The most influential writer in
all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to
a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded
no further. In 1582 he married an older woman,
Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he
left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor
and playwright. Public and critical acclaim quickly followed, and
Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England
and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns
of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and
James I (ruled 1603–1625),
and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted
Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing
upon its members the title of King’s Men. Wealthy and renowned,
Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at
the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare’s death, literary
luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.
Shakespeare’s works were collected and printed in various
editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century
his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was
well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works
led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare’s life, but the dearth
of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeare’s
personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded
from this fact and from Shakespeare’s modest education that Shakespeare’s
plays were actually written by someone else—Francis Bacon and the
Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates—but the support
for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory
is not taken seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary,
Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty-seven plays
and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy
of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeare’s plays
seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming
so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature
and culture ever after.
Much Ado About Nothing is generally
considered one of Shakespeare’s best comedies, because it combines
elements of robust hilarity with more serious meditations on honor,
shame, and court politics. It was probably written in 1598 and 1599,
as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. Like As
You Like It and Twelfth Night, Much
Ado About Nothing, though interspersed with darker concerns,
is a joyful comedy that ends with multiple marriages and no deaths.
Although one of the features of Shakespearean comedy is
that no one dies, it would be a mistake to assume that death is
absent from this genre. Often, Shakespeare’s comedies are more accepting
of death than his tragedies, treating death as part of the natural
cycle of life. Much Ado About Nothing is no exception,
and Hero’s pretending to die of humiliation makes death more vividly
present here than in any of Shakespeare’s other comedies. The crisis
that lies at the center of Much Ado About Nothing troubles
many readers and viewers, since the play creates a very strong sense
of anger, betrayal, hatred, grief, and despair among the main characters.
Although the crisis ends quickly, Much Ado About Nothing sometimes
seems only steps away from becoming a tragedy.
Indeed, the line between tragedy and comedy is sometimes
fuzzy. Many critics have noted that the plot of Much Ado
About Nothing shares significant elements with that of Romeo
and Juliet. Much Ado About Nothing also
shares many features with Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s
Tale, which most critics assign to a different genre—that
of problem comedy or romance. Like Hermione in The Winter’s
Tale, Hero stages a false death only to come back to life once
her beloved has repented.
Although the young lovers Hero and Claudio provide the
main impetus for the plot, the courtship between the older, wiser
lovers Benedick and Beatrice is what makes Much Ado About
Nothing so memorable. Benedick and Beatrice argue with
delightful wit, and Shakespeare develops their journey from antagonism
to sincere love and affection with a rich sense of humor and compassion.
Since Beatrice and Benedick have a history behind them that adds
weight to their relationship, they are older and more mature than
the typical lovers in Shakespeare’s comedies, though their unhealthy
competitiveness reveals them to be childish novices when it comes
to love.
