In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare created one of the greatest verbal sparring matches in all of literature, echoes of which can be heard in the sophisticated comic dialogue of such late masters as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Noel Coward. Throughout the play, the proud would-be lovers Beatrice and Benedick circle each other warily, and as they draw closer and closer to their inevitable union, their scathing witticisms and sly innuendoes reach a feverish intensity that befits the passionate longing they both vainly seek to deny. Much Ado About Nothing is at once a sobering examination of dishonesty and deception, and a boisterous celebration of that over whelming natural penomenon we call love.