Much Ado About Nothing

• 1. Introduction

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  Beside the title of Much Ado About Nothing, in his own copy of the Second Folio, Charles I wrote two names: Benedick and Beatrice. He did not write Claudio or Hero, the other pair of lovers in William Shakespeare's comedy. The king's pen recorded where audience attention had settled. On the page, the quarrelling couple's story carries no more weight than the other romance, and often less. So why did they become the leads? What does a title like Much Ado About Nothing actually promise? And how does a comedy so full of slander, spying and cruelty still send audiences home laughing?

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• 2. A Merry War

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  Messina, a port city on Sicily, is where a messenger brings word that Don Pedro is returning that night from a successful battle. Aragon rules the island, and nearly everything happens at the house and grounds of Leonato, the governor. Before the soldiers even walk in, Beatrice, Leonato's niece, asks about Benedick. She mocks his ineptitude as a soldier. Leonato sums it up: "There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signor Benedick and her."

  Don Pedro tells his host that he and his men will stay a month at least. With him is Claudio, a count of Florence. Claudio catches sight of Hero, Leonato's daughter, and tells his friend Benedick that he means to court her. Benedick openly despises marriage and tries to talk him out of it. Don Pedro backs the match. When Benedick swears he will never marry, the prince laughs and says he will, once the right person turns up.

  A masquerade ball gives the merry war its sharpest round. Benedick and Beatrice dance together behind masks and trade insults. Beatrice knows exactly who he is, while he does not recognize the mystery lady. Benedick is stung to hear himself called "the prince's jester, a very dull fool", and he longs to be spared the company of "Lady Tongue".

  The matchmakers are pleased with themselves. They have not noticed that the prince's illegitimate brother, Don John, is watching the household with plans of his own.

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• 3. Slander And The Watch

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  Don John, whom the cast list calls "the Bastard Prince", wants to stop the wedding, embarrass his brother, and bring misery to Leonato and Claudio. His first attempt comes at the masquerade. There, a disguised Don Pedro is wooing Hero on Claudio's behalf, and Don John tells Claudio that the prince wants her for himself. Claudio rails against the traps of beauty until the misunderstanding clears and he is promised Hero's hand.

  The second attempt works. Don John tells Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero is "disloyal". He then arranges for them to watch his associate Borachio meet a woman at the window of Hero's bedroom. The woman is really Margaret, Hero's attendant. Both men are fooled, and Claudio vows to shame Hero in public.

  At the wedding the next day, Claudio denounces her before the stunned guests and storms off with Don Pedro. Hero faints. Her humiliated father says he wishes she were dead. The presiding friar believes in her innocence. He proposes that the family pretend she has died, hoping to fill Claudio with remorse.

  The crisis pushes Benedick and Beatrice into confessing their love. Beatrice then asks him to kill Claudio as proof of it. Benedick hesitates, but she persuades him, and he challenges Claudio to a duel. Leonato and his brother Antonio also blame Claudio for Hero's supposed death and threaten him, to little effect.

  Rescue comes from the least likely people. On the night of Don John's treachery, the Watch of Messina overheard Borachio and his fellow follower Conrade. The two men were discussing their "treason" and a "most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth". The watchmen arrested both. Their leader, the constable Dogberry, and his partner Verges, the Headborough, are inept, yet they obtain a confession. A sexton judges the trial of Borachio, and Leonato learns that Hero is innocent. Don John has fled, though a force is sent after him.

  Remorseful and believing Hero dead, Claudio accepts Leonato's demand that he marry Antonio's daughter, "almost the copy of my child that's dead". Once he swears to take her, the bride turns out to be Hero. Beatrice and Benedick confess their love in public. Don Pedro teases "Benedick the married man". Benedick answers that the prince looks sad and should "Get thee a wife". A messenger then reports that Don John has been captured. Benedick asks to put off his punishment until tomorrow, and the couples dance.

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• 4. Nothing And Noting

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  "I noted her not, but I looked on her," says Benedick, when Claudio asks whether he took note of Leonato's daughter. The line shows the word at the center of the title. In Shakespeare's day, "nothing" and "noting" were near-homophones. "Noting" meant noticing, gossip, rumour and overhearing. Read literally, the title describes a huge fuss over something insignificant. Examples include the unfounded charge against Hero and the supposed love between Benedick and Beatrice.

