COMMENTS ON MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING [From Knight's "Pictorial Edition."] WE request thee, O gentle reader, to imagine for, as a lover of Shakspere thou canst imagine that thou wert extant in the year of grace 1600; and that on a fine summer's morning of that year, as thou wert painfully guiding thy palfrey amongst the deep ruts and muddy channels of Cheapside, thou didst tarry in thy pilgrimage for a few minutes to peruse a small printed bill affixed upon a post, which bore something like the following announcement: BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD CHAMBERLAINE HIS SERVANTS, AT THE GLOBE THEATRE AT BANKSIDE, This day, being Tuesday, July 11, 1600, will be acted, WRITTEN BY WILLIAM SHAKSPERE. This, thou seest, for thou art cognisant of the present time as well as imaginative of the past, is not a bill as big as a house, the smallest letters of which are afflicted with elephantiasis; nor is it a bill which talks of "prodigious hit" and "thunders of applause," nor in which you see Mr. William Kempe's name towering in red letters above all his fellows: but a modest, quiet, little bill an innocent bill which ought not to have provoked the abuse of the Puritans, that "players, by sticking of their bills in London, defile the streets with their infectious filthiness.” 1 In reading this bill thou receivest especially into thy mind three ideas which set thee thinking, the company of actors who perform the play, the name of the play to be performed, the name of the writer. Thou knowest that it is the best company and the best writer of the day; but the play—is the play a tragedy, or a history, or a comedy? Thou opinest that it is a comedy. If the title were Much Ado thou wouldst be puzzled; but Much Ado About Nothing lets thee into a secret. Thou knowest, assuredly, that the author of the play will take the spectators into his confidence; that he will show them the preparation and the bustle and the turmoil, and it may be the distress, of some domestic event, or chain of events, -the Much Ado to the actors of the events, who have not the thread of the labyrinth; but, to the spectators, who sit with the book of fate open before them, who know how all this begins and expect how it will all end, it is Much Ado About Nothing. It is a comedy, then; in which surprise is for the actors, expectation is for the audience. Thou wilt cross London-bridge and see this comedy; for, “as the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with expectation.' 1 Mirror of Monsters, 1587. * Coleridge: Literary Remains, ii. 78. |