SOURCE: Baker, David Weil. “‘Surpris'd with all’: Rereading Character in Much Ado about Nothing.” In Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading, edited by David Galef, pp. 228-45. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Baker argues that the absence of Leonato's wife Innogen in Much Ado about Nothing necessitates a reevaluation of the play's characters, especially the immediate members of Leonato's family.

“Reade him, therefore; and againe, and againe,” enjoined Henry Condell and John Heminge, the supervisors of the publication of the First Folio, and this injunction to the “great Variety of Readers” contrasts with their depiction of a Shakespeare who never blotted a line and was thus presumably free from the need to reread his own work. Yet rereaders of Shakespeare's plays may find themselves in the position of the plotting Prospero as he watches Miranda and Ferdinand confirm their love according to a script...