SOURCE: Dennis, Carl. “Wit and Wisdom in Much Ado About Nothing.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 13, no. 2 (spring 1973): 223-37.

In the following essay, Dennis explores the two modes of perception he maintains are at work in Much Ado about Nothing: wit and wisdom. In the end, Dennis asserts, wit is portrayed as an unreliable mode of perception.

Recent critics of Much Ado About Nothing have tended to agree with Mr. Graham Storey's convincing suggestion that the play is about “man's irrestible propensity to be taken in by appearances.”¹ “Deception,” Mr. Storey writes, “operates at every level of Much Ado: it is the common denominator of the three plots, and its mechanism—eavesdroppings, mistakes of identity, disguises and maskings, exploited heresay—are the stuff of the play.”² What causes the characters to be so often deceived is one of the central critical questions that the play raises. Mr. Storey...