Much Ado Much Ado Much Ado, Bernard J. Taylor's musical version of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing", was recorded as a concept album in 1995, featuring Paul McGann, Peter Karrie and other West End stars. It received its world premiere at Stratford-on-Avon in 1996. It was partly inspired by the Kenneth Branagh film version. The most recent production was in Budapest, Hungary, opening in June 2007. Terry Wardrope, critic for the European musicals magazine "Words and Music", wrote: "The usual fine cast once again give full throat to a grand selection of songs. One of the strongest facets of Mr Taylor's musical
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