Did Shakespeare chose not to think in Much Ado About Nothing?

what your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light

UPDATE. The next Shakespeare meeting is ***Sunday 23rd June, 19.00 UK time*** (The original date was Fathers’ Day. Whoops!)

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In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare chose not to think very much. That was what the usually reliable A.D. Nuttall said in Shakespeare the Thinker. I disagree. In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare shows us the triumph of determinism or the limits of rationalism—sometimes, thinking simply won’t help.

The title of this play has three meanings. Nothing, first, refers to the plot. Claudio thinks Hero was unfaithful, but he was deceived. So the hinge of the plot is something that didn’t happen. Second, nothing is slang for women’s genitals. Men have a thing, women have nothing. It’s not a tale about honour or virtue, as the characters believe; instead, they are all just chasing skirt. Third, nothing would have been pronounced more like “noting”, i.e. this is a play where everyone notes each other. It’s about gossip, eavesdropping, snooping. Nothing happens other than a lot of talk.

Take these three meanings together and you get a good sense of what this play is about: it isn’t that nothing happened, it’s that all that talk and gossip about what they think happened amounts to nothing very much.