MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

It is said that the main plot of this play is derived from the story of Ariodante and Ginevra, in the fifth book of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Something similar may also be found in the fourth canto of the second book of Spenser's Faerie Queene; but a novel of Bandello's, copied by Belleforest in his Tragical Histories, seems to have furnished Shakspeare with the fable. It approaches nearer to the play in all particulars than any other performance hitherto discovered. No translation of it into English has, however, yet been met with.

This play is supposed to have been written in 1600, in which year it was first published.