 The play, Much Ado About Nothing, is one of Shakespeare's most famous comedies. There's lots of trickery, deception and plots as well as schemes that take place. And it can be a little bit confusing to follow all the different types of characters and of course to know the difference between sometimes Don John and Don Pedro. So what I thought would be really useful is essentially to summarise this play and the key events that happen in this play in a nutshell. So as you can see behind me, I've basically created a mind map of all the key events of the play that I'm going to go over and of course if you're studying this I would suggest taking notes but also this mind map should not replace actually reading the play. So let's begin with the key events that happen. In total I've summarised them as 11 main events that occur within the play. Now the play begins with us learning that Benedict Claudio and Don Pedro, they are visiting Messina after the end of a successful war which has obviously ended on their favour. So they are visiting Messina and they go specifically to see Lannato, a nobleman. And when they visit him they also meet his daughter Hiro and his niece Beatrice. Now what then happens is Claudio falls for Hiro. So Hiro remember is Lannato's daughter. However we also find that there's an interesting dynamic between Beatrice and Benedict. We find that they banter, they joke a lot, they kind of almost insult each other but in a hilarious way of course don't forget that this is a comedy. And we also learn that both of them are really against the idea of love. So whilst on the one hand you have Claudio who falls for Hiro and he is very much someone that embraces the concept of love, his friend Benedict is totally against this and also Beatrice in contrast to Hiro is also against the idea of love, she sees men as deliberately tricking women. Now we then learn that Lannato holds a masked ball in order to celebrate the successful end of the war and during this masked ball the engagement between Claudio and Hiro is announced. Now we then meet another key character in the play. This is Don John who is Don Pedro's illegitimate brother. Do you bear in mind that an illegitimate brother or a sister or an illegitimate sibling basically refers to when one parent so either the dad or the mum they have a main family and then they have an affair with a different person. So for example if the dad decides to have an affair with a mistress which is the case of course of Don Pedro's dad. He had a mistress, he had a child who he'd never recognised as his own and never took on as part of the main family. Hence Don John becomes very bitter because he's the child who is the product of this affair and he is the illegitimate brother. So we learn that Don John is of course the play's villain, he's very bitter and he plans to end Claudio and Hiro's relationship. So we get the sense that he's just this villain, this really negative, nasty, horrible villain. He thus tricks Claudio by making him believe that he saw Hiro being unfaithful on the night before their wedding. We find that of course Don John just takes happiness and causing mischief and causing misery to others maybe to make them feel the same level of misery that he feels. Then of course as I mentioned Claudio does believe him, he does believe his trickery in his plot and separately we learn that there's another plot in another scheme that's taking place. And this includes Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonardo who basically plot and they decide that they want both Benedict and Beatrice to basically believe in love. So what they decide to do is they decide that Benedict will overhear them discussing Beatrice's love for him and vice versa. So they decide to also be in the presence of Beatrice who oversears them talking about Benedict's love for her. This plot succeeds and both Beatrice and Benedict realise that they love each other. Then at Hiro and Claudio's wedding, so don't forget that of course Claudio at this stage mistakenly that Hiro was unfaithful to him, at their wedding Claudio publicly denounces her and this causes her to faint and the priest, Leonardo, Beatrice and Benedict pretend that she is dead until they can prove her innocence. So other plots and other schemes and tricks are taking place. Then later on the Watchmen hair baratio and whose Don John's friend bragging about the successful plot and the successful trick that Don John played on Claudio and this leads Beratio and Conrad to be arrested for this wrongdoing. Then the truth is ultimately revealed that Hiro is innocent. This was a complete trick by Don John and Claudio grieves for her because don't forget that Claudio believes that Hiro is dead. This is part of the comedy element of the play. Then Leonardo punishes Claudio. So Leonardo of course knows that his daughter is not dead. He punishes Claudio by demanding that he marry his niece who is basically a masked woman and Claudio agrees to this. Of course, he's the one that caused the death of Hiro so he can't say no. Now Claudio then heads to the church to marry this masked woman who turns out to be Hiro and basically the play ends with everyone being really happy at the wedding and Benedict proposing to Beatrice at the end. So that's really it when it comes to understanding this play in a nutshell and this comedy. Do make sure you check out my following videos where I'm going to be going over all the main characters in this play and the key quotations to remember as well as the word level analysis you should do when you're writing essays about these characters. Thanks so much for listening.