Much Ado About Nothing - Analysis - Themes and Motifs - Noting

Another motif is the play on the words nothing and noting, which in Shakespeare’s day were homophones. Taken literally, the title implies that a great fuss ("much ado") is made of something which is insignificant ("nothing"), such as the unfounded claims of Hero’s infidelity. The title could also be understood as Much Ado About Noting. Much of the action is in interest in and critique of others, written messages, spying, and eavesdropping. This is mentioned several times, particularly concerning "seeming", "fashion", and outward impressions. Nothing is a double entendre, "an O-thing" (or "n othing" or "no thing") was Elizabethan slang for "vagina", evidently derived from the pun of a woman having "nothing" between her legs.

Examples of noting as noticing occur in the following instances: (1.1.131–132)

Claudio: Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signor Leonato?
Benedick: I noted her not, but I looked on her.

and (4.1.154–157).

Friar: Hear me a little,

For I have only been silent so long
And given way unto this course of fortune

By noting of the lady.

At (3.3.102–104), Borachio indicates that a man’s clothing doesn’t indicate his character:

Borachio: Thou knowest that the fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak is nothing to a man.

A triple play on words in which noting signifies noticing, musical notes and nothing occurs at (2.3.47–52):

Don Pedro: Nay pray thee, come;

Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,
Do it in notes.
Balthasar: Note this before my notes:
There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.
Don Pedro: Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks –

Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!

Don Pedro’s last line can be understood to mean, "Pay attention to your music and nothing else!" The complex layers of meaning include a pun on "crotchets," which can mean both "quarter notes" (in music) and whimsical notions.

The following are puns on notes as messages: (2.1.174–176),

Claudio: I pray you leave me.
Benedick: Ho, now you strike like the blind man – ‘twas the boy that stole your meat, and you’ll beat the post.

in which Benedick plays on the word post as a pole and as mail delivery in a joke reminiscent of Shakespeare’s earlier advice "Don’t shoot the messenger"; and (2.3.138–142)

Claudio: Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.
Leonato: O, when she had writ it and was reading it over, she found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

in which Leonato makes a sexual innuendo concerning sheet as a sheet of paper (on which Beatrice’s love note to Benedick is to have been written) and a bedsheet.