Much Ado About Nothing (The ^AOxford Shakespeare) - Hardcover

Shakespeare, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198129920 ISBN 13: 9780198129929

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1993

Synopsis

This edition of Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare's most delightful and theatrically successful comedies, offers, along with 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.

About this title

Book Description

A revised edition of the Arden Third Series play, edited by leading scholar Claire McEachern.

From the Publisher

Set in a courtly world of masked revels and dances, this play turns on the archetypal story if a lady falsely accused of unfaithfulness, spurned by her bridegroom, and finally vindicated and reunited with him. Villainy, schemes, and deceit threatens to darken the brilliant humor and sparkling wordplay--but the hilarious counterplot of a warring couple, Beatrice and Benedick, steals the scene as the two are finally tricked into admitting their love for each other in Shakespeare's superb comedy of manners.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0198129920
• ISBN 13: 9780198129929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Zitner Sheldon P.