SYLVAN BARNET
Much Ado About Nothing on Stage and Screen
When Much Ado was first-published, the text announced that the play had been "sundry times publicly acted," but despite this implication of popularity the play was not reprinted until 1623, when it was included in the volume that collected Shakespeare's dramatic works. The only reference to a specific performance in Shakespeare's day is in the Lord Chamberlain's account of May 20, 1613, which records payment to the company for a performance of Much Ado at court as part of the celebration of the marriage of Princess Elizabeth. Despite the lack of references to particular performances, however, there is evidence that the play was popular. In 1640, in a commendatory poem prefacing an edition of Shakespeare's poems, Leonard Digges wrote: Let but Beatrice
And Benedick be seen, lo in a trice
The Cockpit, galleries, and boxes are all full.
Aside from testifying to the popularity of the play in the early seventeenth century, this statement is interesting because it locates the center of interest in Beatrice and Benedick, a view shared by Charles I, who in his copy of the text retitled it Benedick and Beatrice.
Of the original presentation of the play we know little besides what can be gleaned from some stage directions, but one of the few things we know from the Quarto text is that the part of Dogberry was played by the famous clown Will Kempe, since Kempe's name appears as a speech prefix instead of Dogberry. Another interesting bit of information, though it casts a glimmer on Shakespeare's method of composition rather than on the staging, is conveyed in the first stage direction of the Quarto of 1600, which includes, after "Enter Leonato, Governor of Messina" these words: "Innogen his wife." Innogen is mentioned again in the Quarto in the first stage direction in 2.1, but no lines are given to her anywhere in the play, suggesting that although Shakespeare at first thought of her as a character in the story, as he worked on the play he decided to omit her but neglected to go back and correct the stage directions.
After the reference in Leonard Digges's poem, the next thing we hear about Much Ado on the stage is a reference in 1660 assigning the play (along with eight of Shakespeare's other plays) as the exclusive property of Sir William Davenant. Davenant combined the Benedick and Beatrice material of Much Ado with a version of Measure for Measure in a play he called The Law Against Lovers, first performed in 1662. But Shakespeare's original play may also have been produced in the late seventeenth century and in the early eighteenth, since a revival of Much Ado in 1721 announced that the play was "not acted these twenty years," a comment that can allow one to conclude (at least tentatively) that Much Ado endured on the stage until about 1690. Between 1721 and 1746 it was given a few times, but it apparently lived chiefly in Charles Johnson's Love in a Forest (1723), which incorporated some passages into a version of As You Like It, and in a curious work by James Miller, The Universal Passion (1737), which combined parts of Much Ado with Moliere's La Princesse d'Elide, along with bits of Two Gentlemen of Verona and Twelfth Night.
Shakespeare's play returned to the stage when David Garrick played Benedick at Drury Lane in 1748. The performance was well received, and Garrick kept it in his repertory until he retired in 1776. From 1788 John Philip Kemble staged it (he played Benedick), and then, in 1803, his brother Charles took the part. In 1858 Charles Kean staged Much Ado--he too played Benedick--in a production that was famous for its splendid sets. John William Cole, Kean's biographer, briefly describes the beginning of this revival, an illusion of the harbor of Messina, which he characterized as "a pictorial gem": The gradual illumination of the lighthouse and various mansions, in almost every window, the moon slowly rising and throwing her silver light upon the deep waters of the Mediterranean, were managed with imposing reality. Then followed the masquerade, with its variegated lamps, bridges, gardens, and lake, seen through the arches of the palace.
As this description indicates, the second half of the nineteenth century was an age of spectacle, especially in the form of illusionistic sets; no expense was spared in creating elaborate sets, and Kean's staging of the church scene (4.1) was especially marveled at.
