The MN Guide to Much Ado About Nothing

So you see, there are two couples, Claudio and Hero—Claudio's a man and Hero's a woman, just in case you can't tell—and Beatrice and Benedict. Beatrice and Benedict are the kind who swear they will never marry—to marry is to be a cuckold! he says; men with beards and men without are both detestable to me! she says. But they fall in love anyway through a trick played on them by their friends.

Claudio and Hero are the wooing, swooning type who almost didn't get married because Don John and his bawdy associates stage a hanky-panky ruckus at the window of Hero's room, convincing Claudio that Hero is a woman without honour. Clausio refuses to marry her on their wedding day; so she swoons, naturally.

Eventually, everything comes to light, but not before Hero is presumed dead and Claudio is set to marry someone else. It ends with a song and dance; both couples are happy, which means that we come full circle and it was really—

______________________much ado about nothing.

Which also means much ado about female genitalia, by the way.