Much Ado About Nothing is no different, but we do not pick up the deeper resonances as quickly as an Elizabethan would, simply because of a shift in pronunciation. We get our first real glimpse of the pun in the title when Don Pedro says, "Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!" (The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, ed. Sylvan Barnet, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972, 2.3.57). As A. R. Humphreys explains, "That 'nothing', colloquially spoken, was close to or identical with 'noting' is the basis of Shakespearean puns, especially in a context of musical 'noting'. A similar pun, though non-musical, is conceivable here" (Introduction, The Arden Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing, London and New York: Methuen, 1981, 4).
The play is, in fact, driven by the "noting" of scenes or conversations and the characters' reactions to these observations; "noting" seems to be the thematic glue that binds the various plot elements together. When he wrote the play in 1598, Shakespeare assembled the Hero-Claudio plot line from bits and pieces of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (Canto V) and Spenser's The Faerie Queene (Book II), and added details about Claudio and Don Pedro from Bandello's La Prima Parte de la Novelle (Novella 22). For the characters of Beatrice and Benedick,