Cover of Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing

4.3 · 12 ratings on Open Library

One couple is tricked into falling in love, and another couple is tricked into falling out of love.

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Length
22,000 words
Reading time
About 80 min
Format
EPUB, DRM-free

About the book

Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing towards the middle of his career, sometime between 1598 and 1599. It was first published in quarto in 1600 and later collected into Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies in 1623. The earliest recorded performance of Much Ado About Nothing was performed for the newly married Princess Elizabeth and Frederick the Fifth, Elector Palatine in 1613.

Shakespeare’s sources of inspiration for this play can be found in Italian culture and popular texts published in the sixteenth century. Gossip involving lovers deceived into believing each other false was often spread throughout Northern Italy. Works like Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Edmund Spencer’s Fearie Queene also feature tricked lovers like Claudio and Hero. Besides these similarities, the idea of tricking a couple like Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love was an original and unusual idea at the time.

This is the Standard Ebooks edition, carefully proofread and typeset, with a table of contents and linked footnotes.

What readers think

4.3 out of 5

12 ratings of Much Ado About Nothing from Open Library readers, as of 10th Nov.

  • 5 stars50%
  • 4 stars33%
  • 3 stars17%
  • 2 stars0%
  • 1 star0%