Videos on BBC's "Much Ado About Nothing," featuring Benedick and Beatrice

On this post are three scenes from the BBC premiere of Much Ado About Nothing, where the classic play is adapted into a British broadcasting station situation. These scenes depict the tensions between Benedick and Beatrice. In the play they throw painful words at one another. It is a chemistry that can be considered acidic but the two elements work very well together.

In the classic play, Benedick and Beatrice always fight with each other, with Beatrice usually coming up with more sharper lines just to make Benedick the soldier look bad. She descibes him as "no less than a stuffed man; but for the stuffing - well, we are all mortal." Beatrice dubs him as "Signor Montano," meaning an upward thrust in fencing. But what Beatrice is really implying is that Benedick climbs the social ladder through means of "mounting."

Benedick, a reluctant suitor towards Beatrice, claims that he will never wed, to say "Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; and the fine is (for the which I may go the finer), I will live a bachelor."

With the 2005 BBC version, these scenes show that little has changed despite modern times taking over.







This scene in depicts the "masquerade" scene where Sarah Parish's Beatrice thought she was speaking to Claudio but instead talks to good old Benedick in a helmet.






And this scene is even funnier yet, with Damian Lewis playing an effective, lovesick Benedick who realizes his affections for Beatrice while playing with a round object.







This scene taking place on a beach depicts the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice at its hottest, as them bickering with each other is one of Much Ado About Nothing's high points in the classic story.

All I have to say is that I wish I could see the full length version of this adaptation!

- Kristopher

Shakespeare's Phrases

Shakespeare created hundreds of phrases used in the English language today that were first written into his plays. Some examples include "Woe is me," "A plague on both your houses," "All that glitters is not gold" and "We have seen better days."

For Much Ado About Nothing, phrases like "As merry as the day is long" and "Lie low." Shakespeare was also fond of inventing new words, as from Much Ado comes "employer" and "mortifying." More words and phrases with their respective plays can be found here.

Even more phrases can be found here.

- Linda

- Further additions by Kristopher

Much Ado About Nothing - A Beginning Summary

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy with a constant play on words and words being used as weapons of rhetoric against hapless characters on many levels. Even the title is played with, as "Nothing" is pronounced "noting" in the style of Elizabethan speech. Various puns on different subject matter of the play take part in the script. Much Ado About Nothing also uses the "love geography" mechanic of different characters falling for one another.

There are two central pairs of lovers: Benedick and Beatrice, with Claudio and Hero. Both Benedick and Claudio are not what you call true "gentlemen" in a sense, for even though they vie for their loves, their affections always go all over the place!

So will the lovers unite? Will there be a happy ending? For more on plot analysis, click here.

Much Ado About Nothing is a play following a tradition of adaptations taking place in modern times. BBC broadcasted a TV drama of the play taking place in a broadcast television news station setting. You can view more information here.

- Kristopher