  There is also a cruder layer. "An O-thing", or "no thing", was Elizabethan slang with a sexual meaning, built on the idea that women have "nothing" between their legs. The other reading, Much Ado About Noting, fits the action just as well. The characters spend the play watching, judging, spying, eavesdropping and passing along written messages. They talk often about "seeming", "fashion" and outward impressions.

  Borachio says that the fashion of a doublet, a hat or a cloak tells you nothing about the man inside. The friar, in the wedding scene, explains that he stayed silent so long because he was "noting of the lady". Each use of the word turns on watching someone closely and drawing a conclusion from it.

  The densest pun comes when Balthasar, the singer, is asked to perform. Don Pedro tells him: "Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!" Noting means noticing, a musical note, and nothing, all in one phrase. Don Pedro's line can be heard as "Pay attention to your music and nothing else." His word "crotchets" adds another layer. It means both quarter notes and whimsical notions.

  Other puns treat notes as messages. Benedick jokes about the word "post", which can mean a pole to beat or the delivery of mail. Leonato, discussing the love letter Beatrice supposedly wrote, asks whether she found Benedick and Beatrice "between the sheet". He means both a sheet of paper and a bedsheet.

  Balthasar, the singer at the heart of that musical pun, has a song that almost nobody in the play bothers to notice. It makes the play's sharpest argument about men and women.

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• 5. Honour And Manipulation

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  "Sigh No More" is Balthasar's song, and it turns the usual accusation around. It presents men as the deceitful and inconstant sex, and it tells women to accept this and go on living joyfully. Some interpreters think Balthasar sings badly, which would undercut the message. Benedick's cynical remark, comparing the song to a howling dog, supports that reading. In Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film, Balthasar sings it beautifully. The song has a prominent role in the opening and the finale, and the women seem to embrace what it says.

  The men of Messina live by a code of honour, loyalty to one another, and a feeling of superiority over women. That outlook shows in the repeated jokes about cuckoldry, with horns as the symbol. Several characters seem to be obsessed with the idea that a man cannot know whether his wife is faithful. Don John exploits Claudio's pride and fear of being made a cuckold. The assumption that women are inconstant by nature helps explain why Claudio so readily believes the slander. Leonato, too, condemns his own daughter on very little evidence.

  Benedick gives witty voice to the male anxiety about women's "sharp tongues and proneness to sexual lightness". The play's treatment of gender is provocative, and it belongs in its Renaissance context. The historian Amussen notes that undoing traditional gender clichés seems to have inflamed fears about the erosion of social order. Comic drama may have served to calm those fears. Ironically, the play's popularity suggests that it only increased interest in such behavior.

  Matchmaking in this play is just another form of manipulation. Many of the tricks have the best intentions. Characters try to make people fall in love, to help someone get what they want, or to lead someone to see their mistake. Not all are well meant, but they share a method. The characters' feelings are treated as tools for reaching a goal, with engagement as the aim rather than the feelings themselves. Sentiments are redirected and weaknesses exploited with surprising ease.

  Yet Beatrice, the figure most audiences remember from this debate, has no obvious precedent in the stories Shakespeare borrowed.

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• 6. Borrowed Plots

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  Matteo Bandello of Mantua collected stories in his Novelle, which means "Tales". Shakespeare's immediate source may have been one of them, possibly through the French translation by François de Belleforest. That tale follows Sir Timbreo and his betrothed Fenicia Lionata in Messina, after Peter III of Aragon defeated Charles of Anjou.

  Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso offers a second version of the slandered bride. In Book V, the lovers are Ariodante and Ginevra, and the servant Dalinda impersonates Ginevra on a balcony. The poem appeared in an English translation in 1591. It also holds a commentary on marriage whose speaker has a counterpart in Benedick. Edmund Spenser tells his own version of the Claudio and Hero plot in The Faerie Queene, in Book II, Canto iv.

  The witty wooing of Beatrice and Benedick, by contrast, appears to be original. The source describes it as very unusual in style and syncopation.

  The play is written mostly in prose. The substantial verse sections give a sense of decorum. It was probably written in 1598 and 1599, and it likely debuted in the autumn or winter of 1598-99. The earliest printed text claims it was "sundry times publicly acted" before 1600. The earliest recorded performances are two at Court in the winter of 1612-13. They were part of the festivities before the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate on the 14th of February 1613.

