94 nicely, subtly, as in I. ii. 15.

130 directly, straightforwardly, plainly.
139-141 measure, used in three senses: (1) versifica-
tion; (2) dancing; (3) amount.

148 jack-an-apes, monkey.

149 greenly, like a maid with green-sickness. 12 whiffler, the marshal clearing the way for a pro- 161 uncoined, not passed from one lady to another

like a piece of money, but of virgin gold. 167 fall, shrink.

21 trophy, signal and ostent, outward sign and 191 Je quand sur. Pope corrected Henry's French show of triumph.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

SOURCES-The central theme of Much Ado about | Claudio to wait upon the facts. Finally, the crisis Nothing is the deceit practised upon a lover, who of Bandello's story, the repudiation by Timbreo of his is led to repudiate his betrothed by seeing a man at lady, was conveyed in the cold terms of a letter. her chamber window. The incidents composing the Shakespeare chose the wedding in the church for this fabric of this plot are generally believed to have been dramatic moment. Timbreo's message may well serve taken from the twentieth Novella of Matteo Ban- as an illustration of the style of Bandello. dello, the most celebrated of Italian novelists of the "Don Timbreo di Cardona sendeth unto you, Messer Renaissance, who died about the time of Shakespeare's Lionato, and unto your lady, bidding you provide birth. The story, one of the longest in Bandello's yourselves with another son-in-law, inasmuch as he collection, appealed chiefly to the sentimental and the purposeth not to have you to parents-in-law, not inpathetic; and the sorrowful speeches of the broken- deed for any default of yourselves, whom he believhearted heroine and the repentant villain furnish most eth and holdeth to be loyal and worthy, but for that of the discourse. The dramatist, employing this he hath with his own eyes seen a thing in Fenicia theme for the ends of high comedy-brilliancy of which he never could have believed, and therefore he wit, bold contrast of characterization, and effective symmetry in the parts of the action-was forced to make alterations and additions, a summary of which affords an instructive illustration of his methods.

leaveth it unto you to provide for your occasions. To thee, Fenicia, he saith that the love he bore thee merited not the requital which thou hast made him therefor, and biddeth thee provide thyself with another husband, even as thou hast provided thyself with another lover. . . ."

Bandello, following history, had taken pains to give the revolting details of the Sicilian Vespers (1283), which preceded the violent seizure of Messina by The compression into Don Pedro's brief but telling King Pedro of Arragon. Girondo's plot against the narrative of the scene at the chamber-window of innocent girl, Fenicia, is ascribed by Bandello to an- Fenicia, an episode fully treated in Bandello, was anger at the rejection of his suit and jealousy of his other masterstroke of dramatic effect on Shakespeare's successful rival and brother-in-arms, Timbreo of part. In two small details of this device he sought Cardona. Shakespeare banished the Vespers, mak-aid from other versions of the same story. The fifth ing Pedro's return to Messina incident upon a blood-book of the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto (1516; less victory over a baseborn brother, Don John, whose translated by Harington in 1591) tells the tale of loss of fortune and favor, added to his natural mal- Ariodante and Ginevra. Here the deception of the ice, gave sufficient motive to revenge upon the king's hero was better devised than in Bandello. Instead of favorite. Bandello's Girondo, described as "exceed- the mere entrance of the villain at a window of ing doughty of his person in the late wars," and Lionato's house, Ginevra's maid is bribed by her lover "one of the most magnificent and liberal gentlemen of the court," could then be transformed into Benedick, in order to heighten the comedy, and afford a pleasing contrast to the darker nature of the main situation. In the same way, Bandello thought the remorse of conscience all that was needed to bring about not only Timbreo's regret for his repudiation of Fenicia, but the repentant Girondo's disclosure of his villainy. Shakespeare, in one of his happiest devices, made this discovery the argument of his sub-plot; and was truer to nature in leaving the regret of the too-credulous

to dress in her mistress's clothes and be seen in her
chamber with him. Shakespeare availed himself of
this intrigue; but to lighten the texture of the plot
left the maid innocent of her part in the deceit. To
do this it was necessary to remove Margaret from ac-
tual contact with Don John; and therefore he adopted
Spenser's version of Ariosto's story, in the Faerie
Queene (II. iv.), which gave the part of the supposed
lover to a base groom. Two lines of this version→
"He either envying my toward good,

