Nineteen facts about Much Ado About Nothing

He “quietly and promptly refused to kill Claudio as one might decline to remove a raincoat.”

The next Shakespeare bookclub is now **19th May**—it was pointed out that 12th is Mothers’ Day in the USA… sorry! You can find all the other Shakespeare posts here.

On Monday, 13th May, I will be talking online at Interintellect to Thomas Arnold about Second Act. I hope to see some of you there!

And don’t forget to book tickets for my Interintellect salon, Shakespeare’s Inadequate Kings.

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1. Much Ado was written in 1598, after Henry IV and The Merry Wives and just before As You Like It and Henry V. There was a quarto in 1600.

2. Much Ado was performed as part of the marriage celebrations at James I’s daughter’s wedding in 1613.

3. In 1632, Charles I inscribed the names “Benedicte and Betteris” next to the title of the play in his copy.

4. In a poem of 1640 it was said that as soon as Benedict and Beatrice were seen “The Cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full.”

5. After the Restoration, rights to perform Shakespeare’s plays were dividd between two companies, the King’s and the Duke of York’s. Much Ado went to the latter and was made into a gross hybrid with Measure for Measure. In this version, there is no Claudio and Hero (there is a Claudio, but the MFM one.)

6. When Much Ado proper was performed in 1721 it was advertised as not having been acted for thirty years, but it was probably much longer, since 1660. A 1709 edition of Shakespeare, though, has an illustration of the church scene, so it perhaps survived beyond what the paper record can tell us.