Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

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Thanks so much for them for sponsoring this season of Zero to Well-Read. Welcome to Zero to Well-Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books and sometimes plays, Rebecca. You wish you had. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Today we're taking on the OG of Romcoms, William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. And before we jump in, you can click the link in our show notes to sign up for our free newsletter, our colleague, Vanessa Diaz, flashes that out with all sorts of interesting show notes, information about the work that we're discussing, some of the best quotes from the show, trivia. It's a really good time. That's free to subscribe. Or you can become a member and get early ad-free access to our episodes and bonus content at patreon.com. slash zero to well-read. And whenever you can, if you have a moment, what you do, because it doesn't take any time, you can leave a rating wherever you're listening for this show. And if you've got a little bit longer, leave a review. And you can always email us at zero to well-read at bookrat.com. We're going to do a mailbag episode coming up pretty quick. Will that be out by the time it's out, Rebecca? I realize I can't remember what calendar dates happened at any rate. If it's already been out, you'll be in line for the next one. When we go back, we read all these emails, I respond to almost all of them. People always send us interesting things about, here's a link to an interview or here's something you maybe didn't know or here's my favorite point. And Jeff Boyd, you looked good in your hat lat. No way they don't ever write that. But one can treat. Oh, but what a delight it would be if they did. Somebody out there, please tell Jeff how nice he looks in his hat. Boy, I really appreciate it. Or just have nice sounds. You can hear that this man is wearing a good hat today. There you go. Thank you very much for saying that. Today, a first for us, which is that it's not the first for us to come talk about Shakespeare. We did Hamlet in the fall. And as we were putting together the year and our first pass at the Great Works, plus some others that we're interested in talking about, plus cultural phenomenon, we realized that we did feel like we needed to get another Shakespeare and not just another Shakespeare but a comedy, right? Because we did Hamlet, which is the greatest of the tragedies, greatest of quotation marks. We can fight about that forever. But the other side of the Shakespearean coin, he has a three sided coin, which I'll talk about in your second. And really, that's the only kind of mixed metaphor you could use for a singularity like Shakespeare. But the really other side, the obverse is the high comedies and much ado about nothing is my favorite of the three sort of high comedies along with 12th Night is as you like it before we get into the problem of comedy. But after the earlier stuff, anyway, talk a little bit more about Shakespeare. But this represents Shakespeare, I think at his most fun, Rebecca. And I think this is important to remember that Shakespeare is fun. There are fun moments in Hamlet, but you wouldn't say that's a great hang, like Romeo and Juliet, like so many of the plays. There are some there are some of the plays that are that have less fun. I'm trying to think of like Richard the second and a fellow. But this is the merriest version of Shakespeare. And it's not without its sadness and melancholy and else. But I think it's helpful when we're talking about these great works, especially older stuff, as this five century old. And when we get to Homer or, you know, the Sophocles, which we've done some of the earlier stuff, that these are humans and they're fun and messy and lighthearted by turn and can be. And that's one of the reasons I think it's worth doing another Shakespeare so soon. Did I get that mostly right? Or what else to say? Yeah, I don't know much to do here. Exactly that we wanted to do a comedy after having done one of the tragedies or having done the greatest tragedy. And when I asked you about, like, do you care which comedy? Here's what I'm thinking about for programming. You immediately went, Benedict and Beatrice, man, yes, we have to do much to do about nothing. And I was like, okay, great, no argument from me. I kind of think about this show in semesters, even though it's just a continuous feed. But I think about what are we doing for the spring? What are we doing in the summer? And then what are we going to do fall and winter? And I kind of think we might do a Shakespeare every semester, like, at least until we've run out of the ones that we have a lot of affection for. And, you know, the reason that we talk about Shakespeare, or one of the reasons that we talk about him as the greatest to ever do it, is not just the language, it's that the language has to do something. And what he does with the language is capture humanity. And Hamlet captures it in angst and grief and love and all of the ways those things are connected. Much ado about nothing captures us at our like, gossipiest, messiest, but also angst and love and plotting and scheming, like all of the things that underpin human emotions. And like, that is what makes these so wonderful to read and so much fun to engage with is that 500 years later, they still feel so true. Yeah. And I'll let you do your synopsis work here in just a second. But as we get into it, the thing that I'm here for especially, and I think the thing in the wide important stage that will lead us into the future is the Beatrice and Benedict Perry, which is, you know, it's the first and best. If you were to ask this particular lover of sparring lovers, which is my favorite kind, that is the thing that's carried forward. But there's a lot else going on here, too. This is as light of a Shakespeare as you're going to get. I mean, some of the stuff is more party, but I think this is just the most straight up fun. And the plot is going to do plot things like a comedy is going to do. But you're really not here for the repop, Becca, but such as it is, what is this story actually about? It's a tale of two love stories. We have Claudio and Hiro, who fall in love at first sight, and everybody around them is on board for it. Hiro's father, Leonardo, who's the governor of Messina, gives his endorsement. Then there's Don Pedro, who is the prince that Claudio reports to and has been off at war with. Then you get Don Pedro's illegitimate brother, Don John, who is in his villain era. They call him Don John the bastard. And he decides to sabotage the union by tricking Claudio into thinking that Hiro has been unfaithful. So that's one plot. And then on the other side, we have Benedict and Beatrice, who they seem like everybody, or they seem to everybody around them like they're the perfect match. They're witty, they're stubbornly independent. And both of them insist that they will never get married. But like, meddlers are going to meddle. And everyone around them plots to play Cupid and tell Benedict and Beatrice each that the other is in love with them. It's that good old fashioned third grade like, Hey, he really has a crush on you. And so shenanigans ensue. Claudio calls off the wedding to Hiro because he thinks that she's cheating on him. Hiro faints at the shock of it. Claudio then believes that Hiro is dead. So he agrees to marry Leonardo's niece as a replacement. And I have commentary on that to get to later in the show. But like, surprise, it's really Hiro who's under the veil. So Claudio and Hiro end up together. Don John the bastard gets found out by a bumbling constable named Dogberry, like one of the great Shakespearean character names. It sounds like should be a comic from like the 1950s. Right. A comic strip. This is Dogberry. Yeah. And then Benedict and Beatrice fall for the plot that their friends have set for them, just like hook, line and sinker. They end up in love with each other and we get a double wedding. And happily ever after. And we get dancing almost in a Bollywood style, like where you just like Trump would start and then everyone dances at the end. So there's kind of a mesh of two kinds of plots. The Claudio Hiro plot is this more that's one that's inherited a little bit from an Italian kind of really set up almost a paint by numbers kind of a plot where there's a misunderstanding and you fake a death and then you put someone to a veil and you do a little switcheroo at the same time. Also, I'm going to insert an early stray thought that I just had. Boy, they really didn't know much about medicine because if a woman fainted, you're like, I guess she's dead. And I'm like, yeah, guess she is. Boy, they really didn't know what we were doing here. Yeah. But it's just believable that she's dead from surprise. So anyway, so that's what we get into here. Why it's important. All right. Well, this leaves me in a bit of a bind because we have done already a Shakespeare and we did with Hamlet. We did a bunch of the Shakespeare stuff and I don't want to repeat a lot of that. But let me start off with just why this particular play and then we can do a little bit of the more of the Shakespearean stuff of this is written during his highest of high periods and I say right smack dab in the middle of the greatest 10 year run in literary history. And just to give you some sense of what we're talking about here. So we're dating this at about 1598 into 1599. Again, we don't really know exactly this because the first folio was in dated. There was this guy Francis Mayer had a 1598 list of Shakespeare plays. But it's very it's it's it's messy. But if we go from 1595 to 1605. Here's what we're talking about. Right. We start in 1595. I'm going to kick it off with Midsurmer's Night Dream. Then we go Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, King John, the merchant of Venice, Henry IV, part one and two, Henry, much ado about nothing, which is late 1598. Henry V, as you like it, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, the Mary Wiser Windsor, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, and all's well that ends well. Well, I kind of rounds us out in 1605. So this is right in the middle and it comes sandwiched, I think, interestingly between the Henry plays and Julius Caesar and then Hamlet's right after. So it's real close in this high period. And this is the highest of high periods here. And I still don't know what to do with this. I really don't know what to do with it. That Shakespeare was prolific. But when you rattle it off that way, it really drives it home. Like just some fun camera issues here. Everything can be like what the hell is going on? All right, go ahead, Rebecca. