Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (reading list .txt) đź“•
Description
Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing towards the middle of his career, sometime between 1598 and 1599. It was first published in quarto in 1600 and later collected into Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies in 1623. The earliest recorded performance of Much Ado About Nothing was performed for the newly-married Princess Elizabeth and Frederick the Fifth, Elector Palatine in 1613.
Shakespeare’s sources of inspiration for this play can be found in Italian culture and popular texts published in the sixteenth century. Gossip involving lovers deceived into believing each other false was often spread throughout Northern Italy. Works like Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Edmund Spencer’s Fearie Queene also feature tricked lovers like Claudio and Hero. Besides these similarities, the idea of tricking a couple like Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love was an original and unusual idea at the time.
The play focuses on two couples: upon the noblemen’s return to Messina, Claudio and Hero quickly fall in love and wish to marry in a week; on the contrary, Benedick and Beatrice resume their verbal war, exchanging insults with each other. To pass the time prior to the marriage a plot to trick Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love has been set in motion. Unbeknownst to both our couples, a fouler plot to crush the love and happiness between Hero and Claudio has also begun to unfold.
This Standard Ebooks production is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright’s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition.
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- Author: William Shakespeare
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A church.
Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, and three or four with tapers. Claudio Is this the monument of Leonato? A Lord It is, my lord. Claudio Reading out of a scroll.Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies:
Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies.
So the life that died with shame
Lives in death with glorious fame.
Hang thou there upon the tomb,
Praising her when I am dumb.
Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.
Pardon, goddess of the night,
Those that slew thy virgin knight;
For the which, with songs of woe,
Round about her tomb they go.
Midnight, assist our moan;
Help us to sigh and groan,
Heavily, heavily:
Graves, yawn and yield your dead,
Till death be uttered,
Heavily, heavily.
Now, unto thy bones good night!
Yearly will I do this rite.
Good morrow, masters; put your torches out:
The wolves have prey’d; and look, the gentle day,
Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about
Dapples the drowsy East with spots of grey.
Thanks to you all, and leave us: fare you well.
Come, let us hence, and put on other weeds;
And then to Leonato’s we will go.
And Hymen now with luckier issue speed’s
Than this for whom we rend’red up this woe! Exeunt.
A room in Leonato’s house.
Enter Leonato, Antonio, Benedick, Beatrice, Margaret, Ursula, Friar Francis, and Hero. Friar Did I not tell you she was innocent? LeonatoSo are the prince and Claudio, who accused her
Upon the error that you heard debated:
But Margaret was in some fault for this,
Although against her will, as it appears
In the true course of all the question.
And so am I, being else by faith enforced
To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.
Well, daughter, and you gentlewomen all,
Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,
And when I send for you, come hither mask’d. Exeunt Ladies.
The prince and Claudio promis’d by this hour
To visit me. You know your office, brother:
You must be father to your brother’s daughter,
And give her to young Claudio.
To bind me, or undo me; one of them.
Signior Leonato, truth it is, good signior,
Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.
The sight whereof I think you had from me,
From Claudio and the prince: but what’s your will?
Your answer, sir, is enigmatical:
But, for my will, my will is your good will
May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin’d
In the state of honourable marriage:
In which, good friar, I shall desire your help.
Good morrow, prince; good morrow, Claudio:
We here attend you. Are you yet determined
Today to marry with my brother’s daughter?
Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
I think he thinks upon the savage bull.
Tush, fear not, man; we’ll tip thy horns with gold
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee,
As once Europa did at lusty Jove,
When he would play the noble beast in love.
Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low;
And some such strange bull leap’d your father’s cow,
And got a calf in that same noble feat
Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.
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