The tradition of Kean was continued by Henry Irving, who staged Much Ado in 1882 for a run of a hundred and two consecutive performances. He then took the production to America, and then back to London, where he staged it for thirty-one performances. For Irving Much Ado was chiefly two things: a play about Beatrice and Benedick, and a play that allowed the designer to present an elaborate, illusionistic reconstruction of aspects of sixteenth-century Sicily. The Dogberry material was heavily cut, since it hardly seemed to belong in this world. The wedding scene (4.1),, for instance, was set in a side chapel of a Sicilian cathedral with three-dimensional columns, sunlight entering through a stained-glass window, and acolytes genuflecting. A contemporary described Irving's set for the church: The altar stands at the left-hand side of the stage, and the beautifully ornamented roof is supported by massive pillars. These accessories, the massive pillars, the figured iron gates, the decorated roof, the pictures, the stained glass, the elaborate and costly altar, the carved oak benches, the burning lights, and the perfume of incense, all combine to render this a scene of such richness and grandeur as at first to arrest all thought of the play and to delight only the eye with the beautiful sight.
Given this elaborate setting it is not surprising that Irving cut Leonato's first line in the scene, "Come, Friar Francis, be brief. Only to the plain form of marriage." The sets and the acting were immensely successful, but John Gielgud in 1963 summed up an unintended side effect of Irving's production: "An outstandingly successful production of a classical play can kill that play's popularity for many years afterward. So it happened in England with Much Ado About Nothing."
Irving, like the great actors before him, played Benedick; his Beatrice was Ellen Terry, and they, as well as the sets--and perhaps the text of the play--were responsible for the play's enormous success in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It's worth mentioning that Ellen Terry (like Helen Faucit, who had played Beatrice from 1836 to 1879), brought to the role a lighthearted mirth and a delightful raillery that apparently had not been present in the later eighteenth century, when the role was played somewhat more shrewishly. Despite her enormous success in the role, Ellen Terry was not fully satisfied with her performance. In her diary she wrote of a performance in 1891: I did some parts better, I think--made Beatrice a nobler woman. Yet I failed to please myself in the Cathedral scene.
Two days later she wrote: Played the Church Scene all right at last. More of a blaze. The little scene in the garden, too, I did better (in the last act). Beatrice has confessed her love, and is now softer. Her voice should be beautiful now, breaking out into playful defiance now and again, as of old. The last scene, too, I made much more merry, happy, soft.
And the next day she wrote: I must make Beatrice more, flashing at first, and softer afterwards. This will be an improvement upon my old reading of the part. She must always be merry and by turns scornful, tormenting, vexed, self-communing, absent, melting, teasing, brilliant, indignant, sad-merry, thoughtful, withering, gentle, humorous, and gay, Gay, Gay! Protecting (to Hero), motherly, very intellectual--a gallant creature and complete in mind and feature.
But years later, reflecting on her performances, she confessed that she never fulfilled her own ideals: I have played Beatrice hundreds of times, but not once as I know she ought to be played. I was never swift enough, not nearly swift enough at the Lyceum where I had a too deliberate, though polished and thoughtful Benedick in Henry Irving. But at least I did not make the mistake of being arch and skittish.
Two other points about Irving's Much Ado should be mentioned: The first is that in addition to cutting much of the Dogberry scenes, he cut most of the jokes about cuckoldry and most of the references to God, substituting "Heaven" for "God," though not when Beatrice (after Claudio's monstrous behavior at the wedding) explodes, "O God, that I were a man" (4.1.304). Second, he followed Kemble i
n adding dialogue at the end of 4.1. The original text ends with Benedick speaking these lines to Beatrice: Enough, I am engaged. I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go comfort your cousin. I must say she is dead. And so farewell.
Irving's version, almost identical with Kemble's, runs thus: Benedick. Enough. I am engaged; I will challenge him.
Beatrice. You will?
Benedick. By those bright eyes, I will. I will kiss your hand, and so leave. you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account.
Beatrice. My dear friend, kiss my hand again.
