Shakespeare's "merry war" of wit between Beatrice and Benedick closes the Globe's open-air season on Bankside this autumn.
Shakespeare’s Globe closes its open-air season on Bankside with Much Ado About Nothing, from Monday 24 August to Saturday 24 October 2026. It is the last production before the theatre moves indoors for winter.
Shakespeare wrote the comedy in 1598 or 1599, the same years his company built the first Globe and he wrote Henry V and As You Like It.
Soldiers return to Messina from a war, and two courtships follow. Don John’s slander nearly wrecks Claudio’s marriage to Hero. Benedick and Beatrice, fighting what Leonato calls their “merry war”, are each fooled by friends into admitting love.
The title puns on the trick itself: “nothing” sounded close to “noting”, meaning gossip and overhearing. The plot turns on characters who hear what they should not and act on it.
The Globe stages it this season alongside As You Like It, its near-exact contemporary. This reconstruction opened in 1997 close to the site of the building Shakespeare’s company used, and plays the comedy outdoors, much as its first audience saw it.
Chelsea Walker directs, with Pippa Nixon as Beatrice, Ken Nwosu as Benedick and Jonathan McGuinness as Leonato.