Much Ado About Nothing (Folger Shakespeare Library) [Mass Market Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author), Barbara A. Mowat (Editor), Paul Werstine (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: December 30, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0743482751 | ISBN-13: 978-0743482752 | Edition: 1

Folger Shakespeare Library

The world's leading center for Shakespeare studies

Each edition includes:

• Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

• Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

• Scene-by-scene plot summaries

• A key to famous lines and phrases

• An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language

• An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

• Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Essay by Gail Kern Paster

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The text is superb . . . the critical introduction is predictably smart and engaging, exactly the sort of essay one would recommend to students."—Eric Rasmussen, Shakespeare Survey

 

"The notes are a pleasure to read; glosses are adept and concise, without windy disquisitions on alternative meanings. Many longer entries are fascinating...Graceful concision also marks the notes on performance and theatrical history...Deftly deploys a combination of linguistic and literary analysis, theater history, and textual commentary...give[s] the reader a sense of the whole play as alive and ever changing, with many intriguing possibilities for interpretation, capably set out within the frame she has created."—Shakespeare Quarterly

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Book Description

Much Ado has always been popular on the stage, where, from the time of Garrick, famous actors have appeared as the sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice. For this updated edition Angela Stock has added a new section to the Introduction in which she reviews the romantic and the darker, more cynical aspects of the play in the light of late twentieth-century stage, film and critical interpretations. She also tackles the critical fortunes of Hero and Claudio in terms of the play's interest in sexuality and misogyny, eavesdropping and deception. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 246 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; 1 edition (December 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743482751
• ISBN-13: 978-0743482752
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #89 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > British & Irish

More About the Author

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and his birth is traditionally celebrated on April 23. The facts of his life, known from surviving documents, are sparse. He was one of eight children born to John Shakespeare, a merchant of some standing in his community. William probably went to the King's New School in Stratford, but he had no university education. In November 1582, at the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, who was pregnant with their first child, Susanna. She was born on May 26, 1583. Twins, a boy, Hamnet ( who would die at age eleven), and a girl, Judith, were born in 1585. By 1592 Shakespeare had gone to London working as an actor and already known as a playwright. A rival dramatist, Robert Greene, referred to him as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." Shakespeare became a principal shareholder and playwright of the successful acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later under James I, called the King's Men). In 1599 the Lord Chamberlain's Men built and occupied the Globe Theater in Southwark near the Thames River. Here many of Shakespeare's plays were performed by the most famous actors of his time, including Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and Robert Armin. In addition to his 37 plays, Shakespeare had a hand in others, including Sir Thomas More and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and he wrote poems, including Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. His 154 sonnets were published, probably without his authorization, in 1609. In 1611 or 1612 he gave up his lodgings in London and devoted more and more time to retirement in Stratford, though he continued writing such plays as The Tempest and Henry VII until about 1613. He died on April 23 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford. No collected edition of his plays was published during his life-time, but in 1623 two members of his acting company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, put together the great collection now called the First Folio.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What is with you people? September 29, 2005

By Brianna Rhywhen

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I am here to do my part in diminishing the value of all the one- and three- star reviews posted here, the authors of which are clearly the same person or all from the same class of children too young to read the play. Amazon visitors reading these should know two things: the reviewer is a twit, and this play is wonderful.

I, for one, am a sucker for romances; if you are, Beatrice and Benedick will make the play worthwhile. Predictability be damned, they were an adorable couple. The main couple, Hero and Claudio, are boring; the other one will make you swoon. Beatrice and Benedick are funny, clever, and stubbornly reluctant to admit they love each other. To wit, they're perfect for one another.

I have read two contradictory criticisms regarding the language in the play on Amazon: that the language is too simple for Shakespeare's standards, and that the language is too difficult. The latter was from the kid's reviews; for everyone else, the language is not so difficult to decipher that you need to avoid it. The Folger edition, at least, has one page of notes for every page of text, noting both puzzling references to Elizabethan beliefs, such as that sights draw blood from the heart, and language problems caused by the hundreds of years between Shakespeare's time and ours. The editors do all the work for you. You have no excuse. (Oh, and that the language is too simple: Bah. It's Shakespeare. That's impossible. I loved all the double entendres; this play was very witty.)