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it just it really drives it home what prolific looked like on him. And some of this, maybe a lot of it is motivated by money that he's got to keep churning out new plays for his company to put on so that they can make money and keep having audiences come back for something fresh. Like these books are there. The plays are not being really like packaged and sold as popular books. That's not his income source. You got to get the bodies in the door. They want to see something new. But that he could be this prolific and this good at the same time, just knocks my socks off every time I'm reminded of it. Yeah. And then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy thing because like, you know, now we think of Shakespeare like look at these great plays and are all jammed in here. But just the work by itself is pretty stunning. But what I'm trying to say here with much about do nothing, Hamlet and Much Ado, we're putting together sort of high points of Shakespeare and the chronology kind of bears it out at the same time. They're written around the same time. Stuff that happens a little bit later gets darker. Measure for measure in the commies that come after are called problem comedies. And maybe once we get to measuring measure, where was when we can talk about that. And then King Lear and Macbeth and the tragedies really get sadder and so do the histories at the same time. So probably still on our Shakespeare mini syllabus to do a problem comedy and to do one of the late, you know, like something like The Tempest and then to do one of the histories, which we haven't done yet at the same time in terms of comedy. This is also being invented, the modern Elizabethan comedy at the same time here. And one thing we want to know about Shakespeare, at least for this is that we again, go listen to Hamlet episode. We're not going to redo the whole thing. If you want to do a mini Shakespeare course about who he is, we did a really good, I would say we did a really nice job. I think so, yes. That turned out here. But so much is going on the same time that allows him to be in a position to be thought of the greatest of all time, like early medicine, the Renaissance, Queen Elizabeth herself, you know, we know just enough to know what we don't know. And there's this flourishing of activity and sort of a loosening of the church's grip over storytelling, especially when it comes into the theater, right? There's not a lot of God stuff here, like we're getting married and like, you know, whatever. But we're not subject to sin. That is not the thing we're really talking about here. We're talking about a humanist understanding of love and their antecedents for the well matched pair like a love plot that go back sort of to, I don't know, probably Penelope and Odysseus might be the first when we think of a well matched couple, even though they were probably married to join a couple of Greek city states. But this idea of Beatrice and Benedict being a good fit and how they figure out they're a good fit. And what a good fit actually means what we're looking for in romantic partner, even the nature of courtship itself is put in contrast like that's the cloudy hero foil for the Beatrice and Benedict, a much more conventional boy ain't she good looking boy and he attractive Prince boy that seems like a good match to some other kind of understanding of how one might court another person, how one might understand what they what they have to bring to the table, what someone else has to bring to the table that there's a table to bring stuff to all that's not just about dowries, Rebecca. Right. Very cool. Yeah. And you know, Benedict and Beatrice always remind me of the sonnet about the marriage of true minds about people that are really coming together from a more intellectual or personality based connection. And there are a lot of ways to read that sonnet because it's Shakespeare. So there are a lot of ways to read everything. But I think one thing that is inarguable here is Benedict and Beatrice as the like originals of Romcom banter. Their vibe has inspired literal centuries of stories. Most notably, Elizabeth Benedict, Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and then Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. And like, and then dozens and dozens, if not hundreds and hundreds of examples, like Emily Henry could never, but she's trying to. And the origins of that are Benedict and Beatrice. Yeah. And it's I that is important to remember too is like, probably someone would have invented this otherwise down the road, like kind of like in physics, where there's some logic to this. But as we get out of a Christian tradition, as we get out of a sort of God oriented or supernatural oriented and marriage oriented just for, you know, procreation and monetary value, the idea of love that is also not about necessarily about physical desire, because Benedict and Beatrice have the hots for each other, but they have the word hots for each other. And I think that's important here. Like that's the primary mode of their understanding. And it's much more of an intellectual desire for each other that frankly is on the page from the first time Beatrice asked about Benedict, right? It's like, there's a couple of ways you can play this. I'll do another straight thought here where Benedict is coming back from war with Claudio and everything's gone well. And they're, you know, kind of the conquering heroes. And even we're told like, not even that many people died. Isn't it great? It's like, yeah, it's even better when we win and not too many people die. And Beatrice, right away is like, how'd Benedict comport himself? And like she managed to get some barbs in. And the way this is usually done is where it's mocking, but you have a sense of the twinkle in her eye. And then when Benedict come back and they're their first jousting, there's a twinkle in their eye and that they have found their, what's it called, their merry war, their sort of ongoing merry war to be as fulfilling as like just doing it would be, right? Like we talk like it's sort of the opposite of Twilight where they sort of stare at each other and want to do it. This is like, they're kind of getting a lot of the relationship out in the open. They're kind of getting what they want out of it already. Intellectual. Just by intellectual, yeah, intellectual, or it's maybe just in its intercourse without the sexual part, right? And I always imagine this as one reason they're so happy being bachelor and bachelorette is they know they have each other to sort of be bachelor and bachelor what with them, they can have these interchanges, they can get the word, they can get their word sex thing on and then go away for a while and come back to do it over and over again. So I think that's one of the fun things for me about this. And you know, a lot of times this is what happens in the Pride and Prejudice or Gone with the Wind or the Nora Ephron, which you have there, which I think a little bit later we'll talk to. It's like the physical consummation is almost, I don't want to say this without being saying something, but it's kind of a letdown because we've done the fun stuff already of the of the wordplay and the fighting and the jousting and the banter. And that's the inexorable end. And that's where it happens to the marriage bed rather than, you know, pre-marital sexual, whatever, like when Harry Mitzali, but the fun thing is the courting and the most fun version of this courting is two hyperliterate, super smart, extraordinarily well written characters having to go at each other for, you know, three and a half acts. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that contemporary romcoms both on page and screen are trying to do is the people who have the word hots for each other, that it needs to be believable that they're into each other before they fall in bed with each other. We need to understand why these people are so attracted to each other. It's not just like, you're hot, I'm hot, let's go bang it out. And it's also like it has to be so grounded in believable intelligence, believable connection to each other. And this is not what romance readers today would call enemies to lovers. Like they are not really enemies. There's this grounded. