As a drama and English teacher I have found that working with Shakespeare is often difficult for the students simply because of the sheer mass of some of the plays.

So, I have shortened several of Shakespeare's works for performance and use in my classroom. I do not rearrange the script, I simply trim it a little.

This Much Ado script is 56 pages long (cut from 92) and divided into scenes, not acts and scenes--31 scenes to be exact. Each scene is labled based on the major event/action in the part of the play.

I have used this both as a performance script, and as a text in my 10th grade English classroom. All the essential events/characters/moments are present

**A note: There is a character list at the beginning of the play. "Leonato" ischanged to "Leonata" and is referred to as "aunt and mother" rather than "uncle and father." This is because when this was performed and when I have used it in class, it is in a predomoninantly female group. If you are more comfortable with the traditional male Leonato, you can simply subsitute his name and change the female pronouns to male.

Approximate running time for performance: 100 minutes.

--Mel Walker