  In 1600 the stationers Andrew Wise and William Aspley published the play in quarto. That was the only edition before the First Folio of 1623.

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• 7. Centuries On Stage

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  In the original production by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, around 1598, William Kempe played Dogberry and Richard Cowley played Verges. The play stayed popular in its early decades and remains one of Shakespeare's most performed. A poem published in 1640 by Leonard Digges praised the draw of the leads. He wrote: "let but Beatrice / And Benedick be seen, lo in a trice / The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full."

  The Restoration reshaped the text. In 1662 Sir William Davenant staged The Law Against Lovers, which inserted Beatrice and Benedick into an adaptation of Measure for Measure. In 1737 another adaptation, The Universal Passion, combined Much Ado with a play by Molière. John Rich had revived Shakespeare's own text at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1721. David Garrick first played Benedick in 1748 and kept the part until 1776.

  Helena Faucit played Beatrice at Covent Garden in 1836, at the very start of her career. Her Benedick was Charles Kemble, in his farewell performances. In 1882 Henry Irving and Ellen Terry brought the play to the Lyceum Theatre, and the pair counted Benedick and Beatrice as their greatest triumph. John Gielgud first played Benedick in 1931 at the Old Vic Theatre and kept it in his repertory until 1959. His Beatrices included Diana Wynyard, Peggy Ashcroft and Margaret Leighton. In 1959 Gielgud and Leighton took the play to the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway, and Leighton received a Tony Award nomination.

  A 1965 National Theatre production directed by Franco Zeffirelli starred Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens. Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave, Albert Finney, Michael York and Derek Jacobi were also in the company. A recording of it earned a Grammy Award nomination. The longest-running Broadway production is A. J. Antoon's 1972 staging, starring Sam Waterston, Kathleen Widdoes and Barnard Hughes. It moved to the Winter Garden Theatre. There Widdoes earned a Tony nomination for leading actress, and Hughes, as Dogberry, one for featured actor.

  Terry Hands directed the Royal Shakespeare Company's highly praised 1982 production, with Derek Jacobi as Benedick and Sinéad Cusack as Beatrice. He staged it on a mirror running the length of the stage, against an unchanging backdrop of painted trees. Jacobi won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor. The pair reprised the roles on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre. Jacobi won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play, and Cusack received a nomination.

  Awards kept following the roles. At the Stratford Festival in 1987, Tandy Cronyn played Beatrice and Richard Monette played Benedick, directed by Peter Moss. In 1989 Felicity Kendal won the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress as Beatrice, in Elijah Moshinsky's production at the Strand Theatre. Mark Rylance won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor as Benedick in 1994, in Matthew Warchus' production at the Queen's Theatre. In 2006 Tamsin Greig won the Olivier for Best Actress as Beatrice, in Marianne Elliott's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. A National Theatre staging by Nicholas Hytner followed in 2007, with Zoë Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale.

  Two very different productions opened in 2011. At Shakespeare's Globe, Jeremy Herrin directed Eve Best and Charles Edwards. At Wyndham's Theatre, Josie Rourke directed David Tennant as Benedick opposite Catherine Tate. Iqbal Khan's 2012 Royal Shakespeare Company staging for the World Shakespeare Festival used an Indian setting, with Meera Syal and Paul Bhattacharjee. In 2013 Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones played the leads at The Old Vic in London, directed by Mark Rylance. They were then in their seventies and eighties, respectively. That year also saw a German-language version, Viel Lärm um Nichts. Marius von Mayenburg translated and directed it at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin.

  Settings kept moving around the globe. Matthew Dunster's 2017 Globe production was set in Mexico, with Beatriz Romilly and Matthew Needham. In 2018 Simon Dormandy set the play in modern Sicily at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, with Mel Giedroyc and John Hopkins. In 2019 Kenny Leon directed an all-Black cast in contemporary Georgia at The Public Theater, with Danielle Brooks as Beatrice and Grantham Coleman as Benedick. Denver Center for the Performing Arts staged it in 2022 with Jennifer Paredes as Hero and Gerrard James as Claudio. In 2023 Chris Abraham directed Maev Beaty and Graham Abbey at the Stratford Festival.

