Shakespeare William. Much Ado About Nothing

Yale University Press, 1917. — 138 p.Edited by Tucker Brooke.Much Ado About Nothing, comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written probably in 1598–99 and printed in a quarto edition from the author’s own manuscript in 1600. The play takes an ancient theme — that of a woman falsely accused of unfaithfulness — to brilliant comedic heights. Shakespeare used as his main source for the Claudio-Hero plot a story from Matteo Bandello’s Novelle (1554–73); he also may have consulted Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. The Beatrice-Benedick plot is essentially Shakespeare’s own, though he must have had in mind his own story of wife taming in The Taming of the Shrew. (David Bevington)