Shakespeare’s popular comedy of reputation and repartee is not listed among his works by *Meres in mid-1598, but must have been written by early 1599, when the comedian Will *Kempe, accidentally mentioned in the quarto edition of 1600 as the original Dogberry, left Shakespeare’s company. It was probably composed in 1598 and first performed that autumn, a dating confirmed by internal evidence: in rare vocabulary it is closely related to 2 Henry IV and Henry V (1597–8, 1598–9) and the incidence of colloquialisms in its verse places it before As You Like It (1599).
Text: The 1600 quarto was clearly set from Shakespeare’s own *foul papers. This authorial draft was apparently fairly untidy: as well as sometimes preserving the names of actors Shakespeare had in mind as he wrote (Kempe for Dogberry and Richard *Cowley for Verges), the speech prefixes are often inconsistent, while entrances and exits are often omitted, and one *mute character, Leonato’s wife Innogen, is mentioned in the opening stage directions to the first two acts but never says or does anything and is never mentioned. The Folio text (1623) reprints the play from a copy of the quarto supplemented, here and there, by the consultation of a promptbook, from which certain stage directions have been added or elaborated.
Sources: The main plot of Much Ado About Nothing—the story of Hero’s defamation—derives from one of the most widely disseminated narratives in European Renaissance culture, which Shakespeare probably knew in many different forms. It appears as the story of Ginevora in *Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516, translated into English by Sir John *Harington in 1591), and as the story of Fenicia in *Bandello’s Novelle (1554, translated into French in *Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques, 1559), while English versions include those of George *Whetstone (in The Rock of Regard, 1576) and Edmund *Spenser (in book 2 of The Faerie Queene, 1590). The story had already been dramatized in English at least twice, once as A History of Ariodante and Genevra, acted at court in 1583, and once as Fedele and Fortunio (1585), an adaptation, probably by Anthony *Munday, of Luigi Pasqualigo’s Il Fedele (1579). The more comical story of Beatrice and Benedick, however, seems to be Shakespeare’s own invention (though some commentators feel that their repartee shows the influence of the exemplary witty dialogues between courtly ladies and gentlemen supplied in *Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano, 1528, translated by Sir Thomas Hoby as The Book of the Courtier, 1561), as do the doings of Dogberry and Verges.
Synopsis: 1.1 Leonato, Governor of Messina, together with his daughter Hero and niece Beatrice, learn of the approach of Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon, who has just defeated his illegitimate half-brother Don John (to whom he is now reconciled) in a military campaign: among his party are the young Count Claudio and his friend Benedick, about whom Beatrice, Benedick’s long-time conversational adversary, makes disparaging jokes. Leonato welcomes Don Pedro, and Beatrice and Benedick, both scorners of romantic love, exchange witty insults. The bashful Claudio, left with Benedick, confides despite his friend’s disdain for marriage that he means to woo Hero. Don Pedro promises to assist by courting Hero while disguised as Claudio at the evening’s masked ball and winning Leonato’s consent to the match.
1.2 Leonato is told by his brother Antonio that he has heard that Don Pedro seeks to marry Hero.
1.3 The malcontented Don John, with his companion Conrad, learns from Borachio of his brother’s plan to woo Hero for Claudio, and hopes to thwart it.
2.1 At the masked ball, Don Pedro (whom Hero has been advised to accept if he proposes) speaks in disguise to Hero. Beatrice speaks to a disguised Benedick, whom she feigns not to recognize, of his faults. Don John, pretending to take the masked Claudio for Benedick, tells him Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. Claudio, cast down, laments this apparent betrayal. Benedick is more affronted at the account of himself he has heard from Beatrice, whom he describes scornfully to Don Pedro: when Beatrice reappears, with Claudio, Hero, and Leonato, he rudely leaves. Don Pedro reassures Claudio that he has wooed Hero only on Claudio’s behalf, and the match is agreed, to mutual satisfaction. Don Pedro banters with Beatrice. After her departure, he undertakes that, with the help of Leonato, Claudio, and Hero, he will trick Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love during the week that intervenes before Claudio and Hero marry.
2.2 Borachio promises Don John he will prevent the marriage between Claudio and Hero by arranging that on its eve Claudio shall see him courting Margaret, Hero’s gentlewoman, in Hero’s clothes at Hero’s window and thus think Hero unfaithful. Don John promises him 1,000 ducats as a fee.
2.3 In the orchard Benedick, reflecting on Claudio’s transformation from soldier to lover, hides to overhear a conversation between Don Pedro, Leonato, and Claudio. After hearing a song by Balthasar, ‘Sigh no more, ladies’, Don Pedro, pretending not to have noticed the concealed Benedick, asks Leonato whether it is true that Beatrice is in love with Benedick. He and Claudio confirm and elaborate this story and, praising Beatrice, the three say they will not tell Benedick because he would only scorn her. Satisfied that Benedick has heard, they leave to initiate a corresponding stratagem against Beatrice, whom they send to call Benedick to dinner. Left alone Benedick, completely taken in, repents of his earlier attitude and promises to reciprocate Beatrice’s imputed love. After she bids him in to dine, Benedick, alone, twists her straightforward and unenthusiastic remarks into subtle messages of love.
