This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Shakespearean comedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourke's film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSC's recent rebranding of it as a sequel. Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives, including contemporary directors' deployment of older actors within the lead roles, the play's relationship to Love's Labour's Lost, its presence on Youtube and the ways in which tales and ruses in the play belong to a wider concern with varieties of crime. The volume finishes with a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further research.

Critical essays about Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing".

This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Shakespearean comedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourke's film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSC's recent rebranding of it as a sequel. Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives, including contemporary directors' deployment of older actors within the lead roles, the play's relationship to Love's Labour's Lost, its presence on Youtube and the ways in which tales and ruses in the play belong to a wider concern with varieties of crime. The volume finishes with a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further research.

Presents a collection of essays discussing historical aspects of William Shakespeare's comedy in which Beatrice and Benedick overcome the obstacles preventing their union and ultimately conceding to mutual love and respect for each other.

Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare’s comedies, was almost certainly written around 1599, as it was registered in 1600. It appeared in Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623. The setting of the play is in Messina, Sicily. The action takes place in and around the house of the governor, Leonato. Leonato is visited by several young men – Prince Don Pedro of Aragon and his friend Claudio, Benedick of Pedua, and Don John, Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother. This annotated edition includes a biography and critical essay.

This is a collection of specially-commisioned essays designed to meet the specific needs of A level students. It introduces students to a wide variety of critical opinion, and shows by example how to construct a good critical essay. This book considers Much Ado About Nothing.

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare. First published in 1600, it is likely to have been first performed in the autumn or winter of 1598-1599, and it remains one of Shakespeare's most enduring and exhilarating plays on stage. Stylistically, it shares numerous characteristics with modern romantic comedies including the two pairs of lovers, in this case the romantic leads, Claudio and Hero, and their comic counterparts, Benedick and Beatrice.