A comedy in five acts, first performed in 1598-99 and printed in a quarto edition from the author's fair papers in 1600. The play takes an ancient theme--that of a woman falsely accused of unfaithfulness--to brilliant comedic heights. Shakespeare was influenced by English translations of Matteo Bandello's Novelle and Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, as well as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, in writing this tale of two pairs of lovers.

In the idyllic Italian town of Messina lives a kindly, respectable old nobleman named Leonato. Leonato shares his house with his lovely young daughter, Hero, his playful, clever niece, Beatrice, and his elderly brother, Antonio.

As the play begins, Leonato is preparing to welcome some friends home from a war. The friends include Don Pedro, a prince who is a close friend of Leonato's, and two fellow soldiers: Claudio, a well-respected young nobleman, and Benedick, a clever man who cannot seem to stop making witty jokes about everything--and everyone--he meets. They are also accompanied by Don John, the illegitimate brother of Don Pedro, who is sullen and bitter and enjoys making trouble for others.

When the soldiers arrive at Leonato's home, Claudio quickly falls in love with Hero. In the meantime, Benedick and Beatrice resume their insulting war of wits, which they have carried on with each other for a long time.

Claudio and Hero pledge their love to one another. To pass the time in the week before they will be married, the lovers and their friends decide to play a little game: they want to get Beatrice and Benedick, who are obviously made for each other, to stop arguing and fall in love.

The trickery begins as Don Pedro (with the help of Leonato and Claudio) attempts to sport with Benedick and Beatrice in an effort to make the two of them fall in love. Likewise, Hero and her waiting woman help to set up Beatrice. Both Benedick and Beatrice will think that the other has professed a great love for them. Their tricks are enormously successful, and in no time, Beatrice and Benedick are madly in love.

The marriage of Claudio to Hero is set to go. Don John-ostensibly reconciled with his brother-despises Claudio, however, and plots against him. First, he tells Claudio that Pedro wants Hero for himself; next, he enlists the aid of his henchman Borachio and one of Hero's gentlewomen disguised as Hero and has his servant Borachio make love to Margaret, Hero's serving-woman, on Hero's balcony in the darkness of the night, and he brings Don Pedro and Claudio to watch. Believing that he has seen Hero being unfaithful, the enraged Claudio humiliates Hero by suddenly accusing her of lechery on the day of their wedding, and abandoning her at the altar. Hero's stricken family and Friar Francis and enlisting the aid of Leonata, who announces that Hero has died suddenly of shock and grief, in reality hiding her away, while they wait for the truth to become known. In the aftermath of the rejection, Benedick and Beatrice finally confess their love to one another.

Fortunately, Borachio has been overheard bragging about his crime (and the 1,000 ducats paid him). he is finally arrested by the heads of the bumbling local police, Dogberry and Verges. Everyone learns of the exoneration of Hero, and Claudio, who believes she is dead, grieves for her. Leonato tells Claudio that, as "punishment," he wants Claudio to tell everybody in the city how innocent Hero was. He also wants Claudio to marry Leonato's "niece"--who, he says, is a girl who looks much like the dead Hero.

Claudio goes to church with the others, preparing to marry the mysterious, masked woman who he thinks is Hero's cousin. When Hero herself is revealed, he is overwhelmed with joy. Then Benedick asks Beatrice if she will marry him, and after some more arguing they agree, and are wed alongside. After which, they receive the news of the apprehension of the bastard Don John and the joyful lovers all have a merry dance before they celebrate their double wedding.

Shakespeare sets up a contrast between the conventional Claudio and Hero, who have the usual expectations of each other, and Beatrice and Benedick, who are highly sceptical of romance and courtship and, seemingly, each other. Claudio is deceived by the jealous Don John into believing that Hero is unfaithful to him--and with his friend and mentor Don Pedro. Don John's plot is eventually unveiled by the bumbling constable Dogberry and his sidekicks. Meanwhile, Beatrice and Benedick have "a kind of merry war" between them, matching wits in clever repartee that anticipates other playfully teasing literary couples. Each is tricked into believing that the other is in love, which allows the true affection between them to grow. At the play's end, both couples are united.

While the play is full of deliberate confusions and mistaken identities, the audience is aware of the truth; only the characters remain confused. Shakespeare eschewed devices of obvious magic or disguise of sex, which he employed in other comedies. The wit and ambiguity of the dialogue and the exquisite pacing of the action sustain the play, which remains popular in repertory.