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. They're like the formal enemies to lovers plot is more of like they've really hated each other for some reason, or one of them hated the other one and then they fall in love. And this is more of as you're saying, like it's friendly jousting, there is real whether they can admit it to each other or not affection for the other one as the object of this jousting. And as someone who can return the volley, you know, like each of them is quick, and you kind of get the impression that they've like, if they were in contemporary times, they would have been on a lot of dates with people that they're like, they were just not that interesting, they couldn't keep up with me. But they like each of them likes that the other one can keep up. And I think you're onto something there with the idea that maybe they know, like, there are no hurry to get married, because is that really going to hold up to the fun that they're having while they can have this verbal jousting with each other. And it's a different plot, say if Beatrice is betrothed or Benedict gets married, because you know, if either of them in this play had a suitor, that person would be the most hated person in the history of all time for the other party, right? Like, this is the kind of relationship where if they were in a relationship and they saw how they bantered back and forth, their signature would be like, what is that about? You know, there is something going on here. So now there's a version, I guess, I've never seen this done, we can play it as if they actually hate each other like there's a lot of animosity. But I almost think the language doesn't allow that. I think it's fun to really allow that. I think that's a misreading. Yeah, I think there's real affection for each other here. I think it's important with Shakespeare too. Again, this is not going to be, this is not going to ring your modern gender role bells in any kind of way. But if you put it in place, what Beatrice, the role she is given here and the line she is given and some of the stuff she says about men is really, I don't want to say revolutionary for the time, but it's transgressive. It's subversive for the day. And that's the best you can do, right? Is to be transgressive, subversive for your day. I've got a couple of quotes here just like, dudes ain't worth shit, is it comes out of her mouth several times essentially in various versions of it. One of my notes was that Shakespeare was really early on the toxic masculinity tip. Yeah, right. And that I think holds up. I think that rings a lot of bells even now. Now again, it's not going to read like someone writing today with a modern sensibility, but it does allow it to survive into the present in a way a lot of things don't have more conventional moralities of the day or conventional places. Or one of the reasons some of these sort of romance plots don't really hold up to a modern reader is because their stale as shit when it comes to our modern understanding of gender equality. And Beatrice is, I guess, technically a spinster by the time this is coming out. There's this long history of older actors playing Benedict and Beatrice. Like sometimes pretty old actors, not just like 30s or 40s, where everybody else in these stories is in their 20s, but like actors in their 50s, 60s, 70s playing Benedict and Beatrice. And the fact that you can port that story into really any stage of life and say, here is someone who never got married, especially Beatrice, this woman who never got married, she never felt the need to until she met a man who could hang with her, really is potent and stays relevant 500 years later. Yeah, Ben is at one point says, well, I never see a three-score bachelor again, which means 60, would suggest that he could be 60. Maybe he's talked about people older themselves, but there's nothing in the text. And I look pretty closely at it this time that precludes this being older, as old as he want kind of folks at the same time. And Beatrice, neither Beatrice nor Benedict, are very often described for their physical or economic attributes whatsoever. That really doesn't come to bear. Like, Benedict even has this really funny monologue where he's talking about like what kind of woman would be right for him and it becomes an impossible ideal. And at the end, he says, and I'll let God decide what color of her hair, right, which is almost like he's acknowledging it's impossible standards. But like the physical thing doesn't really matter because of being modest and chased and blah, blah, blah. But she doesn't have to be, you know, a smoke show. And Benedict is not presented as particularly physically attractive. And, you know, he seems he is a attached to and attended upon greater sort of lords and princes or whatever. So that part's pretty cool, I think to see. Yeah, I really liked that that you can imagine if they're alive today, they've got their little list of things that they're looking for in an ideal partner and that it starts with like smart, funny, and then you get to attractive much further down the list. Yes, that intellectual capacity and emotional connection is the language we would use for it today. But Shakespeare's laying that right out that like, these are people who, you know, you want somebody that you're never going to get tired of talking to. And that's what if they're going to get married and go through all the hassle of it and what they perceive to be the hassle of it, it's got to be worth it in that way, someone who's going to stay interesting. Yeah. And it compares like the switchery you talk about where hero quote unquote dies. And that's one way they get Claudio and his his revenue to come back to the wedding altar. And heroes just sort of replaceable. You put the veil down and she shuts up is like, I'll marry whatever. Right. The right. Right. That Leonardo is like, well, I have this niece you can marry. You know, she's not the same as hero, but she's pretty cute too. And Claudio goes for it immediately. I thought really hangs a lantern on how much for those people marriage is a transaction, a business agreement, like he's not, you know, just falling down with woe that he can't marry this woman that he's in love with for who she is. It's the connections that they have. Like they have the hots for each other because they've seen each other across the room. And that's really it. And that contrast between them and the mode that Claudio and hero are in is the common mode of the day versus Benedict and Beatrice who do the love marriage thing. That's pretty revolutionary at the time. And also not for nothing is how Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway ended up with each other. Yeah, I had that in my stray thoughts that I forgot to write down is in the in the world of Hamnet now, seeing that Ham excuse me, seeing that Shakespeare, well, that's that's a Freudian slip that I think of Shakespeare being the same person to think of Shakespeare being able to write a relationship like this. It gives credence to a meetings of the mind and Hathaway William Shakespeare pairing. Like we don't have any evidence for it, but except that we do, which is this kind of relationship, the images, though also we get other kinds of relationships between men and women that aren't so amazing. I mean, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, I don't know what you want to do with that. But at least it gives some fuel to this speculative fire about how Shakespeare himself might have imagined an ideal pairing of two romantic partners. Also, just I guess on the logistical front to imagine the moment of these things being performed remember in Shakespeare's lifetime, these were not available as plays, it wasn't till the first folio after his death, this much to do about nothing is in the first folio. There's not a lot of discussion about the text when the Hamlet we talked about like there's like four different editions and the full edition, if you include everything that someone has identified as Hamlet is like four and a half hours long. To my understanding, I did some, I went through my notes and some of my old textbooks and stuff and I didn't see a lot of that for much to do about nothing. This is a quick one to Rebecca. It's a tiny like I read this in like an hour like I was flying through it. That's also to know also when it's performed, these are all dudes in this day and age, right? Just to remember the mode and get yourself into the mindset of a lot of the fun, I think for people watching this at the time is we get a lot of masking, but there's like then there's like meta levels of masking of a dude playing a lady who's playing a dude who's playing another lady like some of the farce is like really get off their rocker about who's playing what, but this is one, I think this one especially I have this down in a hot take is I very, very, very, very much thing seeing a performance of this is the canonical way to do it for a lot of Shakespeare, I'm like you read it so you can do the language. This certainly bears close reading of the Benedictine Beatrice stuff especially, but it's different than Julius Caesar or some of these other things where the language is really heightened and you want to dig into a Hamlet monologue like a lot of the fun of this is the fun of it and that's best on stage or on the screen. And it's so quick. I had some extra time and I like I really love this one. So I wanted to invest in it. This was the first time I had read it since high school and as I got back into the text, I was like, Oh, right. I remember really liking this. I like these people. And I wanted to dwell in the story. So I did my old favorite thing after I read it, I went back and listened to a full cast audio production. Oh, it was good. There are several available, but the BBC has one that has like little tiny abridgments like every now and then it jumps and misses a few lines and you might get a little lost if you're following along in the text, but it's got like David Tennant and Chewbattell, Egya Four and just a huge wonderful cast that was really fun to listen to. And then I also watched the 1993 adaptation where Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson play Benedict and Beatrice and seeing that seeing the vibe, especially Emma Thompson delivering the lines and doing she's terrific. Yeah, doing the men ain't shit stuff is just it's so, so much fun. So if you cannot get yourself to a production, there is a really good adaptation on film that you could watch. There are several, but I think the 1993 one is canonical. So 90s cast like Denzel is Don Pedro. And then Keanu Reeves is Don John because he has like four lines and he gets sort of be sullen and like God level Denzel stuff though. He comes out and I was like, God, that's right. Denzel has been sexy for like 50 years. He looks extremely good in the lighting and the whole garb and everything here. You get Michael Keaton as dogberry, even Robert Sean Lutter as Claudio and Kate Beckinsella is