Much Ado About Nothing

Description

This fresh edition of one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies offers new insights into the play on the page and in performance, offering interviews with directors Nicholas Hytner and Marianne Elliott and actress Harriet Walter alongside student-friendly scene-by-scene analysis and a new introduction from Jonathan Bate.

Reviews

'Invigorating, radical and original ! I look forward to using it at my desk and perhaps in my classroom over many years, enjoying Jonathan Bate's perceptive comments, trusting Eric Rasmussen's textual scholarship.' -- Professor Peter Holland, Times Literary Supplement

Author description

JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as "the best modern book on Shakespeare." In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'. ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.

Table of contents

Introduction About the Text Key Facts Much Ado About Nothing Textual Notes Scene-by-scene Analysis Much Ado in Performance: The RSC and Beyond Four Centuries of Much Ado: An Overview At the RSC The Director's Cut: Interviews with Marianne Elliott and Nicholas Hytner Harriet Walter on Playing Beatrice Shakespeare's Career in the Theatre Shakespeare's Works: A Chronology Further Reading and Viewing References Acknowledgements and Picture Credits