1598 – “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never…”

1598 – “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never…”

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 2^nd 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.