Much Ado About Nothing

The title of Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing contains an intriguing ambiguity: the Elizabethan pronunciation of “nothing” was “noting”, i.e. to hear – or overhear. One of the “overhearings” in this play provides romantic confusion, the other is brought about for evil purposes: fake news and disinformation, phenomena all too present today with potentially disastrous consequences.

“My soul doth tell me she is wronged,” says Leonato in Act V.1 about his daughter Hero. He learns a hard lesson, through much grief: to follow his heart, to act on what he knows deep down is true and go against what his treasured friend and superior in status Don Pedro mistakenly claims. Bridegroom Claudio undergoes a similar journey: he falls for a fake reality, but his genuine grief earns him the forgiveness of Hero – a young woman torn between obedience to tradition and the yearning to become a modern, independent woman like her cousin Beatrice.

Why did I choose to set this in 1918? The play begins with a reference to the end of a war. The characters lap up good news and throw themselves into a joyous party, eager to put the past behind them. Parallels to the time after the “Great War” are easy to draw, both with regard to the pain and loss everyone suffered and to the dawning of a new era, the Roaring Twenties. Yet we all know what came after those golden years, and the seeds are plain to see in the manipulations of Don John. Thankfully he proves to be a fairly inefficient villain – but just imagine what he would do if he had AI at his disposal… and so the arch can be drawn all the way to our modern age, where public mobbing and manipulations via social media has reached frightening dimensions.

The men in this play have lessons to learn, and the women do not shy back from delivering them. Much has already been written about Beatrice and her wit, which drives even a smart guy like Benedick to occasional speechlessness; besides her, I want to highlight Ursula, who in this production also assumes the role of Leonato’s brother Antonio. This is no random choice; I wanted a woman, a war widow to hurl some uncomfortable truths at a decorated general and his officer.

In the end, while we relish the verbal battles between Beatrice and Benedick and laugh at the antics of Dogberry and Verges, let’s not forget the serious core of this play. To paraphrase the words of the Friar from Act IV.1: you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it. We are on the brink of losing so much. Democracy is under attack in many places, and we have already lost a colossal amount of biodiversity, a process that threatens the precarious balance of life on earth.

You may think it a bit far-fetched to equate a Shakespeare comedy with our societies’ current existential crises. But humans have always used stories and storytelling to make sense of the world, and to explore ways to make it a better place. And what better backdrop to inspire a change of heart in us all than the glorious nature surrounding us in the Botanical Garden Frankfurt?!