here. Like it's a really good cast up and down the way. So first exposure, you mentioned yours already. Do you remember your first reading of it? Do you remember reviving with it from the very beginning? I remember liking it in high school. I think we read it right after Romeo and Juliet and that Romeo and Juliet was my first Shakespeare. And so being kind of surprised about how much lighter this one feels and the banter between the characters moves quickly. But I feel like the language of Romeo and Juliet crackles more. Like it's just faster and more you need to access the like just let Shakespeare wash over you vibe much more for Romeo and Juliet than you do for much to do about nothing. It's a little easier to grasp. I just remember liking it and being a teenager who was very much the like the boys cannot hang. Like I think this is just true for most teenagers like where you're in that developmental gap. But at the moment that I read it was like I get it. Be like Beatrice's goals. Maybe I'll be single until I'm 35 and some man will be able to hang with me someday. And that's how I'll know who it is. That's interesting. Yeah, I read it. I've read it a bunch of times. A high school reading, a college reading, a grad school reading. But my transformative much do experience, we went to Shakespeare in the Park in 2004 for a production of Much Ado with Jimmy Smith and Kirsten Johnson. She have third rock from the summer. I'm so jealous. It was, listen. Jimmy Smith's forever. It was a magical New York beautiful. You know, you've been in New York in one of those summer nights. Have you ever done Shakespeare in the park? Have you ever done it? I haven't. The timing is never lined up. It's a pain in the butt. It's a pain in the butt. It really is. Unless you know people who, you know, their company or whatever donated a bunch of tickets. For those of you don't know, Shakespeare in the Park, it's a New York City. There's a theater in the middle of the park. And tickets are quote unquote free. Meaning there's corporate sponsors get some like your American Express or whatever. But then also most of them are available free, but you can't reserve a ticket. At least you couldn't 20 years ago. Maybe digital technology that's something else now. And you would line up the day of starting as early as you can get there and you'd wait in line. And my memory is that the tickets were like noon or one and we would get there like seven in the morning, six o'clock in the morning. Oh my gosh. It's a whole day. Okay. And you know, I'm 24, Michelle and I are 24 and we've got more time than money now. But then what you're doing is just hang out in the park. We bring board games, we bring cards, you know, we bring our books, you know, we meet friends there and we bring our like bagels or whatever from Zabars, you know, down the way and hang out in the park for a day and then go drink in the afternoon, then come back at night. I mean, just peak whatever, peak New York, peak, peak this kind of experience. And I was completely blown away by it. And I'd like to be interested in Benedictine, but seeing them do that thing together was so fun and special and the night and the music and the company and everything was just, you know, it was terrific. And I learned shortly thereafter that Smith and Kirsten Johnson had been in production of 12th Night Together just a couple years before and they ran it back. So like they enjoyed it. So and like it was so much fun to see and they were so well matched both performatively and like physically like, you know, Kirsten Johnson is tall. She's tall. Yeah. Smith is tall. And they weren't sort of in their 60s as they are now. I guess their Smith is probably in his early 70s because it's been 20 years, but they were older, right? They weren't 15. They weren't, they weren't Romeo and Julia. They were 27. This is like late season West Wing era, Jimmy Smith. Yeah. Which is, yes, yes, yes. Chef's kiss perfect. And he was terrific. So that's when my heart really went to much ado is to be my favorite of my, the Shakespeare comedies, but also to me, like the will they, won't they verbal sparring word sex thing that I am always looking for in a romantic comedy. Like this is it for me, Rebecca. I guess what I'm saying, like I want some version of this forever or not version of them specifically, but I want the romantic will they won't they people to be sparring and equals and feisty and getting into it in sharp and like the action is the juice. As they say in uncut gems, the dialogue is the juice for me when it comes to rom comes or romances in general. I want the people to be doing something with words and ideas with each other that exists beyond the boy they've got. They really want to do it. And I understand that's a part of it for everyone. That's cool. And I get it. And I'm one of those people too. But when it comes to fictive or literary representations of trying to figure out if this person is right for me, I want principally to be about words and principally about interplay at that level. So I'm cooked for this forever. I guess. Man, yeah, I think you see Jimmy Smith and Kirsten Johnson together. And I think I would be like, I don't need to ever see another ad. Yeah, right. It's fair. Yeah. You've already experienced the pinnacle. That's amazing. And I'm very jealous. But what is it like to read this? What is this all about? We've done a lot of this so far, Rebecca, but where else to get into this? It works. It just it just works. Like it's a real love is a battlefield Pat Benatar stuff. Shouts to Pat. Yeah. Yeah. And the I read the Folger Shakespeare Library edition that had a lot of notes about the intertwining of romantic love and warfare. So I think that's something keeping in mind. But like, it just works. It's wild how far ahead of his time Shakespeare was. I feel that way every time I read Shakespeare. But in this case, it's like he's really on the male fragility thing. All of the dudes don't want to get married because they're afraid of being cheated on. All of the jokes are about getting cooked. And they're in a society where the cost of infidelity is really much higher for women. So it's just these guys egos on the line and Shakespeare's poking fun at them. They're poking fun at each other. But yes, this really has the best time poking fun at them. And then there's also the like old fashioned D component of it's a little unbelievable how quickly these people all fall in love with each other. Like really all it took was going, Hey, he really likes you. Or that Claudio and hero see each other, you know, across the room and then the match gets made. But that was kind of the way things were done back then. So you got to suspend a little disbelief. But the banter between Beatrice and Benedict goes a long way for helping me suspend disbelief about like, Oh, actually, they've had a vibe together. Yes, quite a while. And both of them are insistent on maintaining their independence. And you understand why like each of them is really sharp. And they are somebody that would need a partner who could keep up with them. But that they finally come to see that actually that that thing exists inside the other one. It is so much fun. I just had I mean, I engaged with three different versions of this in the last four years. So I was having a good time. Yeah, it's very, very straightforward in terms of plot. Like you don't you're not going to have a hard time understanding what's going on or what people's motivations are. So it's so straightforward in terms of plot that Shakespeare can like dance around it on a little bit with like deceptions within deceptions and like multiple turnbacks like you can follow in a kind of doesn't matter, right? In that particular God, even the hero's fake death for the characters in the play, there's a lot at stake. But this is not like the fake death of Romeo and Juliet, which is going to have a lot of import and like things are going to go super sideways from there. You know, one thing you were talking about, and this is very much in the play about the the anxiety that men have about women having extramarital or premarital affairs, you know, one thing the word sex does or the meaning of the minds does is like, you kind of can't cheat on somebody if you're perfectly matched that way, because they're not interchangeable. Where this idea of like the physical act of sex is being kind of interchangeable, right? Like you can get your rocks off with a lot of different kind of people. If you have like an intellectual meeting of the minds, you're not sort of like universal docking stations or dockers rather kinds of people. So like there's a way in which you cannot this kind of pairing is more, I don't know, protected because it's gated by a more specific meeting of the minds or a matching of which that's a great point. I really like that. Let's see Beatrice and Bedeck are the main attraction they've been for the beginning. I find myself anxious them to return when they are off stage. Like some other people get some stuff to do, but I would be lying if my mind my eyes don't sort of jump ahead to say, okay, now how long do I have to wait for Beatrice and how much of this do I not have to care about until they're back on the page? This is the marriage of equals, like I said has precursors, precursors, but this one takes it to the extreme to the point where I feel like they're almost the versions of the same person just gender flipped version of each other. Even the names of course are right there where we're you to switch lines and of course the gender stuff. It would be difficult to notice like their personalities are so matched that they're almost interchangeable and it feels to me a little bit like in every chess movie you have to get a sign that someone's a genius or the best person they have to play as themselves. I feel myself, Shakespeare writing himself into this like I'm going to play both sides of the board on this and see how much fun I can have at the same time. Yeah, it's really in that ongoing perpetual debate