Lo! It is summer and I feel like reading Billy Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I was an impressionable young lass when Branagh's adaptation hit the big screen and since then the play has always seemed like the epitome of summer. Maybe it was the white linen dresses or the sunny Tuscan landscape?
One of the many things I love about the play is how Benedict and Beatrice play and fight with words. They match each other every step of the way - it is a dazzling display of verbal virtuosity and this has me falling in love with Shakespeare all over again.
BENEDICK
What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?BEATRICE
Is it possible disdain should die while she hath
such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?
Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come
in her presence.