Much Ado About Nothing in a poem published in 1640, Leonard Digges wrote, "...let but Beatrice / And Benedick be seen, lo in a trice / The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full." After the theatres re-opened during the Restoration, Sir William Davenant staged "The Law Against Lovers" (1662), which inserted Beatrice and Benedick into an adaptation of "Measure for Measure". Another adaptation, "The Universal Passion", combined "Much Ado" with a play by Molière (1737). Shakespeare's text had been revived by John Rich at Lincoln's Inn Fields (1721). David Garrick first played Benedick in 1748 and continued to play him until 1776. The great
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