Much Ado About Nothing Poem by Douglas Scotney

1.
*'You embrace your charge too willingly'

'Thanks for putting me up, good man,
when the opposite's all the rage, '
said a self-deprecating man at the door.

'Don't mention it, ' the good man said,
'To not be a fashionable man,
I'll even be kind to a boor.'

2.
Benedick I

About and in his opposite
(a lady of preposterous wit)
Benedick does what Benedick does:
doesn't take 'no' for an answer.

Benedick having done what Benedick does,
she tells him of all she'd rather,
and that instead of being Benedick's,
her baby's its own father.

3.
Benedick II

There's not a lot made of Will's double-entendre
that can get a reader off;
this is a 'higher' interpretation.

Very, very funny nevertheless;
not without a tear;
a cast of beauty and talent;
the colour won't distract;
a contemporary detective story within
with a couple of bumbling cops;
laugh at a bark as Dick tries out a song.

Aside from the love going on,
as evil looks as good as good
good doesn't note the evil.

To 'Much Ado About Nothing'
get thyself off,
dear Jolyon.



4.
Cupid Unbound

Cupid,
sleepless on a breast,
rued bowing to Beauty
and jealous Lasting Love,
heard a boastful man,
on him pressed his dart,
had his first night's sleep;
Don Pedro had had his last.

5.
Benedick III

As soul responded to the sound of strings,
mind found music funny
and, fixed on the thought of things,
rathered horns for the money.