1. Much Ado about Nothing Fabio Pesaresi fpesaresi@alice.it

2. English drama ► Mistery Plays ► Miracle Plays ► Morality Plays ► Interludes

3. Elizabethan drama ► University Wits ► Spanish Tragedy (1885 c.) (1885 c.) ► Popular theatre ► Propaganda theatre

4. Morality Plays ► Moral teaching ► Allegorical stories ► Everyman

5. Jacobean London Visscher – c. 1616

6. The Globe

8. William Shakespeare

9. 23rd april 1564 Is born at Stratford-upon-Avon

10. 1582 Marries Anne Hathaway

11. 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

12. 1599 Construction of the “Globe” Theatre 'Totus mundus agit histrionem'

13. 23rd april 1616 Dies at Stratford-upon-Avon

14. Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99)

15. Messina Leonato Antonio Hero Beatrice

16. Don Pedro of Aragon

17. Don Pedro Don JohnClaudio Benedick

18. Don John

19. Couples Ideal love: Claudio - Hero

20. The skirmish Benedick and Beatrice

21. The masqued ball ► Don Pedro courts Hero for his friend Claudio ► Don John insinuates the Don Pedro is in love with Hero

22. Playing Friends want Benedick and Beatrice to fall in love with each other

23. The deceit Don John makes Claudio and Don Pedro Believe that Hero has a secret lover

24. The repudiation Claudio believes his eyes and rejects Hero on their wedding day

25. The stratagem Friar Francis proposes to pretend that Hero has died:

26. “ 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”

27. Love declared Benedick declares his love to Beatrice who reciprocates

28. The proof of love Beatrice to Benedick: “Kill Claudio”

29. The revelation The guards discover Borachio boasting about the trick played

30. Repentance Claudio repents for harming Hero

31. The “punishment” Claudio accepts to:  Declare publicly his mistake  Marry Leonato’s niece, without seeing her

32. The double wedding Claudio and Hero

33. Benedick and Beatrice

34. Shakesperian themes ► Plots and sublots ► Deceit ► Evolution of characters ► Fight between good and evil

35. ► Puns ► Mixture of genres and registers ► Allegorical meaning