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Much Ado About NothingPlease see the bottom of this page for detailed explanatory notes and related resources.
Next: Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 3 _________ Explanatory Notes for Act 1, Scene 2 From Much Ado About Nothing. Ed. A. Wilson Verity. London: Rivingtons. 1 Cousin. Really 'nephew.' But these terms of relationship were used very loosely. So nephew is put for cousin in I Henry VI, ii. 5. 64; for grandchild in Othello, i. i. 112; and in Marlowe's Dido Queen of Carthage, ii. I. 335, Venus addresses Ascanius thus: "Sleep, my sweet nephew, in these cooling streams." Spenser, in the Faerie Queene, book iii. canto 3, stanza 13, has coosen = 'kindred;' and elsewhere he uses nephews exactly in the same sense as the Latin nepotes. Derivation, consobrinus, 'the child of a mother's sister.' 6 As the event, &c. 'That shall be as the issue shows.' Only the later Folios read event; first Folio and Quarto have events. 8 Thick-pleached. 'Closely interwoven.' Pleach is from the Old French plessier "to plash, plait young branches, one within another." (Cotgrave.) ... We have "hedges even-pleached" in Henry V. v. 2. 42; and "pleached arms" = 'folded arms' in Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 14. 73. Compare, too, the present play, iii. i. 7. In old-fashioned gardens one sometimes finds rows of yew-trees along a pathway trained to meet overhead, and so form a "thick-pleached alley." 9 Orchard. 'Garden.' Cf. Hamlet, i. 5. 35, "Sleeping in my orchard." Orchard only means 'herb-gard,' from A. S. wyrtgeard, and the literal use of the word is regular in Shakespeare and Elizabethan writers. So "Orchard of the Hesperides" frequently takes the place of the more usual "Garden of the Hesperides." 12 Accordant. 'Willing.' 13 To take the present time, &c. An exact parallel occurs in All's Well, V. 3. 39, "Let's take the instant by the forward top." Everyone will recollect the proverb, "Take time by the forelock," and some will remember Othello, iii. i. 52, 53 — "To take the saf'st occasion by the front18 Appear itself. Perhaps the verb is reflexive. Dyce would read approve. 21 Enter Attendants. So the Cambridge editors. The quarto and folios have no stage-direction, and the close of the scene is rather confusing. Probably Antonio leaves the stage after Leonato says, "Go you, and tell her of it." In the remaining lines Leonato must be speaking to the attendants, though it is strange that he should address them as cousins, even if we interpret cousins to mean kinsmen. ___________ How to cite the explanatory notes: ___________ Related Articles
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