1598 – “Sigh no
more, ladies, sigh no more,
Although
1598 saw the publication of his plays Love's
Labour's Lost and Henry IV Part 1,
Shakespeare may not have received any money for these publications. The listing
of Shakespeare’s name on as the principle actor for Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour meant that he must have still been pursuing
the triple life as playwright, actor and country land owner.
After the turmoil of the previous
couple of years, Shakespeare must have been thinking much about what makes
human nature when he penned ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in 1598. It may seem like
1598 was a lean year for Shakespeare on paper but the fact of the matter is, he
was probably reaping the benefits of revivals of his most successful recent
plays ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and the Henry
IV plays. He also knew that he must milk the Henry IV plays as much as he could
before writing the most anticipated play of this sequence ‘Henry V’.
The emergence back in 1598 in the
streets of London of so many soldiers who had been fighting the wars in Ireland
meant that Shakespeare was not lost for stories and background for ‘Henry V’. He would have been collecting
stories and material for this play, but Shakespeare must have felt that the rumours
that abounded about what was really happening in Ireland with the wars and
rebellion must have made writing Henry V in
1598 a little too controversial. These rumours were further compounded by
stories that Elizabeth I had started to make political overtures to James VI in
Scotland. Shakespeare would have put this project on the shelf for the moment. On
the business front, after buying the 2nd biggest house in Stratford,
Shakespeare had also bought a quite large granary in Stratford upon Avon.
So with business in order, a
history play almost complete, Shakespeare turned to more poetic pursuits. He
probably continued writing sonnets and was thinking about writing a comedy when
one day after greeting a bright spring day, Shakespeare went out into the
streets of London and he probably saw soldiers in the street and lovers on the
doorsteps. It was then that it probably occurred to Shakespeare to write a
comedy set in the Italian country town of Messina as soldiers return from war.
As the talk of Ireland and the wars filled the streets, Shakespeare probably
thought of creating a play with meandering plots dependent on overheard
conversations, mischievous plotting and misunderstandings. Shakespeare
always liked multiple plots and having events within one plot balanced by other
events so with these ideas in mind Shakespeare started to write Much Ado About Nothing.
