Publisher's Synopsis
In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid.Much Ado About Nothing conflates two separate memories into one plot: the baiting of Benedick and Beatrice right into a statement of love and the deception of Claudio into mistakenly thinking that Hero is unchaste. There is not precise source for the first tale, despite the fact that Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde affords a foundation where those who scorn love fall in love with each other. For the second story of a girl falsely accused, but there are numerous possible resources. Ludovico Ariosto's model in Canto V of Orlando Furioso in 1516 was translated into English in 1591 with the aid of Sir John Harington or Matteo Bandello's twenty-second Novella from 1554 and translated into French by way of Belleforest in 1590 are two feasible versions that Shakespeare can also have recognized.
