SOURCE: “Anticipation and Retrospect in Much Ado about Nothing,” Essays in Criticism, Vol. XLI, No. 4, October, 1991, pp. 277-90.

In the essay that follows, Edwards considers Much Ado about Nothing as “a play much preoccupied with … the narrative ordering of human life.”

The relationship between life and stories about life has exercised a number of philosophers, theologians, literary critics and experimental novelists in recent years. Barbara Hardy, who has already made an important contribution to these discussions, now draws our attention to Shakespeare's interest in the ‘narrative motions’ of the human mind (‘Shakespeare's Narrative: Acts of Memory’, E in C, XXXIX. ii. April 1989, pp. 93-115).¹

A leitmotif of Barbara Hardy's analyses has been that works of narrative art reflect and explore the everyday (and night) activities of the human mind: narrative form is derived from rather than imposed upon real life. With the intention of countering this view Louis...