Much Ado About Nothing

Interesting plot, but nowhere near as good as A Midsummer Nights Dream last year. All the class stuff to do with it was pretty boring as well. This pathetic play got me a frickin detention !@#$

Hilarious in performance. Check out Kenneth Braugham's film; it's fantastic. Mostly. I could've done without the greased-up Keanu.

My favorite Shakespeare comedy, second favorite Shakespeare. Definitely worth reading, and even better seeing if it's a good cast.

My favorite Shakespeare play. Not entirely crazy, kind of humorous, still follows Shakespeare's usual lead.

My favorite play of Shakespeare's. Very cute. Dogberry is one of the funniest characters in Shakespeare, hands down.

Two sets of loves, one tricked into and the other tricked out of - the schemes both work, to their extents. It is, basically, much ado about nothing.

I have been unfaithful to Arkangel. I was quite enjoying their presentation, particularly with the excellent Saskia Reeves as Beatrice, but I kept on thinking back to the cinema version of 1993, which I remember with deep nostalgia because it was the year we got married; and eventually I thought, OK, I'll get hold of the Branagh version and watch it instead. Which was surprisingly easy, and definitely worth it.
The play itself is genuinely funny, not quite as funny as A Comedy of Errors, but a better play - the characters are better rounded, and the drama frankly more believable. Beatrice is surely one of the most memorable female roles in Shakespeare (I think only Portia is in the same league). I see from IMDB that her role was played by Penelope Keith in the 1978 BBC version, and by Maggie Smith in a 1967 version which also starred Caroline "Liz Shaw" John as Hero. But the overall frame is good too, the contrast between the Claudia/Hero and Beatrice/Benedick romances, neither of which is straightforward, but complicated in different ways. The Dogberry bits are, for once, pretty integral to the plot, though I suspect it is difficult to integrate them with satisfactory unity of style. (If I were staging it, I'd have Dogberry's guards and maybe even Dogberyy himself visible in the background in all the early crowd scenes, so that they don't appear out of nowhere in Act III.)

Northanger Abbey is one I just recently finished. It is written a little differently than some of Austen's other works it is still a great read.

Ok, I know I said I loved Midsummer Night's Dream, but honestly this one is my favorite (except for the ass part in the other one--I could really relate to that.) Oh and then there's The Taming of the Shrew...

Shakespeare is forced into being accepted by every high school student, which they condemn for their obscurity. That's really a shame, because as exemplified by this play, the stories are at times hilarious and overall superbly told.