Much Ado About Nothing: Peggy Ashcroft as Beatrice, John Gielgud as Benedick.

John Gielgud staged a production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1949, with Anthony Quayle as Benedick and Diana Wynyard as Beatrice. The production was revived in 1950 with Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft and judged one of the best Shakespearean productions of the 1950s that Gielgud continued to play until 1959; but audiences felt Ashcroft, who returned to it at the Palace Theatre in 1955, was unique in the role, achieving such effortlessness that she and Gielgud seemed making up their lines as they went along. .J.W. Lambert wrote in the Sunday Times "Miss Ashcroft has no equal in this country for that rare combination of featherweight touch and attack; her high spirits are the most infectious in the world, and never for an instant do we sense their assumption by a skillful actress." Source: New York Public Library: Billy Rose Collection.