1. Why might it be hard to believe that Hero and Claudio really love each other?

2. Speech and conversation are important in the play, and many of the characters have distinctive ways of speaking. How do the characters’ speech patterns differ?

3. How do gossip, conversation, and overhearing function in the play?

4. What does the play say about relationships between women and men?

5. Much Ado About Nothing is supposedly a comedy: Beatrice and Benedick trade insults for professions of love, and Claudio and Hero fall in love, out of love, and back in love again. But the play contains many darker, more tragic elements than a typical comedy. In what ways is this play tragic?

6. A central theme in the play is trickery or deceit, whether for good or evil purposes. Counterfeiting, or concealing one’s true feelings, is part of this theme. Good characters as well as evil ones engage in deceit as they attempt to conceal their feelings: Beatrice and Benedick mask their feelings for one another with bitter insults, Don John spies on Claudio and Hero. Who hides and what is hidden? How does deceit function in the world of the play, and how does it help the play comment on theater in general?

7. Language in Much Ado About Nothing often takes the form of brutality and violence. “She speaks poniards, and every word stabs,” complains Benedick of Beatrice (II.i.216). Find examples of speech and words representing wounds and battles in the play. What do Shakespeare and his cast of characters accomplish by metaphorically turning words into weapons? What does the proliferation of all this violent language signify in the play and the world outside it?

8. In some ways, Don Pedro is the most elusive character in the play. He never explains his motivations—for wooing Hero for Claudio, for believing Don John’s lie, even for setting up Beatrice and Benedick. He also seems to have no romantic interest of his own, though, at the end of the play, without a future wife, he is melancholy. Investigate Don Pedro’s character, imagine the different ways in which he could be portrayed, and ascribe to him the motivations that you believe make him act as he does. Why is he so melancholy? Why does he woo Hero for Claudio? Is he joking when he proposes to Beatrice, or is he sincere? Why would Shakespeare create a character like Don Pedro for his comedy about romantic misunderstandings?

9. In this play, accusations of unchaste and untrustworthy behavior can be just as damaging to a woman’s honor as such behavior itself. Is the same true for the males in the play? How is a man’s honor affected by accusations of untrustworthiness or unfaithfulness? Do sexual fidelity and innocence fit into the picture in the same way for men as it does for women? Examine the question of honor and fidelity as it relates to four male characters in the play: Benedick, Leonato, Claudio, and Don Pedro. What could Shakespeare be saying about the difference between male and female honor?

10. Do you feel that Beatrice is silenced at the end of the play?

11. What is your reaction to Hero's acceptance of the man who has so recently disgraced her?

12. A word often used to describe Much Ado About Nothing is "festive" (particularly since the fine study by C.L. Barber listed below). How accurate do you feel the label to be? This question can be taken to invite discussion of the nature of the comedy in the play

.13. Compare the central couples in the play with the central couples in The Taming of the Shrew. Do you feel that Shakespeare's art has developed between the writing of the two plays?

14. In what ways does Messina resemble the "green world" of the forest outside Athens? In what ways is it dissimilar? In this play, Shakespeare abandons the familiar dichotomy between Court and Green World to set the play entirely in a world of heightened emotion and lax authority. What does Shakespeare gain and lose in making this choice?

15. Eighteenth and Nineteenth century revisions of the play occasionally went so far as to eliminate the Claudio and Hero plot in order to focus attention specifically on Beatrice and Benedick. While the latter couple is the clearly the more engaging of the two, what do we lose if the former couple is excised?

16. A parallel with Petruccio and Katherine is probably inevitable, and so it is worth being conscious of differences. How do Benedick's interests in Beatrice differ from Petruccio's in Kate? How is Beatrice's determination and wit distinguished from Kate's?

17. The contrast between Dogberry's malapropisms and the linguistic wit of Beatrice and Benedick draw our attention to the importance of language as a means both of communication and of self-definition. To what extent is the ability to create a functional self dependent upon the ability to articulate that self?