Which play features the characters Beatrice and Benedick?

Beatrice and Benedick are the sharp-tongued lovers at the centre of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. They begin the comedy locked in a witty verbal feud, but friends trick each into believing that the other secretly loves them.

The play is set mainly in Messina, Sicily, at the home of Leonato, where Beatrice lives as his niece and Benedick arrives with Don Pedro’s soldiers. Their relationship forms one of the play’s two romantic plots, alongside the more troubled courtship of Claudio and Hero. Beatrice and Benedick’s banter, intelligence and resistance to conventional romance make them among Shakespeare’s most enduring comic couples.

The title also contains a wordplay clue: “noting” and “nothing” were near-homophones in Shakespeare’s time. Eavesdropping, rumours and mistaken impressions drive much of the plot. The play was probably written in 1598 or 1599 and was included in the First Folio in 1623, although it had already appeared in a quarto printed in 1600.