Document Outline

Cover

Copyright page

The Editor

Contents

List of Illustrations

1 An early modern watchman, with his bill and lantern, from Thomas Dekker's Gull's Hornbook (1609)

2 Title-page of Will Kemp's Nine Days Wonder (1600)

3 A man bearing the servile yoke, punishing stocks and effeminizing skirt of matrimony. From Henry Peacham's Minerva Britannia (1598)

4 The emblem illustrating Vis Amoris, from Henry Peacham's Minerva Britannia (1598)

5 Diana and Actaeon, from Henry Peacham's Minerva Britannia (1598)

6 A seventeenth-century woodcut accompanying the ballad 'A Married Man's Miserie'

7 1.1 (146–53), from a promptbook of a 1904–5 touring American production by E.H. Southern and Julia Marlowe

8 Hero swoons after Claudio's repudiation in the church scene (4.1), the frontispiece to Nicholas Rowe's edition of 1709

9 Hero swoons after Claudio's repudiation in the church scene (4.1), engraving by Jean Pierre Simon of the painting by William Hamilton (1790)

10 Hero swoons after Claudio's repudiation in the church scene (4.1), engraving by Edward Francis Burney (1791)

11 Dogberry and the Watch (4.2), in the 1976 RSC production, directed by John Barton

12 Dogberry addresses the Watch in 3.3, engraving by Henry Meadows (1845)

13 Edward Gordon Craig's preliminary sketch for the church scene (4.1) in his production of 1903–4

14 Ellen Terry as a kinder, gentler Beatrice in Henry Irving's Lyceum production, 1884–5

15 Charles Kemble as Benedick, drawing by J.H. Lynch, published by Engelmann, London (1828)

16 Title-page of Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (1615)

17 2.3 in Terry Hands's 1983 RSC production

18 2.3 in John Gielgud's production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 1950

19 3.1 in John Barton's 1976 RSC production

20 3.1 in the engraving by James Heath of W. Peters's painting for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery (1791)

21 Much Ado About Nothing, 1600 Quarto, sigs G3v–4r (4.1.305–4.2.54)

General Editors' Preface

The Text

Commentary and Textual Notes

Introduction

Preface

Introduction

Building a play: sources and contexts

The usual suspects: Ariosto and Bandello

Shakespeare's transformations of his sources: the creation of a social world

The maid

'How many gentlemen?'

The villain

The lover

Beyond the plot

Denouement

Dialogue and debate forms

Sexual stereotypes

Disdain

Modifications of type

Chaste, silent and obedient

Hero

Cuckolds

Structure and style

'The course of true love'

Two plots?

Style

Prose and the prosaic

Euphuism

Verbal handshakes

'The even road of a blank verse'

Image patterns

Songs

Staging Much Ado

Tonal choices

Social representations

Choice of place and time

Cultural moment

Afterlives

Origins

Criticism

Text

First impressions

Making a book

Who's in, who's out

Who gets to say what?

Much Ado About Nothing

List of Roles

The Soldiers

The Household of the Governor of Messina

Townspeople of Messina

Others

Act 1

1

2

3

Act 2

1

2

3

Act 3

1

2

3

4

5

Act 4

1

2

Act 5

1

2

3

4

Appendix: Casting chart

Abbreviations and references

Abbreviations used in notes

Works by and partly by Shakespeare

Editions of Shakespeare collated or referred to

Other works cited

Modern stage, film and television productions cited

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

V

W

Z