eavesdropping on Hero and Ursula's planted conversation.
John Jones, 1771
Beatrice peers from behind a tree in a sunlit garden as Hero and Ursula sit on a bench discussing her in the foreground.
John Sutcliffe, 1904
Claudio publicly turns on Hero at the wedding altar, denouncing her as she stands shocked and her family looks on in horror.
Marcus Stone
A half-length portrait of Beatrice in Elizabethan dress, gazing off with a wry expression.
John William Wright, 1849
Benedick, hidden in the garden, eavesdrops as Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio loudly discuss Beatrice's supposed love for him.
Charles Heath
Dogberry and Verges conduct their bumbling examination of the prisoners Conrade and Borachio, exposing the plot against Hero.
Robert Smirke
Recommended Editions
Folger Shakespeare Library
2004
Folger's the readable one. Text on one page, notes on the facing page, written in plain English instead of textbook-speak. Catches every word and reference you'd otherwise Google, without breaking the scene to do it.
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Notable Quotes
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.
Screen & Stage
Much Ado About Nothing
Film · 1993
Kenneth Branagh
Béatrice et Bénédict
Opera · 1862
Hector Berlioz
looseAnyone But You
Film · 2023
Will Gluck
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- Joss Whedon, filmmaker, Buffy / The Avengers, 1964–: "How dark and manipulative and strange and cynical a romance it is."
- William Hazlitt, Romantic-era English critic, 1778–1830: "That middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender."
- Kenneth Branagh, actor & Shakespearean director, b. 1960: "All throughout this comic debate about everything and nothing, there is life-giving, wisdom-bearing humour and warmth."
- Tom Hiddleston, actor, 1981–: "The most beautiful, warm, redemptive, compassionate play that he ever wrote."
- Harold Bloom, Yale literary critic, 1930–2019: "Much Ado About Nothing is certainly the most amiably nihilistic play ever written, and is most appositely titled."
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