Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader (Arden Early Modern Drama Guides) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350126535 ISBN 13: 9781350126534

Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare (UK), 2019

Synopsis

This volume offers an accessible and thought-provoking guide to this major Shakespearean comedy, surveying its key themes and evolving critical preoccupations. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play’s rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourke’s film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSC’s recent rebranding of it as a sequel.

Moving through to four new critical essays, the guide opens up fresh perspectives, including contemporary directors’ deployment of older actors within the lead roles, the play’s relationship to Love’s Labour’s Lost, its presence on Youtube and the ways in which tales and ruses in the play belong to a wider concern with varieties of crime.

The volume finishes with a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further research.

About this title

About the Authors

Deborah Cartmell is Professor of English and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research, at De Montfort University, UK. A founding member of many organisations (including Literature on Screen and the Association of Adaptation Studies), she is Secretary of the Council for College and University English. As well as being general editor of the Screen Adaptations series, in 2010 she authored Screen Adaptations: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (2010).

Peter J. Smith is Reader in Renaissance literature, Nottingham Trent University. He is the author of Social Shakespeare; Between Two Stools and co-editor of Hamlet: Theory and Practice. He is a trustee of the British Shakespeare Association. His essays and reviews have appeared in Cahiers Elisabethains, Critical Quarterly, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Shakespeare Survey, Times Higher Education.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare (UK)
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350126535
• ISBN 13: 9781350126534
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Deborah Cartmell, Peter J. Smith