SOURCE: Taylor, Mark. “Presence and Absence in Much Ado about Nothing.” Centennial Review 33, no. 1 (winter 1989): 1-12.

In the following essay, Taylor focuses on the inscrutability of characters' reports of events in Much Ado about Nothing that are not represented on stage. Emphasizing the subjectivity of these reports, he focuses on Don Pedro's offstage conversation with Hero in Act II, scene i and the chamber-window scene in which Margaret is mistaken for Hero.

Who would not say, that glosses increase doubt and ignorance, since no booke is to be seene, whether divine or profane, commonly read of all men, whose interpretation dimmes or tarnisheth not the difficulty? The hundred commentary sends him to his succeeder, more thorny and more crabbed, than the first found him.

—Montaigne, “Of Experience” (trans. Florio)

It is difficult to read. The page is dark. Yet he knows what it is that he expects. The...