Episode 263: “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare, Acts 4 & 5

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas are back to wrap up their discussion of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Today, after some introductory talk about literary criticism, our hosts cover the last two acts of this play, highlighting how Shakespeare deals with the five act structure. Once again, we see the problem of things being not as they appear in act 4, as well as the ways in which this play is highly allegorical. Other topics they touch on in this episode are: the move from order to disorder and back to order, ultra-romantic versus anti-romantic, pious deception versus malevolent deceptions, and the restoration of the community. Be sure to listen all the way to the end to hear more of Angelina’s thoughts on why interpreting Shakespeare well is so important!

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Commonplace Quotes:

These were happy materials for Shakespeare to work on, and he has made happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity.
William Hazlitt, from Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

…for alongside the man who finds his own soul, and so the soul of everyone, in a work of art, is the man who reads into it his own prejudices and opinions, makes it a point of departure for some sheer invention, or uses it to grind his own axe–all of them fatally different things.
Harold Goddard, from The Meaning of Shakespeare

Amoretti III

by Edmund Spenser

The sovereign beauty which I do admire,
Witness the world how worthy to be praised:
The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire
In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised;
That being now with her huge brightness dazed,
Base thing I can no more endure to view;
But looking still on her, I stand amazed
At wondrous sight of so celestial hue.
So when my tongue would speak her praises due,
It stopped is with thought's astonishment:
And when my pen would write her titles true,
It ravish'd is with fancy's wonderment:
Yet in my heart I then both speak and write
The wonder that my wit cannot endite.

Books Mentioned:

Amazon Affiliate links follow

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The Aeneid by Virgil

Metamorphoses by Ovid

Lectures on Shakespeare by W. H. Auden

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