Style The play is predominantly written in prose. The substantial verse sections achieve a sense of decorum.
Setting Much Ado About Nothing is set in
Messina, a port city on the island of
Sicily, when Sicily is
ruled by Aragon. Its action takes place mainly at the home and grounds of Leonato's Estate.
Themes and motifs Gender roles as Benedick and
Winifred Emery as Beatrice in a 1905 production. Act IV, Scene I: "Kill Claudio". Benedick and Beatrice quickly became the main interest of the play. They are considered the leading roles even though their relationship is given equal or lesser weight in the script than Claudio's and Hero's situation.
Charles I wrote, 'Benedick and Beatrice' beside the title of the play in his copy of the
Second Folio. The provocative treatment of gender is central and should be considered in its
Renaissance context. This was reflected and emphasized in certain plays of the period but was also challenged. Amussen notes that the undoing of traditional gender clichés seems to have inflamed anxieties about the erosion of social order. It seems that comic drama could be a means of calming such anxieties. Ironically, the play's popularity suggests that this only increased interest in such behavior. Benedick wittily gives voice to male anxieties about women's "sharp tongues and proneness to sexual lightness".
Deception (c. 1771) The play has many examples of deception and self-deception. The games and tricks played on people often have the best intentions: to make people fall in love, to help someone get what they want, or to lead someone to realize their mistake. But not all are well-meant: Don John convinces Claudio that Don Pedro wants Hero for himself, and Borachio meets 'Hero' (actually Margaret) in Hero's bedroom window. These modes of deceit play into a complementary theme of emotional manipulation, the ease with which the characters' sentiments are redirected and their propensities exploited as a means to an end. The characters' feelings for each other are played as vehicles to reach the goal of engagement rather than as an end in themselves.
Masks and mistaken identity Characters are constantly pretending to be others or
mistaken for others. Margaret is mistaken for Hero, leading to Hero's disgrace. During a masked ball (in which everyone must wear a mask), Beatrice rants about Benedick to a masked man who is actually Benedick, but she acts unaware of this. During the same celebration, Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio and courts Hero for him. After Hero is proclaimed dead, Leonato orders Claudio to marry his 'niece', who is actually Hero.
Nothing : Beatrice overhears Hero and Ursula. Another motif is the play on the words
nothing and
noting. These were near-
homophones in Shakespeare's day. Taken literally, the title implies that a great fuss ('much ado') is made of something insignificant ('nothing'), such as the unfounded claims of Hero's infidelity and that Benedick and Beatrice are in love with each other.
Nothing is also a
double entendre: 'an O-thing' (or 'n othing' or 'no thing') was Elizabethan slang for "
vagina", derived from women having 'nothing' between their legs. The title can also be understood as
Much Ado About Noting: much of the action centres on interest in others and the critique of others, written messages, spying, and eavesdropping. This attention is mentioned several times directly, particularly concerning 'seeming', 'fashion', and outward impressions. Examples of noting as noticing occur in the following instances: (1.1.131–132) and (4.1.154–157). At (3.3.102–104), Borachio indicates that a man's clothing doesn't reveal his character: A triple play on words in which noting signifies noticing, musical notes, and nothing, occurs at (2.3.47–52): Don Pedro's last line can be understood to mean 'Pay attention to your music and nothing else!' The complex layers of meaning include a pun on 'crotchets', which can mean both '
quarter notes' (in music) and whimsical notions. The following are puns on notes as messages: (2.1.174–176), in which Benedick plays on the word
post as a pole and as mail delivery in a joke reminiscent of Shakespeare's earlier advice '
Don't shoot the messenger'; and (2.3.138–142) in which Leonato makes a sexual innuendo, concerning
sheet as a sheet of paper (on which Beatrice's love note to Benedick is to have been written), and a bedsheet. ==Performance history==