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.
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.
Much Ado was performed as part of the marriage celebrations at James I’s daughter’s wedding in 1613.
In 1632, Charles I inscribed the names “Benedicte and Betteris” next to the title of the play in his copy.
In a poem of 1640 it was said that as soon as Benedict and Beatrice were seen “The Cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full.”
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.)
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.
It was played multiple times in the early eighteenth century and Garrick played Benedict in 1748. He then played the part every year until his retirement in 1776. It was one of his most popular parts.
In 1836, at his retirement, the 61 year old Charles Kemble played Benedict opposite a 19 year old actress as Beatrice.
Beatrice was one of Ellen Terry’s most popular parts, and she played it throughout her career.
A 1905 Beerbohm-Tree production, complete with lavish sets, lasted for over four hours. Bernard Shaw said, “totally insensible to Shakespeare’s qualities, he puts his own qualities into the work.” Shaw thought this worked “astonishingly” well.
In 1925-26, Edith Evans played Beatrice at the Old Vic. This made her a star. She was playing opposite the now sadly forgotten actor Baliol Holloway. From my profile of Holloway:
When Evans moved to the Old Vic, ‘Nearly everyone thought I was mad.’ Herbert Farjeon reassured her, not least because Holloway ‘makes Elizabethan plays “go along” – a wind that bellies out the sails.’ After Holloway’s death, a letter appeared in The Stage recalling a 1920s Old Vic production. Before the curtain went up, a message appeared that the lead actor was ill and Baliol Holloway, just back from America, would play the protagonist without rehearsal.‘Anticipation was high for a sight of our old favourite and when the curtain rose on the second scene out there stood our Baliol… the house rose with a mighty roar of applause. Feet stamped, cheers rose. After 40 years... I have never experienced such a spontaneous gesture of affection and appreciation for a favourite actor.’ (The Stage, 27 April 1967)
A 1961 review of Christopher Plummer as Benedict (playing opposite Geraldine McEwan) said that he “quietly and promptly refused to kill Claudio as one might decline to remove a raincoat.”
It is not unknown for older actors to star in Much Ado today. One of the best performances I have seen starred James Earle Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, when they were 81 and 75 respectively. (The reviewers disliked it; they were wrong.) (My other favourite was Tamsin Greig, who was riotously funny.) (Oh how I wish I had seen Harriet Walter…)
It used to be the tradition that when Hero faints and Benedict rushes forward to help her, Beatrice shoos him away out of jealousy. Ellen Terry as a young actress said that was nonsense, and an old-school actor told her, “Well, it always gets a laugh.” This suggests the play was often played more farcically than we tend to see it today.
The trope of a falsely accused woman who “dies” recurs in Shakespeare’s later plays Othello, Cymberline, The Winter’s Tale. But there have been false deaths in earlier plays, such as Falstaff in the first part of Henry IV part one.
Unlike As You Like It, the plot is not so neatly or harmoniously revolved. A dark note is still present at the end of this “comedy”. Much Ado, really, is more like the problem plays.
F.H. Mares says this of V.i: “…the scene starts with the pathos of the father lamenting the disgrace of his daughter, and rejecting the attempts of his brother to offer consolation. The text is inexplicit as to whether Antonio knows at this stage that Hero is not dead… Leonato also asserts it, and he knows it to be false. In the moment of giving Claudio the lie, Leonato is lying himself. Our knowledge of this—and that Hero is safe—assists the difficult shift from pathos at the opening of the scene to something like farce in Antonio’s senile anger. The embarrassment persists when a tense and serious Benedick, coming to deliver his challenge, is met with the usual flippant jesting, which now must appear as the depth of bad taste and insensitivity in Claudio and Don Pedro.” No wonder the scene has so often been cut…
In Glasgow in 2013, Beatrice became Bertram. At the Globe in 2004, the whole cast was female. (I saw it, rather dull considering the opportunities; all I remember is the acting being distinctly sub-par.) The reviewers were amazingly bigoted and their comments would not be published today, one hopes. The 2013 production got good notices, focussing on the intriguing fact that the play transfers almost effortlessly to homosexual casting. It has become more widely accepted, or at least understood, I think, that if Shakespeare wasn’t bisexual then he understood bisexuality remarkably well, and this play is a nice instance of that side of him. Read MAAD and imagine the genders changed in either direction or in any combination, and you will find few, if any, obstacles. I am therefore surprised not to have seen more attention given to this play in recent years. There have been productions, but there ought to be more.
Compared to his sources, Shakespeare made the impulsive, romantic lovers, the violently jealous, younger people of lower status. Claudio is intended as a very unlikeable character. The conservative temperament that informed Romeo and Juliet is coming out quite strongly in Much Ado.
Most of these facts were gleaned from the excellent Cambridge edition of the play.
just to say, the book club has proved very fruitful for our rehearsals and selected parts of this article especially have gone down a treat in the group. cheers
excellent, cheers. for reasons previously mentioned, am looking forward to more on MAAD