Beatrice and Benedick

Hidden in the language of Shakespeare's best-loved comedy Much Ado About Nothing are several clues to an intriguing tale. It seems that the witty lovers Beatrice and Benedick had a previous, youthful love affair which ended bitterly. But how did they meet, why did they part, and what brought them together again?

Messina, Sicily, 1588. Beatrice of Mantua, newly orphaned at just twenty, is brought to live at the court of her kindly uncle Leonato, to be companion and governess to his ten-year-old daughter Hero. That fateful summer the Spanish lordling Don Pedro visits for a month-long sojourn with his regiment. In his company is the young soldier Benedick of Padua. Benedick and Beatrice begin to wage their merry war of wit which masks the reality that they dance a more serious measure, and the two are soon deeply in love. But the pair are cruelly parted by natural disaster and man-made misunderstanding.

Oceans apart, divided by war and slander, Beatrice and Benedick begin their ten-year odyssey back to Messina and each other. Their fates seem strangely connected to seafarer Thomas Book, a Londoner who hints at a clandestine mission for the English Queen. But who is the mysterious Englishman? And what is his peculiar interest in their story, and that of all other Italian lovers?

In a journey that takes us from the sunlit southern courts of Sicily to the gorgeous Renaissance cities of the north, Beatrice and Benedick tells the tale of Shakespeare's most appealing lovers and why they were destined to be apart before they could be together.