One criticism I somewhat agree with is that the plot is boring. Hero and Claudio, being the main couple, get much time, and I didn't care much about Don John's vengeance, but at least half of my favorite couple was usually present, and by no means do Hero and Claudio's plot monopolize the story. Much Ado About Nothing is often genuinely entertaining, which is what kept me interested. The plot's not the point here, it's the dialogue.

In sum, the language is poetic, but not so much so that it reads like Klingon, the romance will make you sigh, and the plot is at least good enough to keep Beatrice or Benedick in most of the time. Don't let the previous reviewers deter you: Read it.

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Unusable and Eclectic Ideas Ruin this Important Edition November 11, 2008

By Desertmartin

Format:Paperback

Claire McEachern's Introduction, notes and commentary on Much Ado About Nothing suffer from the decline in real scholarship over the last few years. Previous introductory materials in Arden edition have always built on the solid scholarship of the past, adding new ideas and research as integrated parts of the growing body of knowledge associated with Shakespeare scholarship. McEachern's abandons most of the valid accepted readings of this play to wander rather aimlessly down the tunnel of self-promoting feminist, postmodern eclecticism. As a college professor, I am dismayed to see Arden turn to such contemporary and popular approaches at the exclusion of real context. The Arden editions have always set the standard, but are now falling prey to the subjective, personalized, even vindictive vents of the academic few. The field of Shakespeare criticism, unfortunately, is in danger of collapsing in on itself, and becoming completely irrelevant to anything other than these marginalized interest. More specifically, McEachern's search for sources for the play becomes a labyrinthine exposé of speculative inference and unrelated texts, ignoring primary sources for a new historicist fascination with the obscure. The tenor of her subjective argument about the play is captured in her overdone attack on Benedick as misogynist and Beatrice's rendering as the shrew. The problem, obviously, is the imbalance here; the feminist objective reduces a complex and humorous interplay to victimizer and victim, both seen from one perspective. Ignoring the historical contexts of the play, she focuses instead on marginal texts that only partially relate to the central themes of the play, to the social context, and to the audience's understanding both of Shakespeare's environs and present-day concerns. McEachern eventually backs herself into ridiculous corners, such as pages of arguing how women of the period who were too talkative (such as Beatrice) were labeled promiscuous, only to concede that Beatrice is never so labeled or even considered such. Her complete overblown fascination with the few humorous "cuckold" references in the play channel her criticism into a reductive and extremely limited analysis of minor factors in the play, while she completely avoids the important social considerations of marriage, challenges to gender roles, and the place of female intelligence in Shakespeare's society. It is a sign of the worst kind of scholarship, that her introduction to Much Ado About Nothing runs to nearly 145 pages, once the length of only the Hamlet introduction among the Arden editions (the only play, because of its complexity, demanding such a lengthy explication). Ego gets the better of scholarship here, and buries the important and necessary social, political and cultural ideas associated with this play. If McEachern's editing and commentary is a sign of things to come from Arden, they can expect to lose readers on all levels who find such marginalized approaches to important scholarship outside the interest of students and professionals alike.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Ado About the Play May 2, 2006

By Elainne G.

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I feel it is necessary to dispute some of the prior reviews I have just read. Shakespeare is a magnificient writer and Much Ado About Nothing is no exception. Some people have written that it is difficult to understand his language; however, the Folger Shakespeare Library has notes on the left page to explain vocabulary that modern readers may not understand. These notes also explain phrases that are no longer used such as "civil as an orange" which is a similie (with the orange being a Seville orange) having the meaning of "between sweet and sour".

Much Ado About Nothing is a witty comedy with enjoyable banter between Beatrice and Benedick, an ironical storyline, and humorous characters such as Dogberry whose malapropisms bring a smile to the reader's face.