Much Ado about Nothing

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Plain Label Books, Jan 1, 2008 - Drama - 190 pages

Shakespeare's comedy play "Much Ado About Nothing" pivots around the impediments to love for young betrothed Hero and Claudio when Hero is falsely accused of infidelity and the "lover's trap" set for the arrogant and assured Benedick who has sworn of marriage and his gentle adversary Beatrice. The merry war between Benedick and Beatrice with the promptings of their friends soon dissolves into farcical love, while Hero's supposed infidelity is shown to be little more than "much ado about nothing."

 

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Page 56 - Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny. Converting all your sounds of woe Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Page 69 - The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, And greedily devour the treacherous bait ; So angle we for Beatrice, who even now Is couched in the woodbine coverture.
Page 84 - Why then, take no note of him, but let him go ; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.
Page 117 - Of every hearer : for it so falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost, Why, then we rack the value ; then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours.
Page 65 - I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage ; but doth not the appetite alter ? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour ? No ; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

About the author (2008)

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616), English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, is the most widely known author in all of English literature and often considered the greatest. He was an active member of a theater company for at least twenty years, during which time he wrote many great plays. Plays were not prized as literature at the time, and Shakespeare was not widely read until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a great upsurge of interest in his works began that continues today.

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