Stoicism as Performance in Much Ado about Nothing

Introduction

This Element demonstrates how Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing models an understanding of the philosophy of Stoicism as performance, rather than as intellectual doctrine.

Historical Context

To do this, it explores how, despite many early modern cultural institutions' suppression of Stoicism's theatrical capacity, a performative understanding lived on in one of the most influential texts of the era, Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, and that this performativity was itself inherited from one of Castiglione's sources, Cicero's De Oratore.

Conclusion

The book concludes with a sustained reading of Much Ado to demonstrate how the play, in performance, itself acts as a Stoic exercise.