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 plays rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourkes film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSCs 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 plays relationship to Loves Labours 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.