Much Ado about Nothing (Vol. 31) | John Dover Wilson (essay date 1962)
John Dover Wilson (essay date 1962)
SOURCE: "Much Ado about Nothing," in Shakespeare's Happy Comedies, Northwestern University Press, 1962, pp. 120-40.
[In the following essay, Dover Wilson explores structure and characterization in Much Ado about Nothing, defending the merit of the Hero-Claudio plot, detailing the "hide and seek" pattern of the play, and praising the characters Beatrice, Benedick, and Dogberry.]
[Much Ado about Nothing] has two main plots: (i) the Hero-Claudio plot, belonging to the tragi-comedy type of The Merchant; and (ii) the Beatrice-Benedick plot, belonging to the comedy of wit, exemplified in Love's Labour's Lost. The dramatic dovetailing is carried out with Shakespeare's usual tact in such matters, but most critics appear to agree that, as we find them declaring in the case of the casket-plot and the bond-plot of The Merchant, there is to their thinking some dissonance of...
[The entire page is 6960 words long]
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