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

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 plays rich stage and screen performance, looking closely at major contemporary performances, including Josie Rourkes film starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones at the Old Vic, and the RSCs 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 plays relationship to Loves Labours 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. Review A commendably comprehensive guide to textual and performance scholarship on the play. ― Cahiers Elisabethains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies About the Author Deborah Cartmell is Professor in English at De Montfort University, UK, and Director of the Centre for Adaptations. 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.