Much Ado About Obscenity

The Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1598-9) was written at a time when the codes of rudeness, obscenity and indecency were socially less stringent. In the sixteenth century England, some tolerance prevailed towards the obscene language, here understood as the transgressing lexicon to refer to sexuality inserted by the playwright in his production by means of innuendos, metaphors, allusions and puns. Nevertheless, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the attempts to moralize the plays for the sake of decorum and rectitude, obscenity was eliminated from the Shakespearean work, which had then become canonical. After all, it was argued that the use of lower forms of language had been due to the playwright s desire to please less refined audiences. If on one hand that sort of action prevented Shakespeare s work from being completely excluded from school textbooks and family shelves, on the other, it led those who translate and adapt his works to ignore expressions with which Shakespeare built his lewd comical images. This article explores the choices for adapting the lewd play with words in the BBC adaptation Much Ado About Nothing, an episode broadcasted in 2005, under Brian Percival s direction, as part of the project Shakespeare Retold. I am particularly interested in the way Percival, in his role of director, handled the lewd innuendos, metaphors, allusions and puns found in the Shakespearean text in his rereading to be viewed at spectators homes, in many instances, in a family setting

Literature: history, themes, analysis · Psychology · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Theater, Performance, and Music History

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