Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (reading list .txt) 📕
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.
Read free book «Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (reading list .txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: William Shakespeare
Read book online «Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (reading list .txt) 📕». Author - William Shakespeare
No, that you shall not, till you take her hand
Before this friar and swear to marry her.
Give me your hand: before this holy friar,
I am your husband, if you like of me.
And when I lived, I was your other wife: Unmasking.
And when you loved, you were my other husband.
Nothing certainer:
One Hero died defiled, but I do live,
And surely as I live, I am a maid.
All this amazement can I qualify;
When after that the holy rites are ended,
I’ll tell you largely of fair Hero’s death:
Meantime let wonder seem familiar,
And to the chapel let us presently.
Why, then your uncle and the prince and Claudio
Have been deceived; they swore you did.
Why, then my cousin Margaret and Ursula
Are much deceived; for they did swear you did.
And I’ll be sworn upon’t that he loves her;
For here’s a paper written in his hand,
A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,
Fashion’d to Beatrice.
And here’s another
Writ in my cousin’s hand, stolen from her pocket,
Containing her affection unto Benedick.
My lord, your brother John is ta’en in flight,
And brought with armed men back to Messina.
Much Ado About Nothing
was published in 1600 by
William Shakespeare.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Emma Sweeney,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1998 by the
P.G. Shakespeare Team and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
Esther Before Ahasuerus,
a painting completed in 1635 by
Artemisia Gentileschi.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
February 24, 2020, 7:47 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-shakespeare/much-ado-about-nothing.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
UncopyrightMay you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.
Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.
Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on
Comments (0)