Or of himself to treason ill disposed"—

have been thought to suggest Shakespeare's motiva- George Seacole (III. iii. 11) becomes Francis Seacole tion of Don John; but this seems hardly necessary. a little later (III. v. 62). Finally, there appears a Of all the other features in the plot Shakespeare repetition of device in the overhearing which has been is generally credited with being the sole inventor. accounted for as intentional in the artist's plan, but The characters of Benedick and Beatrice exhibit the which may also be interpreted as haste or the shreds growth of his dramatic power in the years following of early work. "The body of [his] discourse is somethe creation of their prototypes, Rosaline and Biron, time guarded with fragments, and the guards are but in Love's Labour's Lost. The parts of Dogberry and slightly basted on." Verges, similarly, bear equal witness to his ability to make real and human the stock figures of the comic stage. Above all, the neatness and symmetry of the general dramatic design disclose the hand of the art-new work, or perhaps the dramatist's greater interest ist who had constructed The Merchant of Venice.

Some minor questions, however, offer problems yet to be solved. Shakespeare's common practice of selecting themes already popular on the stage has justified the suggestion of an earlier play as the chief source. "A matter of panicia” (Phenicia) appears in the Revels Accounts of 1574, "showed by my lord of Leicester's men." In 1583 a play about Ariodante and Ginevra was performed before Queen Elizabeth. Die schöne Phoenicia, a German play by Jacob Ayrer, based on Belleforest's version of Bandello, is held to have had an English original. Finally, the internal evidence from Much Ado itself, in its printed form, has been offered as favoring the theory of an earlier play by Shakespeare, of which the present text is a revision.

This last claim has some foundation. The lack of care shown in a number of details, where the main plot is so highly wrought out, would be more characteristic of a dramatic palimpsest written over early work than of a new play made out of whole cloth. Thus the stage-direction of the quarto of 1600 introduces Innogen, wife of Leonato (I. i. and again II. i.). Don John appears wrongly in the stage-direction of I. i. 183. Antonio's servant overhears Don Pedro's device (of winning Hero's love for Claudio) from the orchard-alley; Borachio overhears it from behind the

arras of a musty room.

Antonio's son, mentioned in

I. ii., should naturally be the one to challenge Claudio; this task falls to Benedick, and the son is no more heard of. Leonato says (V. ii. 298):

This evidence, however, though important in its cumulative effect, is at best negative; and either the needs of immediate presentation, the taking up of

in the dialogue and important characters could well account for such lack of finish in minor details.

At the Princess Elizabeth's wedding in 1613, warrants were made out in the Lord Treasurer's accounts for Much Ado, one of seven Shakespearean plays performed at these festivities. In the second part of this warrant appears "one other called Benedicte and Betteris." Some have thought this a reference to the earlier play; but the unlikelihood of inserting one play under two names in accounts is more than balanced by the unlikelihood of presenting two plays on the same plot and with the same characters upon one occasion. Charles I added the name Benedick and Beatrice to the title of his copy of this play, in the Second Folio of 1632.

CRITICAL COMMENT-The criticism of the playhouse has always been favorable to Much Ado about Nothing. Leonard Digges, in verses written perhaps in 1623, but published in 1640, says:

"Let but Beatrice

And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice The cockpit, galleries, boxes all are full." Since the Restoration mingled praise and censure have been bestowed upon the play, varying principally with the sentiments most in fashion in the critic's time. Thus in 1709, Charles Gildon thought "the accusation of Hero is too shocking for either tragedy or comedy," but admired Benedick and Beatrice as "two sprightly, witty, talkative characters; . . . all that passes betwixt Benedick and Beatrice is admirable." In the days of Blue-Stockings, Mrs. Inchbald "My brother hath a daughter, censured these same characters for allowing themselves And she alone is heir to both of us." to become eavesdroppers. In the romantic age WilThis reference to "my brother," if to Antonio, liam Hazlitt declared that "perhaps that middle point passes over the son already mentioned; if not to An- of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the lutonio, then Beatrice's claims at least are slighted. dicrous blends with the tender"; but Campbell obClaudio's uncle, referrred to in I. i. 18ff., is not else- jected to Beatrice as "a tartar," and "an odious where mentioned, though his presence at the wedding woman," quite untrue to the soft ideal of the time. would be more than natural. The clerkly watchman, Later critics, particularly those of the moral school