about like should you marry someone who's a lot like you or should you marry your opposite? Is it opposite to tract or is it that you're looking for someone who's very similar and and it for Bennett to be interested certainly there they need at least someone who's an intellectual equal to them and it comes across as a very similar like a sharp pokey vibe spiky. It's like one reason my brothers and I got so good at ping pong is that I was older, Wes was the natural best in the middle and then Kyle was the youngest so he was always playing against us right. So in various permutations we are always playing against someone that was a little better than us or at least older and in this smart we're somehow Shakespeare pulls off where both Benetrick is smarter than Beatrice and Beatrice is smarter than Benedict. I don't know how he did that but it's tremendous at the same time. It's really fun. Yeah, I do have knowing something intimately through language they know each other so well because of a long history of talking right. Claudio and Hiro is much of an older style of matchmaking young prince innocent maiden. They know each other not at all so we're especially prone to misunderstanding and attune to deceit and that also brings up situation versus character. The Claudio Hiro like this is their situation they marry out of station and positionality where Beatrice and Benedict are really more of an exploration of character finding each other in the plot. Like the plot exists so that the characters configure each other out as characters and as people rather than sort of a mousetrap version of an exerbill logic of you know edifice rex or something else like that at the same time. Beatrice and Benedict snap out of their entrance positions when hearing themselves and notably their faults described by others. Yes. And the important thing is that those observations are both accurate and believed that it is key that they are both smart and self aware enough to hear real criticism of themselves and take it to heart. Yeah. That can be hard to see in this play. And but it's important. Yeah. That there I noted that as well that each of them overhears people talking about them and they have a moment of like am I really like that. Yes. And and being like oh yeah I totally yeah and being like oh yeah the the Barb hits deep because yeah it turns out I am like that and maybe like maybe on the other side of that if I could get over it is love and connection with this great mind sex with a great guy. What more are we looking for. But I really appreciated that Shakespeare does that as well. Like you know we've bumped up against a couple dialogues in some of the books that we've covered most notably between Joe and Laurie and little women where it's like we've got to have it out. I've just got to tell you straight how you are. But this thing of overhearing other people talking about you is also a way to get there and it's not pleasant and it's really like pretty subtle in the text. But I noted that as well that each of them is like oh OK never mind like the people around me all seem to agree that I'm the asshole here. So let's figure it out. Yeah. You have a note here about nothing and noting. Can you do that real quick. I think that's people don't know that you want to we might want to. Yeah. It just helps to know that nothing was pronounced as noting when the play was written. So there's word play even in the title of this that much in fact is made of notes and of things that are noted throughout the play. And there are many lines about did you note she noted I noted we are noting. And it just helps to know that nothing and noting can be interchangeable aren't always but can be in a lot of the parts of the text. I don't remember where I got this and I've had this in my mind for a long time. And if you want to go research yourself go for it. I remember there's also usually a quadruple entendre with Shakespeare that's more body. And the one I remember is that nothing and no thing were sometimes descriptors of women's because they literally don't have a thing. So there's another valence that you can go try. I'm not sure. I remember that that obviously would have stuck with me as a high school reader. So that could have been something my high school English teacher invented. I don't know. I couldn't find any that didn't make it into the full edition. Yeah. It didn't make it in the full tradition. Nor to my Riverside Shakespeare at the same time. All right. Straight thoughts Rebecca. What else do you have? What occurred to you as reading this that aren't sort of germane? Their side dish is not on trace to the reading experience is what to do about it. Really questionable security procedures happening here where they're just hiring randos off the street to patrol the Prince's castle. Like I was tempted to Google is this how they used to do it back in the day. But like dog berries just walking around town being like who's not too drunk and available tonight. Did you like the dogberry stuff? What did you make of it? I like it better in the performances of it. I liked it better in the play that are in the movie than just in the text. I think it's it's harder to get the sort of silliness of it in just the text for readers today. I agree with you. Yeah. I believe the commentators that it came across back then. But this has always been performed. So it probably really depends on who's in that role. But I liked it much better when Michael Keaton was doing it. The full character in all Shakespeare I always prefer performed. The monologues and soliloquies I always prefer to read or the language stuff. But that especially because it tends comedy tends to be a lot broader in that regard and also more topical. Like they're making a lot of references to things that you and I have no way of understanding without a concordance and deep research there. At the same time one of mine is even 500 years ago we were bending over backwards to come up with the novel romantic plots that so many mass and overhearing and like already we're trying to jump through a bunch of hoops and we've done five. We've had 500 years more of spinning out things like no wonder it's hard to have a believable romantic comedy because it's kind of all been done at some point. I think that's a really great point. And it like sort of connects with one of my frustrations as a modern reader of rom-coms. Like we're in a golden age of rom-com books being written. There are more of them like all over the place. They're really popular. But I the banter needs to be good. It really needs to be good and believable. And I'm going to give you 10 pages. And if the banter does not sound like real smart people engaging with each other. If it sounds like what someone thinks real smart people sound like I'm going to be out. And Shakespeare sets the bar for that here. Yeah. In order to write it you have to be it. You have to write. You have to be able to do smart funny awesome banter to write it. And that's not everyone can do that. Right. I mean that's one where the person and the task really need to be aligned at the same time. And like in reality so much of it is individual chemistry. Like you can be you can have a really smart person and drop them into a conversation with someone else who's really smart. But if the chemistry doesn't exist for them to have the answer with each other if it's not the right like on the same wavelength kind of thing it doesn't work. And I think there are a lot of really smart writers who just the romcom mode is not the right mode for them. But there's a lot of incentive to be writing romcoms today. And going back to this one and the origin of so much of the banter like it's really it's Shakespeare and Nora Ephron and that's it. In my heart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It made me have you ever. You know like I would be amenable to some version of like Waiting for Good Dough or my dinner with under one of these just two people on a bench talking to a dinner with Andre's a table. But like I'm sure someone has tried that. But like one long first date. I mean I guess that's kind of what before sunrise is. Yeah. That's before sunrise. But OK. So I am in sparring version. Yeah. I know. I know. We're on the same. We're on the same. It's Shakespeare Nora Ephron and Richard Linklater. Yeah. So this is going to bring up other instances where words of the primary Avenue of Courtship before sunrise. You know Cyrano de Bourgenac into Roxanne Roxanne starring Steve Martin is one of the great 80s joys. Then also another Eiffron which sleepless in Seattle. It's not just that it's Eiffron but think of the mode of courtship. Right. It's Meg Ryan over not overhearing but listening to Hanks give us essentially a soliloquy about what love means to him. Yeah. And then she writes a letter that weirdly speaks to an eight year old boy's heart and we're not going to talk about that too much about the problems of that. But and then they also see each other. But when they see each other they're struck and they literally can't say anything. So it's both physical and intellectual at the same time. I just watched sleepless in Seattle on a plane two weeks ago. And like other than the fact that we talk about boundaries really differently today than we did in the 80s. It really holds up because it is this idea of being connected to someone through ideas. And then there's also of course you've got right where they literally fall in love with each other through their words through their emails and messages and then again when they meet in person. But really the pinnacle. Yeah. One thought I had here. I really like that they have a lot of history by the time we pick up the plot. Like we're in media res of their relationship in media. Res if you don't know that term is like a way of just dropping you into the middle of the action rather than like you know we're going to we're going to get ready and here's this person you're meeting for the first time. This is not we do not meet Beatrice and Benedict when they're