Benedick. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go, comfort your cousin; I must say, she is dead.
Beatrice. Benedick, kill him, kill him if you can.
Benedick. As sure as he's alive, I will.
It is to Ellen Terry's credit that she protested against this change--but her protests were unavailing.
Elaborate illusionistic sets of the sort used by Kean and Irving continued in favor in the early twentieth century--Beerbohm Tree's production of 1905 was in this tradition--but a counter movement was already afoot in the late nineteenth century, when scholarly knowledge of the Elizabethan stage began to move from the study to the theater, and experiments were made in staging Shakespeare in what was thought to be the Elizabethan manner, i.e. on a relatively bare stage with only minimal props. In 1912 Granville-Barker took a middle course between the illusionistic settings of the previous age and the virtually bare stage of its opponents, and produced some of the plays with simple, stylized, elegant decor that he called "decorative" and that we would call "symbolic." And then in 1925 Barry Jackson assaulted the late nineteenth-century approach from a different angle, by staging Hamlet in modem dress. The way was now open for all sorts of settings, with the consequence that we have had productions of Much Ado in (to name only a few styles) Elizabethan dress, in seventeenth-century dress (ranging from that of the Cavaliers to the Three Musketeers), in nineteenth-century dress (early, middle, and late, including the production by John Houseman and Jack Landau, set in northern Mexico--now Texas or southern California--in which the performers wore sombreros and highly decorated outfits), and in twentieth-century dress (ranging from the beginning of the century to the present).
Directors occasionally justify the change simply by saying that something fresh is needed, but more often they claim that the new setting clarifies the play in some way. Thus, the northern Mexican setting was justified on the grounds that Messina was a Spanish colony (the Aragonese, led by King Pedro, had defeated Charles II of Naples and had transferred the court to Messina), and that, since American audiences have little sense of Messina as a Spanish colony, Mexico is a fitting substitute. But John Gielgud, who in 1949 chose the Renaissance ("I had always imagined Much Ado with scenery and dresses of the Boccaccio period"), in 1963, in Stage Directions, expressed his dissatisfaction with these novelties: Much Ado, it seems to me, is above all a play of the Renaissance. It may conceivably be played in a decor of an earlier period than Shakespeare's. But I have been amazed, in the last few years, to find it, both at Stratford-on-Avon, the Old Vic, Stratford Ontario, and Stratford Connecticut, decked out in Victorian or Regency scenery and costumes, without much protest from audiences or critics. Surely the period between 1800 and 1900, when women barely showed their ankles and conversation between the sexes was intensely prudish and reserved, is in direct contradiction of Shakespeare's whole intention in the text.
One can imagine what Gielgud, the greatest Benedick of our century and the director of what has been esteemed the greatest production of the play, would have thought of the northern Mexican version, or of A. J. Antoon's version of 1971 (set in a small town in the United States, around 1900), or of John Barton's version of 1976 (set in India).
Antoon's Much Ado, produced as part of the Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, New York, began and ended with a brass band, dressed in blue and gold uniforms. The background was an elegant pavilion in a more or less Victorian style, Don Pedro became Captain Pedro, the soldiers seemed to be vestiges of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and when dressed more formally they wore striped blazers and carried pocket flasks. The ladies carried parasols and sneaked cigarettes, and much fun was had with police who resembled Keystone Kops. The production was later televised, with the result, it was said, that the number of people who saw this production far exceeded all of the audience put together who saw earlier productions of the play.
