In the film version of Much Ado About Nothing, adapted as well as directed by Kenneth Branagh (who also plays Benedick), Messina has disappeared. Outside the tightly knit family world of Leonato’s Messina, but never visited in the play, there seem to be only that unidentified battlefield on which Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon, has just defeated his bastard brother, the vicious and disaffected Don John, and those Italian cities in which Leonato’s other aristocratic guests were born: Florence in the case of Count Claudio, Don Pedro’s youthful favorite, Padua in that of Benedick, the prince’s older and comically misogynistic companion.

Although Leonato’s town house, like that of his brother Antonio, is grand enough to boast a spacious garden, in which some of the action takes place, no one in this play ever escapes to the equivalent of As You Like It’s Forest of Arden, the wood near Athens of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or even Petruchio’s country estate in The Taming of the Shrew.

The house of Leonato, Governor of Messina, stands in a Sicilian city of churches, law courts, and jails, where crowded streets as well as private dwellings need to be patrolled and kept quiet at night-however inefficiently-by Constable Dogberry and his shambling subordinates. Now her rules could mean his family's ruin.Much Ado About Nothing (1598) is one of the most resolutely urban of Shakespeare’s comedies. until a scandal from the past resurfaces.

With Owen Anabelle enjoys pleasures she never imagined. Not only does Owen nip Anabelle's extortion plans in the bud, the devilishly handsome Duke soon has the sexy seamstress dreaming of more than silks and satins. Her list keeps her (somewhat) honest-until she encounters Owen Sherbourne, the Duke of Huntford. Never enter into any form of social interaction with a client. Never reveal the secrets of a paying client. Never request payment from someone who cannot afford it. To make up for her misdeeds, Anabelle keeps to a firm set of rules: It isn't something she's proud of, but the reluctant blackmailer needs the money to care for her gravely ill mother. A dressmaker in London's busiest shop, Miss Anabelle Honeycote overhears the ton's steamiest secrets-and (occasionally) uses them to her advantage.

When She Was Wicked by Anne Barton