
Episode 261: “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare, Acts 1 & 2
Welcome back to The Literary Life Podcast and our series on Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. This week Angelina and Thomas are discussing Acts 1 and 2 and will try to do that by talking about the story as a whole, not simply focussing on the characters. They talk about the roles of the anti-romantic and the ultra-romantic couples, as well as the place of poetic verse and plain verse in the dialogue of the play. Other topics they cover are the trickery for good and ill, the influence of the planets in Medieval and Renaissance thought, and the cosmology of music and dance in Elizabethan times.
Join Addison Hornstra with Angelina Stanford for a webinar on Alice in Wonderland and more, called Through a Looking Glass Dimly.
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Episodes Mentioned:
Also see our 2023 Literary Life conference talks on Shakespeare for more help as you dive into Shakespeare with us this season!
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Commonplace Quotes:
Tempore difficiles veniunt ad anatra iuvenci.
Ovid, from “Ars Amatoria“
In every play Shakespeare wrote, the hero or central character is the theatre itself. His characters are so vivid that we often think of them as detachable from the play, like real people. So such questions as “is Falstaff really a coward?” have been discussed since the eighteenth century. But if we ask what Falstaff is, the answer is that he isn’t: he’s a character in a play, has no existence outside that play, and what is real about him is his function in the play.
I stress this because for the last century of so serious literature has been largely character-centered.
…it seems clear that Shakespeare didn’t start with a character and put him into a situation: if he’d worked that way his great characters would have been far less complex than they are. Obviously, he starts with the total situation and lets the characters unfold from it, like leaves on a branch, part of the branch but responsive to every tremor of wind that blows over them.
Northrop Frye, from Northrop Frye On Shakespeare
Delight in Disorder
by Robert Herrick
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
Books Mentioned:
Amazon Affiliate links follow
“On Stories” by C. S. Lewis
Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Othello by William Shakespeare
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis
The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien
Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis
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