Sigh No More, Ladies

Aimee Morris
Nov 18, 2018
2 min read

Updated: Nov 24, 2018

Falling for Shakespeare (and a young Kenneth Branagh).

It all started with the opening scene of Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (1993) in a double period of English Lit. Emma Thompson, as Beatrice, rests atop the trunk of an olive tree reciting Balthasar’s ditty ‘Sigh no more, ladies’ to her fellow picnickers in the bucolic Chianti countryside.

The party spots Don Pedro and his men - including young Branagh as Benedick - approaching on horseback in the valley below, which provokes a flurry of activity: the picnickers rush in a collective squeal towards Leonato’s house, garments billowing in the Tuscan breeze, while Kenneth and co. gallop in triumphantly.

Slow motion shots capture each rider atop his steed, a dashing display of masculine prowess - and in all cases a very fine head of hair. Sigh no more? I think not. If there’s any appropriate response to this scene it’s very heavy sighing indeed. And that’s before everyone proceeds to disrobe and bathe with gay abandon.

My fellow classmates trotted off to lunch after our double English Lit period, unfazed. As if they hadn’t seen a twenty-something Kenneth Branagh in slow motion atop a burly beast; as if they hadn’t been enthralled by Beatrice and Benedick’s caustic exchanges and enraptured by the transformation of their bitter loathing into the most joyous and soppiest of love.

By contrast, I staggered out of the classroom in a daze. 16-year-old me was captured, heart, mind, body and soul. There was no turning back. By the end of Branagh’s Much Ado, I had fallen in love with Shakespeare, hook, line and sinker (not to mention Branagh himself, but more on that later).

That evening I went home and learned ‘Sigh no more’ by heart, reciting it to all who’d lend a reluctant ear. Thankfully, for all involved, auditions for the school’s open air production of Romeo and Juliet came around soon after, and I’d spend the remaining months of the school year getting stuck into the character of Juliet’s Nurse. More on that anon.

I leave you with a taste of Branagh's heartwarming Much Ado...