Sparkling with witty dialogue, Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare's most enjoyable and theatrically successful comedies. This up-to-date edition offers a newly edited text and an exceptionally helpful and critically aware introduction which discusses Shakespeare's social transformation of his source material, and rethinks the attitudes to...more

Like Love's Labour's Lost, Much Ado about Nothing shows Shakespeare moving into a more complex and darker terrain through his exploration of an apparently harmless comical romance. The play revolves around the adventures of the two gallants Claudio and Benedick at the court of Sicily. Claudio falls in love with the governor's daughter Hero, and is ...more

A vivacious woman and a high-spirited man both claim that they are determined never to marry. But when their friends trick them into believing that each harbours secret feelings for the other, they begin to question whether their witty banter and sharp-tongued repartee conceals something deeper. Schemes abound, misunderstandings proliferate and mat...more