Judging from numerous reviews, John Barton's Anglo-Indian production for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1976, with Judi Dench as Beatrice and Donald Sinden as Benedick, was a much more thoughtful affair. Barton saw the Hero-Claudio plot as largely about pleasure-seeking men with elegant manners and coarse moral values; he found in British India a setting which seemed appropriate to this interpretation. Moreover, he was able to make memorable some scenes which, when merely read in a book, seem a trifle dull. Here is Roger Warren (in Shakespeare Survey 30 [1977]) describing the beginning of 5.3, the scene in which Claudio and Don Pedro offer a rather stiff, formal repentance at the supposed tomb of Hero, while a song describes their action, "Round about her tomb they go": "Round about her tomb they go" indeed: Claudio and Don Pedro marched in a formal circle with military precision, half drew and then completely drew their sabres by numbers, then reversed the process to sheathe them again. These mechanical military honors exactly fitted the mechanical formality of the text. But then dawn broke, and Don Pedro gave full value to his warmly flexible lines about the gentle day as the play moved us into (literally) the light again.
Writing in 1966, a decade before Barton's production, J. R. Mulryne in Shakespeare: "Much Ado About Nothing". called attention to the ease with which a reader may pass over the potent drama in this scene, which on the page consists, as Mulryne says, of "the mere reading of one rather undistinguished verse and the singing of another, followed by a resolve to repeat the practice yearly." As Mulryne said, and as Barton went on to demonstrate, if the scene is properly staged
the audience undergoes, in fact, an experience that is deeply impressive at the time and distinctly memorable during the rest of the play and when it is over. An ill-defined experience certainly, but one that investigates Claudio's remorseful consciousness, or specifies his moral reflection on his behavior. But this is precisely what Shakespeare wants at this point. With the play developing as it has, moral analysis would be out of place; to interest us now in the idiosyncratic movement of Claudio's mind would open up perspectives the play has not otherwise explored. We need only to be assured about the depth of Claudio's emotional response, not its precise nature: and this the theatrical experience to which the words-on-the-page appropriately give rise will do for us.
The analyses by Roger Warren and J. R. Mulryne are not overly subtle. A performance of the play supports them, and though inevitably the "merry war" between Beatrice and Benedick and the malaprops of Dogberry are more easily appreciated, the Hero-Claudio plot is equally dramatic if properly staged, or if envisioned in the theater in one's mind.
Although Much Ado About Nothing continues to be regularly produced, no stage productions of the last two decades have established themselves as landmarks, and the image that we are likely to have of the play in performance will probably be shaped chiefly by the BBC television version and a film made by Kenneth Branagh. The television version (1984), virtually uncut--it runs for two and a half hours--was made in a studio, but it is quite handsome. The chief set is a large courtyard planted with fruit trees, and the costumes, seeking to evoke a place (Messina, in northeast ern Sicily) that for the Elizabethans was remote, are vaguely seventeenth-century Turkish. Although in the early part of this version Beatrice and Benedick seem sulky rather than witty, it picks up and is a creditable production.
Kenneth Branagh's film (1993) is a considerably abridged version of the play (it runs for a bit less than two hours), but it sho
ws some material not dramatized in the play, notably Hero's alleged infidelity. In the play we are merely told about it, but in the film we see Hero (actually Hero's waiting-woman, Margaret, whom Claudio takes to be Hero), nude, at an upper window, with Borachio. And at the end of the film, we see (as we do not, in Shakespeare's text) Don John brought in under guard. The longest addition is near the beginning, when the camera pans across a Tuscan landscape (Branagh has said that Sicily is not green enough to suit his vision), and cuts back and forth between the tanned playful women in their white billowing dresses and the eager men in their nineteenth-century military uniforms raising a cloud of dust as they ride (they are returning from battle) toward the women. "Some grateful teacher," Branagh said, "with a gasp of relief will be able to say, 'Here are girls with cleavages and boys with tight trousers, class. You will now shut up for an hour and a half and pay attention.' " And the film, with Branagh as Benedick, Emma Thompson as Beatrice, Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, and Keanu Reeves as Don John, does hold our attention, and in its way it disproves John Gielgud's comment, quoted a moment ago, to the effect that the play cannot be coherently set in the nineteenth century. Despite Michael Keaton, of Batman fame, who gives a disastrous performance as a demented Dogberry, it's a delightful romp.