If anyone tries to tell you that Shakespeare is stuffy or boring or highbrow, just remember that the word “nothing” was used in Elizabethan era slang as a euphemism for “vagina”.

Shakespeare has a play called Much Ado About Nothing, which you could basically read in modern slang as Freaking Out Over Pussy. And that’s pretty much exactly what happens in the play.

kiralamouse

It’s also a pun with a third meaning. There’s the sex sense of much ado about “nothing”, there’s the obvious sense that people today see, and then there’s the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, “nothing” was pronounced pretty much the same as “noting”, which was a term used for gossip. So, Flamewar Over Rumors works as a title interpretation, too.

The reason we call Shakespeare a genius is that he can make a pussy joke in the same exact words he uses to make biting social commentary about letting unverified gossip take over the discourse.

ms-demeanor

Hey, hey, hey, you’re forgetting the fourth thing, that noting (again, pronounced note-ing) was a pun on music NOTES and that’s why there’s a shitload of singing and dancing and puns about singing and dancing because Much Ado About Noting is basically Freaking Out Over Pussy The Musical: Gossip Making a Mountain out of a Molehill.