Much Ado about Nothing Fabio Pesaresi
English drama ► Mistery Plays ► Miracle Plays ► Morality Plays ► Interludes
Elizabethan drama ► University Wits ► Spanish Tragedy (1885 c.) (1885 c.) ► Popular theatre ► Propaganda theatre
Morality Plays ► Moral teaching ► Allegorical stories ► Everyman
Jacobean London Visscher – c. 1616
The Globe
William Shakespeare
23rd april 1564 Is born at Stratford-upon-Avon
1582 Marries Anne Hathaway
1592 Robert Greene: "...for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey" Johannes fac totumJohannes fac totum
1599 Construction of the “Globe” Theatre 'Totus mundus agit histrionem'
23rd april 1616 Dies at Stratford-upon-Avon
Much Ado About Nothing ( )
Messina Leonato Antonio Hero Beatrice
Don Pedro of Aragon
Don Pedro Don JohnClaudio Benedick
Don John
Couples Ideal love: Claudio - Hero
The skirmish Benedick and Beatrice
The masqued ball ► Don Pedro courts Hero for his friend Claudio ► Don John insinuates the Don Pedro is in love with Hero
Playing Friends want Benedick and Beatrice to fall in love with each other
The deceit Don John makes Claudio and Don Pedro Believe that Hero has a secret lover
The repudiation Claudio believes his eyes and rejects Hero on their wedding day
The stratagem Friar Francis proposes to pretend that Hero has died:
“ what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours”
Love declared Benedick declares his love to Beatrice who reciprocates
The proof of love Beatrice to Benedick: “Kill Claudio”
The revelation The guards discover Borachio boasting about the trick played
Repentance Claudio repents for harming Hero
The “punishment” Claudio accepts to: Declare publicly his mistake Marry Leonato’s niece, without seeing her
The double wedding Claudio and Hero
Benedick and Beatrice
Shakesperian themes ► Plots and sublots ► Deceit ► Evolution of characters ► Fight between good and evil
► Puns ► Mixture of genres and registers ► Allegorical meaning