like 14 and like at school together or whatever the version of this would be. They've got a lot of backstory and we feel it right away. And that also made me think of Efron and when Harry and Sally she tries to do that right. We the first 30 minutes are her showing us the earlier battles in the merry war between Harry and Sally where Shakespeare is like you have to believe it. And because the banter is so natural and their mode of communication and courtship. If that works then you kind of believe that they've had it for a long time at the beginning to let's see do Beatrice and Benedict change or they revealed or some other verb. Is it scary to think that your whole understanding of yourself is fixed in this case they're going to be bachelor bachelor forever or that if you were but to hear the right few sentences your total understanding of yourself and the world can be undone. I think that it's the answer is yes to both. Yeah that's just a cheater right answer but you're right yeah I agree with you. Yeah like that's the paper that I would write in if the prompter where are they revealed or do they change is both that like they are revealed to themselves and then they change to connect with each other. And I think it's Shakespeare taking us into that question of is this what's scarier to find out that you might be the same forever or that this fixed idea of yourself is actually wrong and could be changed if you get the right piece of feedback and it's but for that right insight from the right person or from the right people that your whole world might be different. Another straight thought I had is you know in Shakespeare and there's a lot of like other kinds of comedies that are outside of Shakespeare that include mass and mistaken identity. Did this ever once happen in real life? Like anything with a mask in a marriage plot like did any for those of you who've read like Italian I don't know like I don't even know that they exist but like biographies of minor lords and ladies in Italy in like 17th century was there a lot of people accidentally falling with the wrong person because they were wearing a mask and a ball. Also if this happened so often I would just outlaw masquerade balls there's too much misunderstanding about who's who. I need to believe that we've always been smarter than who's that guy who just happens to have a thing over his eyes right now. The Renaissance version is mask fishing rather than cat fishing. Yes. Is it more fun interesting to imagine Beatrice and Benedict actually hating each other at the beginning or as I always read it as pigtails in the inkwell but with words flirtation. I think them hating each other at the beginning would make it too it's like too easy of a story like that's the more like traditional enemies to lovers and then like something like lightning's going to strike and now they love each other and I kind of never really believe those. I prefer this version where they have a deep history there is some affection that's under the surface whether either of them can acknowledge it or not and it just has to be tapped into I think that's more fun. Yeah I'm tipping my hand a little bit too or I don't believe in my heart of hearts that there's any version of what we first knew each other we literally hated each other and then fell in love I just don't believe that. I think if you're eventually going to be in a position where you like somebody the seeds of it were there from the beginning and maybe that hatred is sort of transferred desire or whatever repressed sexual sexual tension but I I've never heard of a version where like yeah 10 years ago we met each other and we hated each other like literally couldn't stay each other I thought they were like I've never heard of that actually happening in real life but anyway quote time Rebecca I you know it's weird I don't have a full list because it kind of flies so yeah it's really cool. I have a little less than later than some other episodes. I mean early on Leonardo says how much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping just a good one Benedict complimenting Beatrice I would my horse have the speed of your tongue he sees it you know. Oh yeah he gets it. And then Leonardo says to Beatrice that will never get the husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue and I was like man who among us has not heard be nicer you should smile more. Yeah and then here's Benedict inventing radical candor happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. Great pull that's what I was saying before like he heard it and he's like okay I'll take that to heart yeah. What do you have? I have for which of my bad parts just now first fall in love with me right like when they start of starting to circle each other this is always a fun part of when you this I've done this once so I should say this is a fun part of being in love with someone is like then you get to needle the other person for like what did you like about me best and all that kind of stuff but because the pantomime or at least their shared understandings they didn't like each other is like now you've got to really eat the crow because you are saying all this crap about me and you have to say which of the parts first fell away the scales from your eyes fell away I love the merry war I'm going to use this forever to think about this kind of dynamic between and we should say we've mentioned all heterosexual couples at this point I think it works for all pairings of all genders and sexualities where it's a it's a verbal language intellectual yes merry war between people. There are gender bent oh yeah like gender bent adaptations and retellings of much to do about nothing like there are good reads lists of retellings but you can find this like one of the joys of this story is that it is portable to people with any gender in any time a Shakespeare can be adapted into you know sort of any time and setting but you can find those and that same vibe carries over regardless. This is Beatrice saying she's asked like are you ever going to get married essentially by one of Leonardo one of the other clods over there not till God make men of some other metal than earth would it not grieve a woman to be over massed with a piece of valiant dust to make of her account make a count of her life to a clot of wayward moral they think there's no one that I really want to hitch my wagon to because it's all garbage. Let's say you know this is interesting this is I believe Leonardo as well to certain so the prince woos for himself friendship is constant all other things save in the office and the fares of love so heart and business friendship works but when you get love involved and business involved friendship the strange can be shown I may or may not be in the middle of a watch of a Sopranos where this is certainly true. Much to do about nothing in the Sopranos don't have a lot in common on the surface but you just did it okay yeah there you go. Let's see Don John he was just sort of like replacement level bad guy like he's just a yeah I guess if you're known as John the bastard I don't know how nice we're expected you to be really when you put it that way also he's been treated he's gotten the shaft his whole life because he like is an illegitimate child of somebody he's come by it honestly. Also like Shakespeare even shows that we don't care about John because he just gives him John everyone's Leonardo Claudio hero Beatrice and John the star John the bastard. Don Barry and John. Don Barry but he does get this little bit that I like all hearts and love use their own tongues let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent for beauty is a witch against whom's charms faith melted into blood so like this I don't use beauty as your load star here right negotiate for yourself what you're interested in because beauty is a witch it's changeable it's it's alterable like there's a lot of different kinds of people that are beautiful and it goes away at the same time Benedict this is just my favorite Benedict I don't know of anything else to say but I wanted to get some language into the pod shall quips and sentences these paper bullets of the brain awe a man for the career of his humor basically saying well these words change what I've always done and who I've been the career of my humor I've always been this way no the world must be peopled when I said I would die a bachelor I did not think I live till I were married the world must be peopled is the point of comedy this goes back to Aristotle and you know the early days of tragedy and comedy tragedy being the certainty of death that's what tragedy is about and comedy is essentially about the world being people the continuity of life is another way of understanding that those are the two those are the two sides of this human coin I myself is going to die I every one of us is going to die yet life goes on how do you reconcile those two things and the answer is art that's for me uh is this for you Rebecca why might this be for you I think if you want to go back to the origins of the rom-com like it's it is really fun especially through seeing it or listening to it to engage with this banter and see what a high level execution of that this kind of verbal sparring looks like um also if you're just looking for an accessible place to go do some Shakespeare I agree this is much more accessible than some of the tragedies it's way more accessible than Hamlet I'm glad that we started with Hamlet we had a great time in that episode but for like it's been a while since you read Shakespeare maybe you've never read Shakespeare or like you just sort of did the cliffs notes in high school and you want to actually engage with it yourself this is a great place to start yeah I mean if you can go fire up the 1993 version I think you're having a pretty good time I don't have a lot of maybe not we have nothing here I don't either I think it's just if you just don't care about Shakespeare which right you're allowed to but we are both on the record of like if you if