Much Ado About
Nothing
A Comedy By William Shakespeare
Written around 1600.
First printed as a play in 1623.
Background Information
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Set in the town of Messina in Sicily, Italy.
Tragicomedy or Comedy: happy ending with the
potential for ending in tragedy
The five acts follow two pairs of lovers and a
strange man.
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Claudio & Hero: The conventional young lovers who
have a crisis that threatens their relationship, but
reunite at the end.
Benedick & Beatrice: two battling, witty lovers who
begin the play hating each other, and end up in a
different kind of loving relationship.
Dogberry: The bumbling policeman who, with his
associates (the volunteer night watchmen), figure into
the action when they catch the bad guys.
Romeo &
Juliet
Rome
Much Ado
About
Nothing
Comedy…
Impossible to define
 Definite kinds, low to high
 Reformation of a (ridiculous)
character
 Holiday spirit
 Ritual element (marriage)
 Comic diction
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Comedy…
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Tragedy is about the break-up of civilization.
Comedy is about the establishment of social
harmony.
Both are dramatic terms of art: thus “tragedy” is
not the same as “horrible” and comedies can be
bittersweet as well as funny.
Drama is not life, but ritual: thus Shakespeare
ends comedies in weddings as a sign, not a
proof, of social stability: 3 weddings in MSND;
2 in Much Ado
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What happens after, who knows? Cf. the marital problems of
Oberon and Titania: but you need hope.)
(
What does the title mean?
Nothing/Noting: homophones in
Shakespeare’s day.
 Definition
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A great fuss (much ado) is made of
something insignificant (nothing)
• Unfounded claims of Hero’s infidelity
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Got everything to do with spying
• Interest in other people’s thoughts and
lives, notes, letters, eavesdropping…)
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Noting: singing (sight-reading)
“Nothing/Nothing” as the
Ridiculous?
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This is a play about “nothing,” scrutinizing for
little signs of truth, relying on fallible eyes, as
when Beatrice and Benedick ignore the other’s
words and look for signs that the other loves
them.
While B and B are examining minutia, Claudio
is deceived by the overly obvious impersonation
of Hero by Margaret. He is not at all interested
in the signs of love but in marrying an heiress
with the sought after qualities of beauty and
meekness (neither one said to belong to
Beatrice, whose name, rather, suggests
beatitude, or cosmic happiness, while Benedick
means “blessed”)
The language…
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Innuendo and bawdy language is part of the
humor in this play.
Puns – words that look alike but have
different meanings
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“A man to a man: stuffed with all honorable
virtues … he is no less than a stuffed
man.”
Most of the language of the play is in prose.
Prose rather than verse
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Verse spoken by the young lovers: Claudio
and Hero
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Verse expresses their lofty feelings of love
Verse spoken by those in authority:
Leonato (governor) and Friar Francis
(priest).
Leonato and Friar – expresses their formality of
their roles –governor and priest
Prose reflects the anti-romantic attitudes of the
principal characters, their refusal to play the game
of love
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Benedick – Ardent, poetic lover
Beatrice – coy, flirtatious woman
Sigh no more…
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Sung just before men deceive Benedick
Balthasar says the song is about how men
deceive women by wooing falsely.
But Don Pedro wants the music (Note, notes)
and “nothing” of that meaning but rather, here,
a set-up for the “nothing = noting” by Benedick
of their feigned conversation about how
Beatrice loves him.
So the play harmonizes or softens male
deception by turning it from a slander to a merry
plot, re-enacting origins of comedy as a form.
Comedy – Word play
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Malapropism: misusing words
ridiculously; confusion of words that
are similar in sound.
Ex: oderous (smelly) for odious
(hateful)
 Dogberry: “You are thought here to be
the most senseless and fit man for the
constable of the watch…(sensible).
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Irony: great comic irony is that with all of
these bright people, the ones who
uncover the villain’s plot are the dopey
cops.
Sigh No More (Hey Nonny, Nonny)
By William Shakespeare
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh nor more;
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never;
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,
Or dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey, nonny, nonny.
Themes
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Road to marriage is often lined with pitfalls
and impediments
People often wear masks to hide their true
feelings
All is not what it seems
Love is NOT blind
Love IS blind
A woman’s chastity is a treasure no man
should possess except in marriage
RUMOR IS BAD, mmmkay?