Scenery

Scenery in this time period was believed to be very bland, simple, and sometimes non-existant. Much Ado About Nothing needed something more and advanced to comply with what was going on in the story. John Addington Symonds "It is difficult for us to realize the simplicity with which the stage was mounted in the London theatres. Scenery may be said to have been almost wholly absent. Even in Masques performed at Court, on which immense sums of money were lavished, and which employed the ingenuity of men like Inigo Jones [reigns of James I and Charles I], effect was obtained by groupings of figures in dances, by tableaux and processions, gilded chariots, temples, fountains, and the like, far more than by scene-painting. Upon the public stage such expenditure had, of course, to be avoided. Attention was concentrated on the actors, with whose movements, boldly defined against a simple background, nothing interfered. The stage on which they played was narrow, projecting into the yard, surrounded on all sides by spectators.” while Dr. H. H. Furness says, "in a note on Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare Variorum), I think there were more scenery and stage accessories in those days than is generally believed.”
   Much Ado About Nothing used multi-leveled stages in order to provide different areas of acting and helped move the stage directions within the show. Giving the actors the opportunity to have different acting spaces without spending money on backdrops and painting was revolutionary and helped the audience understand where everythign was in the play

Eva Turner Clark (1941)
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