BRUSH UP YOUR SHAKESPEARE: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
When the Bard from Avon - better known to you and me as William Shakespeare - put on his plays back in the late 16th and early 17th century, he was writing for both royalty and the so-called rabble, combining highbrow language and lowbrow humor and even gore (or as Roy Scheider once put it, after the royalty has talked endlessly, the gravedigger explains what's really going on). When Shakespeare's plays are used today, however, it's as art to bring to the masses, and especially in English classes, it's for medicinal purposes - it tastes bad, but it's good for you (as demonstrated in DEAD POETS SOCIETY - when English teacher Robin Williams announces he's going to talk about Shakespeare, the entire class groans). And yet Shakespeare has not only been performed, it's also been borrowed from (as in 1991's L.A. STORY) and spoofed. And there have been a few who have done Shakespeare as both mass entertainment and art. Laurence Olivier was the most well-known Shakespearean actor/director of the 40's and 50's, producing many film works of his plays. In 1989, Kenneth Branagh announced himself as a prime interpreter of Shakespeare's plays with his film version of HENRY V - taking a mediocre play and almost making it work. In 1993, he takes a slight but enjoyable Shakespeare comedy, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, and makes it artful and entertaining.
Branagh takes us right into the language at the beginning, as we see the words of the sonnet that is sung in the middle of the play appear on screen, as Beatrice (Emma Thompson) reads them aloud:
"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more Men were deceivers ever One foot in sea and one on shore To one thing constant never Then sigh not so, but let them go And be you blithe and bonny Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny"
We then fade into a glorious Italian countryside, where Beatrice and the rest of her family, including her cousin Hero (Kate Beckinsale), Hero's father Leonato (Richard Briers), governor of Messina, and his brother Antonio (Brian Blessed), who is Beatrice's father. They are interrupted from their reverie by the arrival of Don Pedro (Denzel Washington), Prince of Aragorn, and his merry men Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) and Benedick (Branagh). Also on hand is Don John (Keanu Reeves), Don Pedro's bastard - and estranged - brother.
Claudio and Hero are in love with each other, and so Don Pedro and Leonato arrrange for them to be married. Don John, however, smarting over Claudio's promotion to his position, tries to thwart that marriage. First, when at a costume party, he tries to insinuate to Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero for himself. When that fails, he arranges for Borachio (Gerard Huron), one of his henchmen, to be in Hero's window with one of her attendants, Margaret (Imelda Staunton), so that Claudio can see. Meanwhile, Beatrice and Benedick claim not only to not be in love with love, but they can't stand each other (Beatrice: "I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you." Benedick: "What, my dear lady Disdain! Are you yet living?"). So, naturally, Don Pedro, Claudio, Hero, and Leonato try to arrange to get them to fall in love. Ironically, however, it's Don John's plot against Hero and Claudio that drives Beatrice and Benedick together.
Latest Articles