you have decided you just don't care about Shakespeare I don't really know how to talk to you about yeah about art and literature but there's otherwise I mean it'll it's like two hours out of your life it's worth a trip very quick very quick I also this one was a little more difficult because we do not in our immortal questions at art asks have one about love and relationships we have what is the good life what do I owe my neighbor how do I know what I know is this all there is how to deal with the certainty of death what else might there be what's the deal with good and evil free will real or no I mean I guess your romantic life is a subset of what is the good life Rebecca yeah yes and Benedict and Beatrice especially Beatrice in my reading of it have had like certain visions of what their lives were going to be and those are called into question here and they reassess what they actually want so I think it's very much what is the good life and maybe a subset of free will real or no is do people change can you change and and they're both wrestling with that yeah I think also there is a little subset maybe in a more interpersonal way how do I know what I know that's about like how do you even understand yourself because you are only seeing yourself the prism of yourself right so we get these particular moments the Cupid's traps rather than arrows caught Beatrice and Benedict in this one but the trap was a mirror right because the things that were said about them weren't untrue they weren't lying right they were saying a true thing indirectly but they were saying a true thing at the same time so like and how do you get enough self-knowledge where you can do something with it and this is education I think the classical liberal education is you're going to learn enough to be able to see yourself in your position way that you can do something about it if you want to yeah and there's a little also what's the deal with good and evil in so far as Don John the bastard is plotting to keep Claudio and hero away from each other and the side characters even say to each other like don't mind him he's all he's just been mad forever because he's an illegitimate kid and he's been treated like shit and like there's some explaining to each other about why this person is doing evil things or bad things I'm not sure that this disrupts the marriage plot cracks up to be evil but there's a little exploration of why would somebody maybe do some something unsavory you know I've never thought about it until just this moment when you said that if you think of John the bastard as being symbolic of something right he is the product of outside of wedlock sexual desire right so the play is sort of showing us like here's one of the reasons you don't want to be held captive by lust is because you can produce this thing that's going to come and back bite you back in the ass right like the reason he's he's not treated well is because he falls outside of the I'm sure the patronage or whatever is going on at the same time he's pissed off because he's illegitimate and this idea of illegitimacy itself is a problem that's it that's that's what I read it as that shakespeare is more pointing to like these people have created this problem in Don John by treating him so poorly and if they had just been nice to him or treated him like everybody else we wouldn't be in this situation is sort of what's underneath that are we sure this is about art and writing I mean it's really about the power of language but shakespeare is always about the power of art and language is you know a form of art but what benedic and Beatrice are doing with each other here is absolutely about language could you get most of the gist from watching the signal adaptation absolutely yes and we are treating the 1993 Kenneth Branagh MS. Thompson joint as the signal adaptation there there are many of them there's a later one that joss weeden produced that like joss weeden is problematic for a lot of reasons but I've I read good reviews of that production but 93 is the way to go I think I think we even take the signal adaptation could you out of a decent adaptation like I think a good high school production you can have a hell of a time yeah you could have a good time at just about any version of this I think if you wouldn't want to see a movie musical tv series or muppets what would you choose okay I originally have in my notes here that I would love to see this as an and Juliet style jukebox musical I think that would be really fun but the more I've thought about it the more that I want a version of this that does what the basilar min Romeo and Juliet does like like I did miss edge and crackle when I was like watching the 1993 someone who's addicted to laudanum to show up in the 93 one is just very true it's a period piece it's like true to the original but I think Shakespeare is fun in an update or like a teen comedy it really like I'm retrospectively disappointed that there's not a like 1999 teen comedy inspired by this one in the way that like 10 things I hate about you is the taming of the shrew and you know that clueless Emma well taming of the shoe has a little bit of that Beatrice and benic dynamic in the main characters just more plot about why they can't be together and again it's a little more there's a little more frijan between the two of them at the same time I was thinking about this in this regard where we get like we'll get modern versions of Hamlet all the time like I think there's a Riz Ahmed right now one playing in yes there is one here but we'd never get a modern version of a comedy but with Shakespeare's language what we'll get is an adaptation we'll get like a clueless or something but we never get is like the actual language set yes in 1985 high school or something like that the film from 2023 anyone but you with glenn pal and sydney sweeney that is a retelling of much to do about nothing their names are ben and b but it's it's just the loose elements of the but they don't they can't do the Shakespeare thing because they're not Shakespeare right and it's not the Shakespeare language yeah yeah so I I think what I would take I'm on this I think I'm agreeing with you I would like to see a movie version of it but change the setting around to I don't know 1954 like like a dead poet society like a women's college and a men's college or something like I don't know but like use just use the language but bring it somewhere else I don't I agree with you I don't like the maybe I've seen too many of the we're vaguely English lords with sword stuff I've seen too much of that yeah I mean you can keep Denzel from the 93 adaptation but everything else I want updated yeah trivia adaptations rumors mr. tribute quotes and more you did the glenn pal said I did not know this I have not seen this and I did not know this this is a I mean watch it if you're hard up for airplane movie material is my take on anyone but you I think if I am doing a modern version of this where and and you're taking my thread that the most important pieces intellectual and language courtship I am not casting glenn pal and yes the main characters uh-huh yeah maybe get in the time machine and cast Ethan hawk and Julie delby or why not they could do it now yeah we we just got done saying benedict can be a trist don't really have an age cap how about yeah that we could do a recap maybe we'll save that for our office hours let's let's make that our office hours we're casting our ideal version of the version right now we can think about it together um you have a great stay weird good read so this is I knew I like this new bit we're doing which are looking at the most popular good reads quote the most I first I tried to guess what when I was looking this up what was going to be the most popular quote from this on good reads and I've been right for a couple of the books we've done I would never in a million years have gotten this one it's a quote from balthazar's song that starts signo more ladies signo more men were deceivers ever and it's like the whole song is the most popular quote I have to believe it's because of the signo more ladies men were deceivers ever bit uh and then number two is what I would have guessed which is I can see he's not in your good books said the messenger to be a trist no and if he were I would burn my library but you can usually count on good reads to pick a quote about books and make it the number one quote yeah I think I wonder if the signo more is the most popular because of that mumford and song's song oh popular song called signo more I thought about that too I would yeah I will believe just about anything when it comes to like the conspiracies around how quotes become popular on good reads which maybe we're the only people who have conspiracies about those things you have an awesome note that if you hadn't put it now I was going to put in this too about the prose poetry oh yeah I found this deep in my research but much ado about nothing contains more prose than any other Shakespeare play it's only about 25% inverse I think that's probably why it feels so much easier and more accessible Shakespeare's doing less of like in Hamlet for instance there's a lot of putting picking a certain word just because it fits the cadence or putting words in an counterintuitive order because it fits the iamic pentameter and since so little of much ado about nothing is in verse it's a more direct read through I wonder if contemporaneous experiences of the play would have noted that as making it feel more conversational making them for more quote-unquote realistic like almost like Robert Altman's characters talking over each other was a sign of trying to imbue the the work with realism I was trying to I was trying to make a case for why this might be because you would think if the primary attraction here is the wordplay between Beatrice and Benedict my suspicion or instant would have been to flower it up to really posify it but he went the other way which I guess that's why he shakes bird I'm not among many many other reasons