1. The play's title contains a pun: "Nothing" was pronounced like the modern "noting" and can mean here 1) nothing or 2) noting, as in musical notation, or 3) noting, as in to notice: "I note you are enjoying this play."

• Is this much ado about nothing, in our sense of nothing?
• Is there anything serious happening here or does the happy ending mean that everything is okay and no harm or even any significant change has occurred?

2. How is the musical pun on noting significant to the play?

• Where does this pun surface in other ways?
• How important are the songs of the play?
• Are there other references tomusic?

3. What about the third sense of noting (i.e. noticing) in this play?

• Who notices what?
• When does the ability to notice or to interpret what one sees become important and to whom?

4. What can we gather from Beatrice and Benedick from their first encounter in the play (I, i)?

• What has their past relationship been like?
• Why did Benedick leave for the wars in an army that probably was an all-volunteer army?
• What is Benedick like around women?

5. Is Beatrice like Kate of Shrew?

• Why or why not?
• What is her major characteristic?
• How does her family handle it?
• How do available men, like Don Pedro and Claudio and Benedick, respond to her?

6. What has Hero's past relationship (that is, before the wars) been like with Claudio?

• Why is she named Hero? (For that matter, where does Beatrice get her own name?)

7. What is the point of the low-class characters?

• Why do they commit such drastic malapropisms?
• What does it mean that they are able to understand each other despite egregious verbal mistakes?
• How do we compare them to the upper-class characters?

8. This is a play about both the strength of family bonds and the desperate importance of reputation in forming new family alliances.

Note the prince's (Don Pedro's) embarrassment at thinking he may have matched Claudio with a slut and Leonato's desire to die when his daughter is publicly humiliated.

• What codes does this set of social values place upon women in this society?
• How do Beatrice's exuberant speech and Hero's alleged infidelity relate to each other in this code?

9. Are Beatrice and Benedick a good match for each other? Are Hero and Claudio?