SOURCE: Ross, Thomas W. “Maimed Rites in Much Ado About Nothing.” Costerus: Essays in English and American Language and Literature 5 (1972): 125-34.

In the following essay, Ross compares Much Ado about Nothing to Shakespeare's problem plays and notes the play's elements of disharmony and ethical ambiguity. Ross contends, however, that the play is not a failure, but “succeeds brilliantly in conveying its bitter-sweet power.”

Critics have never accepted Much Ado as a problem play—or as a forerunner of the Last Plays, the romances or tragi-comedies. Yet if we are made aware of this drama's affinities with these kinds of play, we can understand and enjoy it more readily. We can balance extravagant critical pronouncements about it—as, for instance, that it is a “wedding of love and humor”¹ and thus is like most of the comedies of the 1590's; or that it is a peculiarly “venomous play” with...