Exclusive Extras
Inside Much Ado About You
Warning! In describing relations between characters, I may wreck a book for you by making it clear who someone marries, or the outcome of a book. Please do not read about The Inside Take if you're wary of knowing who is paired with whom!
- After Much Ado was published, a reader named Ashley pointed out that Lucius Felton and Lucius Malfoy, from the Harry Potter series, seem quite similar in their overall appearance, “snake-like” qualities, and the fact that they both carry canes. She also noted that the actor who plays Lucius’s son, Draco, in the movies is named Tom Felton. Eureka! I read each of J.K. Rowlings’s first three books aloud THREE times to my son, who at that point couldn’t read for himself. So I was startled by Ashley’s literary analysis – but after thinking it over, not surprised.
The Earl of Mayne first appeared in Your Wicked Ways. At that time, I thought of him merely as a useful bad boy, to be tossed at the end of the novel. But in the way of bad boys, he refused to go away. And I received so many letters asking about his fate that I knew he had to return.- Tess and Lucius trade lines from Catullus, the Roman poet. I have taught Catullus’s work in poetry survey classes at my university, and students are always stunned by the frank way he talks about love and sex. Catullus was an upper class Roman who lived in Julius Caesar’s time. He rebelled against his parents by becoming a poet, and even as a poet he was considered fairly outrageous because he used colloquial language in his verse, and talked mostly of love. (Well, love and sex).
Lucius Felton first appeared in the novella “A Fool Again”, published in The One That Got Away. Do try to find this story – it brings together Tobias, who is the brother of the hero of Fool for Love and Lucius, together with a perfectly delicious heroine.
Draven Maitland is modeled, to some extent, on Prince from Louisa May Alcott’s Rose in Bloom. If you’ve only read Alcott’s Little Women, this is a wonderful book too–about a little girl who is orphaned and raised by her uncle. Eight cousins swirl around the book, and Prince, beautiful, petulant, rash Prince was my favorite when I was a girl. I cried and cried over Rose in Bloom…- Miss Pythian-Adams is kind of a joke on myself. After teaching Shakespeare for ten years, I have managed to memorize a great deal of verse without trying. There are moments when I have to restrain myself from boring everyone by dropping a particularly great bit of poetry into a conversation just because it occurred to me. So Miss Pythian-Adams’s technique of getting rid of her unwanted fiancé by quoting poetry at him seems a natural!
- Much Ado About You is also available in manga format in Japan!
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