Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy of two couples: the sparring wits Beatrice and Benedick, who are tricked into love, and the young Hero and Claudio, whose wedding is wrecked by a malicious lie.

Main characters

• Beatrice, niece of Leonato
• Benedick, a lord of Padua
• Hero, Leonato's daughter
• Claudio, a young lord of Florence
• Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon
• Don John, his illegitimate brother
• Leonato, Governor of Messina
• Dogberry, a constable, and the Watch
• Borachio, follower of Don John

Plot summary

This summary gives away the ending.

Don Pedro and his officers, returning from war, stay with Leonato in Messina. Claudio falls in love with Leonato's daughter Hero, and Don Pedro helps arrange their marriage. Leonato's niece Beatrice and the soldier Benedick resume their 'merry war' of insults, each declaring they will never marry.

To pass the time before the wedding, Don Pedro and the others stage conversations to be overheard: Benedick hears that Beatrice is secretly dying of love for him, and Beatrice hears the same of Benedick. Both are converted at once. Meanwhile the resentful Don John has his follower Borachio woo Hero's gentlewoman at Hero's window at night, and shows the scene to Claudio and Don Pedro as proof that Hero is unfaithful.

At the altar Claudio publicly shames Hero, who faints. The Friar advises the family to announce that she has died. Beatrice, furious at the insult to her cousin, demands that Benedick prove his love by challenging Claudio: 'Kill Claudio.' The truth comes out not through the clever aristocrats but through Dogberry's bumbling night watch, who overhear Borachio boasting. Claudio, repentant, agrees to marry a 'niece' of Leonato sight unseen, who unveils as Hero. Beatrice and Benedick are exposed by love sonnets each has written, and agree to marry.

Themes

• Honour, reputation and slander
• Deception, both malicious and kind
• Wit and the war between the sexes
• Seeing and overhearing ('noting')

Famous lines

I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?

Benedick, Act 4 Scene 1

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever.

Balthasar's song, Act 2 Scene 3

Kill Claudio.

Beatrice, Act 4 Scene 1

More in our collection of famous Shakespeare quotes.

Sources

The Hero and Claudio plot is based on a story in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and a novella by Matteo Bandello. Beatrice, Benedick and Dogberry are Shakespeare's own creations.

On stage and screen

In Elizabethan pronunciation 'nothing' sounded close to 'noting', meaning observing or overhearing, which is how every plot in the play works. Beatrice and Benedick have been played by star pairings from Ellen Terry and Henry Irving to Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in Branagh's 1993 film.

See where Much Ado About Nothing sits in Shakespeare's career on the timeline, or read about the playhouses it was written for.