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Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare Essay

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Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing is a short play by Shakespeare, which has comedy, romance, suspense and a lot of drama twisted into several hundred lines of verse. The ending is happy, however, and little has changed albeit two marriages. The play is important, not because of its subject matter, but because it shows us that life itself is similarly enjoyable and foolish - our lives are "much ado about nothing". The first thing an audience will find to enjoy in this light-hearted comedy is the excellent stagecraft, which includes setting, costumes and masks. Act II scene 1 from the 1993 production I saw, is an ideal example of the type of stagecraft an …show more content…

The audience would find this quite comical because Beatrice has appeared so set against romance and marriage, yet she declares that a man who possessed all these qualities would surely "win any woman in the world". However, she then quickly adds "if a' could get her good will" as if realising her mistake, for she has vowed never to marry anyone. This leads into a conversation about whether Beatrice will ever marry, and Beatrice jests that she will not, for she likes neither men with beards, proclaiming that "I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face" nor men without beards, "what should I do with him, dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman?" This conversation pursues, with Beatrice exasperating Leonato more and more, until the masked revellers make their grand entrance. The masks are the final and most important feature of the stagecraft. They create the suspense element by disguising the wearer's true identity, and this deception causes both amusement and problems. They also allow the characters to flirt playfully with one another - such is the case for Ursula and Antonio, and Margaret and Borachio. In usual circumstances, Antonio would not dream of acting the way he does with Ursula, but by wearing the mask he can detach from his social and personal responsibilities. In the production I saw, the director

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