have passed hurriedly over the distressing figure of the language of the time. The popularity of the witClaudio, or have lingered only to denounce him less constable is indicated also by Robert Armin, the roundly. Andrew Lang took comfort in the thought comedian who succeeded Kemp with the Lord Chamthat "though Hero forgave Claudio, we may be hap-berlain's players. In the dedicatory epistle to The pily certain that Beatrice never will." A German Italian Tailor and his Boy (1609) he says: "Pardon, critic, representative of his school, says that "the I pray you, the boldness of a beggar, who hath been moral impossibility (of Claudio's character) is pat-writ down an ass in his time, and pleads under formâ ent." On the other hand, from one of the acutest pauperis in it still, notwithstanding his constableship of German critics, F. Kreyssig, has come the schol- and office." arly vindication of this character as a true and faithful study of the aberrations of youth. "It is youth, endowed with unusual vitality, but totally inexperienced, and spoiled by fortune, that pleads for forbearance."

The inclusion of this play in the score chosen for court performance in 1613 is further evidence of its rank among Elizabethan comedies. Playwrights have more than once paid Shakespeare the compliment of echoing the characters and dialogue of Much Ado. Thomas Heywood's Fair Maid of the Exchange (1607) imitated the dialogue; D'Avenant's Law against Lovers (1661-2) added Benedick and Beatrice to the plot of Measure for Measure; and James Miller's Universal Passion (1736) combined Shakespeare with Molière, in his Princesse d'Élide.

Critics have been more at one over the merits of the play from the constructive side. The skill with which the catastrophe is prepared for, and especially the manner in which the solution is provided by the dull wits of the constables, have been frequently praised. Miss Helen Faucit (Lady Martin), in her time the most distinguished of Beatrices, has written The modern revival of the play dates from 1721, much excellent comment on the play. She ranked it, when Ryan produced it at Lincoln's Inn Fields, from the theatrical standpoint, among the best of with the advertisement "not acted thirty years." Shakespeare's works, and delighted in the witty rail- From this time performances were of fair fre lery of her part. Some modern critics, however, have quency; appearances are recorded at Covent Garden felt obliged to apologize for the wit of the piece. in 1737, 1739 (when Mrs. Vincent played Beatrice), Lang says: "The wit-combats must be judged his- and in 1746, when Mrs. Pritchard chose to play torically. . . . Even court-wit was clumsy in Shake- | Beatrice for her "benefit." This rôle she made faspeare's time." mous two years later, when Garrick acted Benedick for the first time, at Drury Lane, Nov. 14, 1748. Davies says: "The excellent acting of Mrs. Pritchard in Beatrice was not inferior to that of Garrick in Benedick. Every scene between them was a struggle for superiority; nor could the spectators determine to which of them the preference was due." Murphy adds that when later Mrs. Pritchard turned the part over to her daughter "the play lost half its value." Other admired impersonators of the part in Garrick's time were Peg Woffington, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs.

A most amusing, and at the same time instructive contrast in criticism comes from the pens of the most famous poet, and the most successful playwright, of our day. George Bernard Shaw has called the play "irresistible as poetry, but hopeless as epigrammatic comedy," and he compares the wit of Benedick and his lady most unfavorably with that of a coster and a flower-girl. Dogberry, on the other hand, he liked, as "a capital study of parochial character. Sincerely played, he always comes out as a very real and highly entertaining person." While the playwright thus Abington. Perhaps the most distinguished performpraises the poetry, the poet has lauded the playcraft of Much Ado. Swinburne says: "For absolute power of composition, for faultless balance and blameless rectitude of design, there is unquestionably no creation of his hand that will bear comparison with Much Ado about Nothing."

STAGE HISTORY-In the MS. of the play, which was carelessly prepared for the printers, the names of two of the actors are preserved. William Kemp, the most famous low comedian of his day, was Dogberry, and Richard Cowley played Verges. Quotations from Dogberry's malapropisms are common in

ance of the eighteenth century was that of John Kemble, who appeared for the first time as Benedick at Drury Lane on April 30, 1788, with Miss Farren as Beatrice and Mrs. Kemble as Hero. Charles Kemble, according to Lady Martin, was the most famous Benedick of the next generation. Miss Brunton played Beatrice in his company in 1817. In Kemble's farewell performances at Covent Garden, he introduced "the first of modern Beatrices," Helen Faucit, who for over thirty years was supreme in the part. Next to the same actress's Rosalind, it was perhaps the most popular rôle of the time.