Much Ado About Nothing

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The idea of class, especially as it relates to sex, is an important theme in the play, which was probably written a little before 1600. What do you know about the classes of Elizabethan England? How did the upper and lower classes interact with one another?

This question connects to the theme of Sex and Class.

Teaching Suggestion: Elizabethan England was divided into a few socioeconomic classes, with the hereditary nobility at the top, gentry and merchants in the middle, and peasantry at the bottom. These classes determined virtually every aspect of a person’s life, from their occupation to the way they dressed. Since people were generally born into their class, there were limited opportunities for social mobility. The bulk of people’s social relationships were also formed within their social class: It was not common or desirable for a noble, for example, to marry a commoner or a peasant. In Much Ado About Nothing, the interconnected themes of Sex and Class are at the heart of the characters’ conflicts and interactions.