Status Updates From Much Ado About Nothing (Ark...

In TOG’s production, the First Watchman is literate and has notes of Don John, Borachio and Conrad. This record and Dogberry’s confidence takedown/unmask the “honorable men,” Don Pedro and Claudio (V.i).

Okay this is hysterical.

why yes, I did decide to read a shakespeare comedy in my free time 😋

Beatrice persuades Benedict to kill his comrade Claudio. How interesting it must’ve been in Shakespeare’s day to listen to a young male say, “O that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into curtsies, vaulor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too” (VI.i). Did men in the audience become women’s friends?

What a tremendous line about plots intersecting! Beatrice says, “It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you, but believe me not: and yet I lie not. I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin” (IV.i).

So far I have learned that Shakespeare only wrote for what we would see on a theater stage. Reading this with a black and white imagination is bland so far.

Reading before Actors from the London Stage