Sparkling with the witty dialogue between Beatrice and Benedicts, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare`s most enjoyable and theatrically successful comedies.

This edition offers a newly edited text and an exceptionally helpful and critically aware introduction. Paying particular attention to analysis of the play`s minor characters, Sheldon P Zitner discusses Shakespeare`s transformation of his source material. He rethinks the attitudes to gender relations that underlie the comedy and determine its view of marriage.

Allowing for the play`s openness to reinterpretation by successive generations of readers and peformers, Zitner provides a socially analytic stage history, advancing new views for the actor as much as for the critic.