3.1 Hero arranges for Beatrice, apparently unperceived, to overhear a conversation with her gentlewoman Ursula in which Hero reports that Benedick is deeply in love with Beatrice and deserves better than the insults he would receive if he told her of it. Alone, the deceived Beatrice undertakes to reciprocate Benedick’s love.
3.2 The day before the wedding Don Pedro and Claudio banter with Benedick, who will not admit that he has fallen in love, but nonetheless leaves for a private conference, presumably about the possibility of marrying Beatrice, with Leonato. Don John tells Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero is disloyal, promising to show them a man entering her chamber window that night: Claudio says that if this proves true he will shame Hero at the intended wedding.
3.3 The constable Dogberry, with his partner Verges, gives the Watch comically ill-worded advice as to how to discharge their duties during the night. After Dogberry and Verges leave, the Watch overhear Borachio boasting to Conrad about how he has been wooing Margaret at Hero’s window, successfully persuading the watching Claudio and Don Pedro (placed at a distance by Don John) that Hero is false. The Watch arrest both men.
3.4 Hero, Beatrice, Ursula, and Margaret are dressing on the morning of the wedding, Margaret joking at the expense of the apparently converted Beatrice and Benedick.
3.5 Dogberry and Verges come to tell a preoccupied Leonato about the arrested Borachio and Conrad, whom they hope to interrogate in his presence, but are so long-winded and inept that he dismisses them to proceed on their own.
4.1 At the wedding service, conducted by Friar Francis, Claudio gives Hero back to her father, accusing her, with the support of Don Pedro and Don John, of falsehood, and recounting that he saw her entertain a lover at her chamber window the previous night. Hero faints before her three accusers leave. Leonato, convinced of her guilt, wishes she were dead, but Friar Francis, questioning her as she revives, is persuaded of her innocence. Leonato and Benedick agree, on the Friar’s advice, to conceal Hero, giving out that she has died. Left together, Beatrice and Benedick admit they love one another. Beatrice asks Benedick to prove his love by avenging the slander of Hero: he agrees to challenge Claudio to a duel.
4.2 The inept and self-important Dogberry and Verges, with the Sexton and the Watch, question Borachio and Conrad. The Sexton realizes that the supposedly dead Hero was slandered by Don John, who has stolen away, and goes to tell Leonato. Dogberry, insisting when Conrad calls him an ass that this too should be written down, brings his prisoners after him.
5.1 Leonato refuses Antonio’s attempts to comfort him: when they meet Don Pedro and Claudio, they accuse Claudio of killing Hero by his defamation, but he declines to fight with either, and they leave, Don Pedro still maintaining the truth of Claudio’s accusation. Benedick arrives and, despite flippant remarks from Don Pedro and Claudio, challenges Claudio to a duel, and leaves. When Dogberry, Verges, the Watch, and their prisoners Borachio and Conrad arrive, Don Pedro and Claudio are appalled to learn how they have been deceived. Brought by the Sexton, Antonio and Leonato join them, and a penitent Borachio confesses to Leonato his share in Hero’s supposed death. Don Pedro and Claudio beg Leonato to impose what penance he will for theirs: Leonato instructs Claudio to vindicate Hero’s reputation to the people of Messina, to bring an epitaph to her tomb that night, and to be ready the following morning to marry a daughter of Antonio’s, said to resemble Hero, in her place. Borachio assures Leonato that Margaret was unaware of the malicious plan in which she was a participant.
5.2 Benedick has been trying to write love poems for Beatrice: the two are talking when Ursula brings the news that Hero has been cleared and the slanderous Don John has fled.
5.3 At Leonato’s family tomb Claudio reads out and places an epitaph for the wronged Hero, and a hymn is sung, ‘Pardon, goddess of the night’. Claudio and Don Pedro leave to change out of mourning in time for the planned wedding.
5.4 At Leonato’s bidding Antonio is ready to present a veiled Hero to Claudio as if she were his daughter. Friar Francis, his faith in Hero vindicated, agrees to marry Beatrice and Benedick at the same time. Don Pedro and Claudio arrive: Antonio brings Hero, Beatrice, Margaret, and Ursula, all veiled, and shows Claudio which he is to marry. Claudio vows to marry the veiled Hero, thinking she is Leonato’s niece: she then reveals her face, asserting her innocence. The Friar promises to explain everything to the overjoyed Claudio after the wedding ceremony. Meanwhile Beatrice and Benedick, beginning to realize how they were tricked, come close to disowning their mutual affection before their friends produce a love sonnet written by Benedick and a love letter by Beatrice as evidence of it, and they agree to wed, Benedick disavowing his former opposition to marriage. Benedick calls for music that all the reconciled friends and lovers may dance before the wedding, and when news arrives that Don John has been captured and brought back to Messina Benedick urges Don Pedro to postpone all thoughts of him and his due punishment until the following day.
