Much Ado about Nothing: A Comedy

Children's Literature

This entertaining retelling of the Shakespeare comedy includes extracts from the original text and is illustrated with expressive cartoon-like drawings. The story is preceded with an illustrated character list for easy reference. It is part of The Shakespeare Collection that includes retellings of Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. The text of each book has been reviewed by Kathy Elgin of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The distinguished publisher, Oxford University Press, pegs the age range at 7 to 10. The publisher's web site says that these lively books make Shakespeare accessible to a young audience, sparking a lifelong interest in the Bard and his world. Although the text is quite readable, it seems unlikely to me that the specified age group would be interested in a tale of love, hate, and deception set in the far past. Isn't there a danger that children 10 and under may be turned off forever by a tale so irrelevant to them? The book would seem to be more useful for those who want a quick introduction or review of the plot, perhaps before seeing the play. 2002, Oxford University Press,
— Janet Crane Barley

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up–These books depict Shakespeare’s plays through black-and-white paneled storytelling. Much Ado is set in Italy during the late 1800s, using Victorian clothing to set the scene. Vieceli uses different styles of manga art with great effect, from “chibi” or “super-deformed” characters to show excessive cuteness or childish banter to the dramatic, overflowing tears that exaggerate a character’s grief. This play is an excellent choice for adaptation, given its comedic moments and over-the-top emotions, and Appignanesi adapts it beautifully. King Lear is more challenging to convert to the style, made no less so by the choice of setting: the North American frontier, with Lear himself cast as an Algonquin chief. The traitorous Edmund is cast as one of the few African Americans. He is more sympathetic than in other productions, but he remains a villain. Ilya works hard to wrap real historical and cultural details into the panels, attempting authenticity instead of stereotypical images that too often accompany Native Americans in comics. However, there are some questions about the accuracy of the appearance of the fools particularly; they are costumed as “clowns,” one with a vaguely Southwestern appearance and the other wearing the entire hide of a wolf. In addition, Ilya places some gratuitous nudity and cleavage into the script, and the depiction of Lear’s daughter Regan as sometimes pale and sometimes dark-skinned is confusing. Still, both books are likely to draw manga readers further into Shakespeare’s plays, and students of the Bard may get new ideas about how his works can be presented to modernaudiences.–Alana Abbott, James Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford, CT

School Library Journal

Gr 3-5-These series titles aim to make the Bard's words accessible via free-prose adaptations. The formulaic retellings convey the plot lines of two popular comedies, but all evidence of his poetic genius is missing. Instead, modern slang expressions and/or cliches, such as Toby Belch's complaining of Olivia's "mooching around gloomy rooms" and Andrew's dancing "like a drunken flamingo," replace Shakespeare's more fluid language, trivializing his words. The characters are all included, introduced through pictures at the beginning of each volume, but all but the two main ones remain completely two-dimensional, and the relationships among them are unclear. This is particularly true in Much Ado, a complicated story with incidental characters whose purpose in the play is difficult to discern. For instance, Conrad and Borachio suddenly appear, but there is little sense as to why they are part of the plot against Claudio. The cartoon watercolor renderings, alternating between black-and-white and color, vary from quarter- to half-page in size and suggest the style used by animators. Thus, while they do reinforce the stories, there is a sameness among them, adding to the lack of character development. In fact the characters' images could be interchanged, even between plays, without much confusion. These books are no substitute either for the originals or even for Marchette Chute's classic Stories from Shakespeare (World, 1956; o.p.).-Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.