Shakespeare Ladies Club gained influence over Drury Lane their popularity and success began to be recognized in prologues to performances of new plays and new adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. For the premiere of "The Universal Passion", an adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing" by James Miller, the prologue included an “ecstatic eulogy of the Shakespeare Ladies Club”: Has slumb’ring lain near half a Cent’ry past, But now what Joy! to find the Night is o’er! To see the Lamp of Science shine once more; To see the Reign of Farce and Dulness end, And Albion’s noble Fair to Shakespear’s Sense attend. Fond to
Much Ado About Nothing and proneness to sexual lightness". In the patriarchal society of the play, the men's loyalties were governed by conventional codes of honour and camaraderie and a sense of superiority to women. Assumptions that women are by nature prone to inconstancy are shown in the repeated jokes on cuckoldry and partly explain Claudio's readiness to believe the slur against Hero. This stereotype is turned on its head in Balthazar's song "Sigh No More," which presents men as the deceitful and inconstant sex that women must suffer. A theme in Shakespeare is cuckoldry or the infidelity of a wife. Several of the