Artistic features: Less lyrical than the other mature comedies, with the exception of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing nonetheless looks forward, in the depiction of Hero’s ‘resurrection’, to the late romances (particularly The Winter’s Tale). Its closest kinship, however, is with the early The Taming of the Shrew, with which it shares a structure contrasting naive, romantic attitudes to love (such as those of Lucentio or Claudio) with more pragmatic and sceptical ones. Benedick and Beatrice, quarrelling in prose all the way to the altar, often resemble Petruccio and Katherine: Beatrice, for example, admitting to herself that she loves Benedick, promises to reform her character in terms of which Petruccio would certainly approve: ‘I will requite thee, | Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand’ (3.1.111–12).
Critical history: Although their relationship occupies what is nominally only the sub-plot, it is the more protesting and reluctant couple who have dominated responses to the play, which seems to have been nicknamed ‘Beatrice and Benedick’ (the title *Berlioz would use for his operatic version) from early in its stage history (by, for example, *Charles I). Combining the play with elements of Measure for Measure in 1662 (as *The Law against Lovers), William *Davenant borrowed only Beatrice and Benedick from this play, their repartee decisively influencing the subsequent development of Restoration comedy. The play has been one of the most popular of the mature comedies since the mid-18th century, though it has never inspired as rich a critical literature as The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, or Twelfth Night. *Hazlitt praised Dogberry, regularly hailed since as an all too convincing depiction of petty officialdom, but from his day to this the main plot of the play has elicited little but apologies, with criticism on the subject mainly dedicated to exploring or explaining Claudio’s inadequacies as a comic protagonist. His behaviour towards Hero, variously excused and vilified as wholly conventional, and the play’s suggestions of a woman-centred world which finally prevails against the barrack-room assumptions of the soldiers, have, however, recommended the play to the attention of *feminist critics, while others have found in Friar Francis’s stratagem not only an anticipation of the last plays but glimpses of Shakespeare’s views on *religion.
Stage history: Much Ado About Nothing was one of the plays acted at court in May 1613 to celebrate the marriage of Princess *Elizabeth, and according to Leonard *Digges’s commendatory poem (1640) was one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies. Beatrice and Benedick reappeared at the Restoration only as the laughing cavaliers of *Davenant’s adaptation, but the original made brief returns to the stage in the 1720s and 1730s (displaced between 1737 and 1741 by another adaptation, the Reverend James Miller’s The Universal Passion, which crosses the play with Molière’s La Princesse d’Élide). It was finally established in the repertory forever when David *Garrick wittily chose the role of Benedick for his first performances on returning to the stage after his honeymoon in 1748, opposite Hannah *Pritchard’s Beatrice. Since then the bantering couple’s most notable representatives have included J. P. *Kemble and Dorothea *Jordan (1798), Mr and Mrs Charles *Kean (1858), Mr and Mrs Charles *Calvert (1865), Henry *Irving and Ellen *Terry (1882), Lewis Casson and Sybil *Thorndike (1927), John *Gielgud and Peggy *Ashcroft (1931, 1950, 1955), and, in John *Barton’s production of 1976 (set in the British Raj), Donald *Sinden and Judi *Dench. Dench herself directed the play for Kenneth *Branagh’s Renaissance company in 1988–9 (with Branagh as Benedick and Samantha Bond as Beatrice), a production which anticipated many elements of his subsequent film. Modern productions of the play, like Barton’s, have often stressed the military world inhabited by its male characters: this was especially true of *Cheek by Jowl’s award-winning 1998 production, which followed Barton in dressing Don Pedro’s officers in uniforms of the British colonial period. Notable Much Ados in recent years have tended towards big-name charisma in the Beatrice and Benedick pairing to ensure full houses, as with Gregory *Doran’s verdant, post-Second World War RSC production (2002) with Harriet *Walter and Nicholas le Prevost as the reluctant lovers. Zoë Wanamaker and Simon *Russell Beale headed the National’s 2007 blockbuster, while Catherine Tate and David *Tennant led a sell-out run at Wyndham’s Theatre (2011). Meera Syal and Paul Bhattacharjee balanced charm with the right amount of acerbic sparring in the RSC’s 2012 Indian-set production, a comic triumph that made even stranger and sadder Bhattacharjee’s suicide the following year.
Michael Dobson, rev. Will Sharpe
On the screen: The earliest recorded screen version was an American *silent film of 1909. Scenes from the play were among the earliest Shakespeare television extracts to be transmitted (1937). Russian films were made in 1956 and 1973. *Zeffirelli directed an impressive British cast (including Maggie *Smith, Derek Jacobi, and Frank Finlay) in a stage production later adapted for television (1967), followed by a BBC TV version (1978) with Michael York as Benedick, originally scheduled to open the complete BBC series but replaced in 1984 by Stuart Burge’s TV production. On a grander scale Kenneth Branagh filmed the play (1993) in a lavish Italian setting, with himself and his then wife Emma Thompson as Benedick and Beatrice among a part-Hollywood cast. Joss Whedon eschewed star names in his low-budget, modern-day version, shot in black-and-white in and around the director’s house. Its unfussy and brisk nature lends a ready and accessible comic charm.
Anthony Davies, rev. Will Sharpe