'MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING' was first printed | blance ceases. Ariosto found the incident
in 1600. There was no other separate edition.
The variations between the text of the
quarto and that of the folio are very few.
The chronology of this comedy is sufficiently
fixed by the circumstance of its publication
in 1600, coupled with the fact that it is not
mentioned by Meres in 1598.

of a lady betrayed to suspicion and danger,
by the personation of her own waiting-wo-
man, amongst the popular traditions of the
south of Europe-this story has been traced
to Spain-and he interwove it with the
adventures of his Rinaldo as an integral
part of his chivalrous romance. Spenser
has told a similar story in 'The Faery Queen'
(Book II., Canto IV.). The European story,
which Ariosto and Spenser have thus adopted,
has formed also the groundwork of one of
Bandello's Italian novels. It was for Shak-
spere to surround the main incident with
those accessories which he could nowhere
borrow, and to make of it such a comedy as
no other man has made-a comedy not of
manners or of sentiment, but of life viewed
under its profoundest aspects, whether of the
grave or the ludicrous. The title of this
comedy, rightly considered, is the best ex-

"The story is taken from Ariosto," says Pope. To Ariosto then we turn; and we are repaid for our labour by the pleasure of reading that long but by no means tedious story of Genevra, which occupies the whole of the fifth book, and part of the sixth, of the 'Orlando Furioso.' "The tale is a pretty comical matter," as Harrington quaintly pronounces it. The famous town of St. Andrew's forms its scene and here was enacted something like that piece of villainy by which the Claudio of Shakspere was deceived, and his Hero "done to death by slanderous tongues." But here the resem-positor of the idea of this comedy. It is "a