but that's one yeah I have here that King Charles and his personal copy scratched out the title much ado about nothing and just wrote Beatrice and Benedict and I say I stand with King Charles I stand with the monarchy on that particular reading of this one yeah really telling like that and in most of like if you just surf around online looking for people chatting about Beatrice and Benedict or you know reviews and light commentary like not the scholarly stuff the thing that readers and people going to see the play like is Beatrice and Benedict the Claudio hero stuff opens the play and gets more screen time or more stage time they get a lot more language devoted to them and all of the scheming and stuff around them but it really is about Beatrice and Benedict hot takes Rebecca where you want to go if you have to slut shame you should at least do it with language like she knows the heat of a luxurious bed that is next level here bar god tier one liners um yeah you have another good way I mean oh yeah I mean I mean Efron's not Shakespeare but she's doing more of the things we like right yeah I just think that if you want to write a rom-com you should be required to read or see much to do about nothing and then see some Nora Efron before you are allowed to try to write the banter like just know what the highest level of that looks like so you know what to strive for I agree I already said the seeing seeing it perform to superior the mass the dancing the where are they who's saying what in front of whom the overhearing all that plays better when you see human bodies doing it I've got another hot take in my continued effort to to tell people about courtship which I had very little to do and it's been 30 years since this happened I think being around being someone that other people enjoy being around is an underrated courtship ritual and under just like that you're fun that you're a good you would be a good thing that you care about other people that you're you know something interesting to say now again I don't think slagging the other people all the time and because you're so much smarter them is going to work I think people think that's what the message to take I think being fun and interesting sort of in a general way around other people is a good way to find other people so yeah it's not real negging like this is yeah this is like playful appreciative yeah yeah so that's my other hot take further reading for books other things that are like this I mean there's so much inspired by this pride and prejudice is the most obvious classic that's inspired by the banter and then there are lists on Goodreads as I've said like you can google yourself a retelling or really any contemporary rom-com has some roots here yeah I'm going different medium this is an under no movie a death set starring Catherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy who themselves have a complicated romantic history so that's abuse it also weirdly written by Nora Efron's parents who were also screenwriters at the same time yeah yeah they were extremely heavy drinkers and it was problematic and there's a whole story to be told there oh this is a great idea for someone to take a movie based on Nora Efron's childhood in her career that could we get someone playing Nora Efron and her like a biopic of Nora Nora Efron don't you think that would work Rebecca I nominate Michelle Williams they look nothing alike but I feel like she would be great we'll take that to office hours anyway the setup here is it's also germane to like technological anxieties as one might have oh yeah Catherine Hepburn plays a corporate librarian reference librarian essentially where different pieces of this NBC like company will call in for fact checking and she's super smart and gets a bunch of wonderful lines and they're both older that was another thing that I was thinking about they're both I think that they're in their 60s by this point maybe a little bit older Tracy is quite old at this point and Spencer Tracy is a computer engineer who's been hired by the company to come in and put in a basically AI system to help answer the questions and they of course have a reason to be suspicious of each other but they are they are well matched pair and their lines together in their dynamic are just super fun at one point someone someone comes into the office and sort of is begins to try to spar with Catherine Hepburn and Tracy says to them careful you're in the big leagues and that's I think I think it's a good indication of what's going on and now it's it's also a great Christmas movie there's a lot of Christmas stuff going on we watch it every year around Christmas time so there you go too are you're at campaigns lighting up the dashboard but not the pipeline that's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions my boss asked for results so we opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had impressions cut the bull spend see revenue not just reach LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks advertise on LinkedIn spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit go to linkedin.com slash lead terms and conditions apply cocktail party crib sheet this is a thinner index card than we normally have the only thing I have here all the cool kids have Beatrice and Benic is their favorite hetero romcom duo they just do just mark it up anything else all right no let's get into our final yeah well red score here zero well red score each one gets a score from one to ten with ten being the highest one is historical importance two is readability three current relevance of central questions four book nerd read cred and five oh damn factor kind of an odd one to fit onto this Rebecca is it it is I mean historical importance less is less important than other shakespeare's but shakespeare is more important than almost anyone else so eight well yeah I was thinking something similar I guess it I guess it goes down to shakespeare plus how important do we think this dynamic of representing romantic love is which maybe is really important maybe it is really important yeah it's somewhere in the eight nine it doesn't hit a ten for me can't be ten can't be ten yeah but eight and a half nine eight and a half yeah let's go yeah I like that readability it's the one of the more readable shakespeare's but shakespeare is tough another one where we have to like take two versions of the I think I would go like a six or a seven it's the language isn't super it's not dense there aren't a ton of outdated references like you you know the folger edition that I read has the side by side pages where right you know you get all of the contemporary english translations of things and most of those are like it's you can still understand the vibe of the sentence without picking up the the specific meaning which I think means something like hamlet is a lot harder yeah there are sense and hamlet like I literally know what the point of the sentence is right yeah maybe like a six I don't know yeah and then we're creating a shakespeare curve because anything we say there's a concordance you're like is maybe that's a two I was just about to say like but then again maybe it's a three I don't know do you just split the difference and five yeah I think I think that's all I can do with shakespeare I can't I cannot bring myself to make it lower than that because of the pleasure of it yeah right like it takes you got it you got to get out your knife and fork but the bites are good if you if you can get it uh if you can get it served up right current relevance of central questions I mean romantic love is always around and yet it's not sort of pressing I don't know seven six five doesn't feel super urgent I think six let's go interesting one so many of these we have this cab wrapping if you've gone around to read it on your own to see what the deal is you get extra points if you were assigned it you get zero points so where does that leave us and it's less important as we were saying because it's less important than some of the other shakespears and it literally calls itself much to do about nothing so I don't know four sure sure okay so wait hold on I want to back up okay I think any shakespeare has to be at least six okay you read shakespeare on your own has to be okay we'll give it a six yeah oh damn factor now this is one where what we're looking for here is at its peak the peak moments of this text how much you go oh yeah that's the shit right there by that measure I'm looking at an eight and a half for some of these I think that's right yeah when they're really going at it and you're having the most fun the highs are high the highs are very high for that I feel good about this so I do eight and a half for a circle importance five for readability six for current relevance of central questions six for book nerd read cred and eight and a half for oh damn factor there we go what a joy to have a fun one an easy one yeah at the same time that's our show for detailed show notes you go to patreon.com slash zero to well read you could also sign up for our free newsletter and other membership options which includes early ad-freed episodes of this kind of episode but also one of the choices will allow you to stick around and listen to office hours in which we metaphorically pour self a dark liquor and a tumbler and sit in a leather chair around a fire and just sort of shoot the shoot the shit about what else we were thinking and noticed this one looks like we're going to recast a modern adaptation for ourselves and looking very much forward to that you can choose an email at zero to well read at book read comm recommendations corrections appreciations maybe you'll get in a mailbag maybe you won't into the future follow us on all the socials at zero to well read podcast.com thanks so much to thrift books for sponsoring the season of zero to well read and zero to well read is a proud member of the airwave podcast network Rebecca we will continue our merry war with episodes into the future thank you so always a pleasure