  In 2025 Jamie Lloyd directed Hayley Atwell as Beatrice and Tom Hiddleston as Benedick at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. In 2026 the production transferred to the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, with Atwell and Hiddleston reprising their roles.

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• 8. Afterlives

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  Hector Berlioz built the opera Béatrice et Bénédict, in 1862, on the play. Operas by other composers followed or preceded it. Jean-Élie Bédéno Dejaure and Henri-Montan Berton wrote Montano et Stéphanie in 1799. Árpád Doppler wrote Viel Lärm um Nichts in 1896. Paul Puget's Beaucoup de bruit pour rien was published in 1898, and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford's version came in 1901. The composer Edward MacDowell said Ellen Terry's Beatrice inspired the scherzo of his Piano Concerto No. 2. Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote music for a 1920 production in Vienna.

  In 1976 the Bolshoi Theatre premiered the ballet "Love for Love" by Tikhon Khrennikov. He reused material from the incidental music he had composed for a 1936 stage production. Later musical versions include The Boys Are Coming Home, produced in 2006 by the American Music Theatre Project. Berni Stapleton and Leslie Arden set it in America during the Second World War. The 2009 album Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons takes its title from Act 2 Scene 3 of the play. Its title track quotes the play. A 2015 rock opera, These Paper Bullets, was written by Rolin Jones with music by Billie Joe Armstrong. Opera McGill has commissioned another, with music by James Garner and a libretto adapted by Patrick Hansen.

  On screen, Martin Hellberg directed an East German film, Viel Lärm um nichts, in 1964. A Soviet adaptation by Samson Samsonov followed in 1973, starring Galina Jovovich and Konstantin Raikin. The BBC broadcast a television version of Zeffirelli's National Theatre staging in February 1967. It starred Maggie Smith as Beatrice and Derek Jacobi as Don Pedro, with music by Nino Rota. Alan Cooke directed it for television.

  Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film was the first sound version in English released to cinemas. Branagh played Benedick opposite his then-wife Emma Thompson as Beatrice. Denzel Washington played Don Pedro, Keanu Reeves played Don John, Richard Briers played Leonato, and Michael Keaton played Dogberry. Robert Sean Leonard was Claudio, Imelda Staunton was Margaret, and Kate Beckinsale made her film debut as Hero.

  Joss Whedon finished filming his version in 2011, and it was released in June 2013. Amy Acker played Beatrice and Alexis Denisof played Benedick, with Nathan Fillion as Dogberry. Whedon gave it a contemporary revision with an Italian-mafia theme. In 2012 a filmed version of the 2011 Globe performance reached cinemas and DVD. The Wyndham's Theatre performance became available for download or streaming on the Digital Theatre website.

  Television has returned to the play often. The 1973 New York Shakespeare Festival production by Joseph Papp, shot on videotape, includes more of the text than Branagh's film. A 1984 BBC version starred Robert Lindsay as Benedick and Cherie Lunghi as Beatrice. In 2005 the BBC set the story in the studios of Wessex Tonight, a fictional regional news programme. Damian Lewis, Sarah Parish and Billie Piper starred, as part of the ShakespeaRe-Told season. A 2014 YouTube web series, Nothing Much to Do, retold the play in New Zealand. PBS recorded the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. It broadcast the show on Great Performances on the 22nd of November 2019. Chuck Cooper played Leonato, and Camille A. Brown handled the choreography.

  The play has also turned up in a loose film adaptation, the 2023 romantic comedy Anyone but You. Will Gluck directed it, and Ilana Wolpert co-wrote it. It is set mainly in contemporary Australia, with Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell as analogues of Beatrice and Benedick.

  Young adult novelists have taken it up too. Lily Anderson's The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You, from 2016, puts Trixie Watson and Ben West in a "school for geniuses". Mckelle George's Speak Easy, Speak Love, from 2017, moves the events to the 1920s and a failing speakeasy. Molly Booth's Nothing Happened, from 2018, makes Claudio and Hero a queer couple named Claudia and Hana. Laura Wood's Under a Dancing Star, from 2019, is set in Florence, and Chloe Liese's Two Wrongs Make a Right came out in 2022.

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