Much Ado About Nothing
By: edited by Mary Berry and Michael Clamp.
Contributors: Berry, Mary.; Clamp, Michael.
Edition: 11th printing
Series: Cambridge School Shakespeare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9780521426107
Copyright date: 1993
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. -- Problems, exercises, etc; Courtship -- Drama; Conspiracies -- Drama; Rejection (Psychology) -- Drama; Plays; Messina (Italy) -- Drama
Genres: Drama.
Description: Counter This edition of Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare's most delightful and theatrically successful comedies, offers, along with a freshly edited text, an exceptionally helpful and critically aware Introduction and commentary. Paying particular attention in his Introduction to analysis of the play's minor characters, Sheldon P. Zitner discusses Shakespeare's social transformation of his source material, rethinking the attitudes to gender relations that underlie the comedy and determine its ruefully optimistic view of marriage. Interpretations are advanced less because they are arguable than because they are actable. Allowing for the play's openness to re-interpretation by successive generations of readers and performers, the editor provides a socially analytic stage history. Full notes and commentary continue previous editors' work of clarifying textual and performance problems of interest to both readers and actors. 
(publisher's description)
Notes: "This edition ... uses the text of the play established by F.H. Mares in The new Cambridge Shakespeare"--Prelim. p.