Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 10th February 2011
Paperback
Published: 21st October 2015
Paperback
Published: 1st July 1998
Hardback
Published: 11th June 2019
Paperback
Published: 25th June 2024
Paperback, New edition
Published: 5th June 1995
Paperback
Published: 8th December 2011
Paperback
Published: 11th January 2018
Paperback
Published: 3rd July 2017
Hardback
Published: 1st June 2015
Much Ado About Nothing: Third Series
By (Author) William Shakespeare
Edited by Claire McEachern
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
The Arden Shakespeare
1st June 2015
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800
822.33
Hardback
368
Width 129mm, Height 198mm
500g
Much Ado About Nothing boasts one of Shakespeare's most delightful heroines, most dancing wordplay, and the endearing spectacle of intellectual and social self-importance bested by the desire to love and be loved in return. It offers both the dancing wit of the "merry war" between the sexes, and a sobering vision of the costs of that combat for both men and women. Shakespeare dramatizes a social world in all of its vibrant particulars, in which characters are shaped by the relations between social convention and individual choice. This edition of the play offers in its introduction and commentary an extensive discussion of the materials that informed Shakespeare's compositional choices, both those conventional sources and other contexts, from cuckold jokes to conduct books, which inform the ideas and identities of this play. Particular attention is devoted to Renaissance understandings of gender identity and social rank, as well as to the social valences of Shakespeare's stylistic choices. A treatment of staging possibilities offers illustrations drawn from the earliest and recent theatrical practices, and a critical history examines the fate of the play in the changing trends of academic scholarship.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was an English dramatist, poet, and actor, generally regarded as the greatest playwright of all time.