Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader

This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Shakespearean comedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourke's film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSC's recent rebranding of it as a sequel.

Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives, including contemporary directors' deployment of older actors within the lead roles, the play's relationship to Love's Labour's Lost , its presence on Youtube and the ways in which tales and ruses in the play belong to a wider concern with varieties of crime.

The volume finishes with a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further research.

Table of contents

Introduction (Deborah Cartmell and Peter J. Smith)

1. The Critical Backstory (Alison Findlay)
2. Performance History: Landmarks, Tendencies, Outliers, Recursions and Riffs in the Performance History of Much Ado About Nothing (Kathryn Prince)
3. The State of the Art (Elinor Parsons)
4. New Directions: Letting Wonder Seem Familiar – Italy and London in Much Ado About Nothing (Duncan Salkeld)
5. New Directions: Much Ado – Women (and Men) of a Certain Age (Elizabeth Schafer and Sara Reimers)
6. New Directions: Much Ado or Love’s Labour’s Won? – Does It Matter Which? ( Lois Potter)
7. New Directions: Much Ado About Nothing and Social Media (Christy Desmet)
8. Resources: ‘How Apt It Is to Learn’ – Studying and Teaching Much Ado About Nothing (Brett Greatley-Hirsch and Sarah Neville)

Notes
Bibliography
Index