SOURCE: Roberts, Jeanne Addison. “Strategies of Delay in Shakespeare's Comedies: What the Much Ado Is Really About.” In Renaissance Papers, 1987, edited by Dale B. J. Randall and Joseph A. Porter, pp. 95-102. Durham N.C.: The Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1987.

In the following essay, Roberts examines Shakespeare's use of obstacles and delay in Much Ado about Nothing and his other comedies, and contends that the delays “provide audiences with the pleasant anxieties of sustained anticipation.”

Audiences of Shakespeare's tragic drama predictably and recurringly experience the desire to hold back the rising tide of tragic action, to arrest time, to allow a few more moments for Juliet to awaken and embrace Romeo, for Emilia to enlighten Othello, for the servants to muster the courage to save Gloucester's eyes, or for someone to rescue Macduff's wife and children from Macbeth's murderous rage. The impulse to delay persists in spite of the...