SOURCE: Traci, Philip. “‘Come, 'tis no matter. / Do not you meddle’: Too Much Ado in Shakespeare's Comedy.” Upstart Crow 4 (fall 1982): 107-12.

In the following essay, Traci discusses the motif of meddling in the affairs of others in Much Ado about Nothing, particularly with respect to the romantic relationship between Beatrice and Benedick.

However critics have viewed Much Ado About Nothing,¹ whether as happy comedy² or Shakespeare's most cynical study in the genre³, they have agreed that its title, despite its seeming throwaway quality, carries significance. Here, however, agreement ends. Dorothy Hockey sees a central pun in the Elizabethan pronunciation of “nothing” as “nothing”, which underscores, she points out, the noting and misnoting in the play.⁴ The pun is not without significance to such studies as those of Berry, Evans, and Lewalski, which focus in different ways on different levels of “knowing.”⁵ The differences among Claudio's eyes, even when...