There is a legend that places the origin of the expression “much ado about nothing” in the taking of Amiens by the Spanish Thirds in 1597, which was an episode of the religious wars in France, a conflict in which Philip II participated. He intervened to protect the interests of the Catholic monarchy.
When field master Hernán Tello de Portocarrero received the order to assault the square, in March 1597, it is said that in his camp a unison and joking “well, it's going to be not!” was heard. Amiens had overwhelming walls, and, after more than a year and a half of campaigning, Portocarrero barely had 800 men left.
However, he succeeded. In the book From Pavia to Rocroi. The Spanish Thirds (2017), Julio Albi relies on the chronicles of the time to explain the stratagem that he came up with, very similar to the myth of the Trojan horse. He infiltrated a dozen soldiers disguised as peasants into the city, who, after a bizarre fight with the guards, managed to block the portcullis - the barred and raised gate that protected the fortresses - with a wagon, leaving free access to the two hundred infantrymen. who were waiting hidden in a nearby hermitage.
According to one of the versions of the event, one of the false farmers threw a sack of nuts on the ground so that the guards would be distracted by collecting them, and that was when they dealt the blow. It is not known exactly when this nuance – undoubtedly apocryphal – was added to the story, but it made a fortune, because even today the citizens of Amiens continue to call themselves “les mangeurs de noix” (the nut eaters).
The fact is that, as the city returned to French hands just six months later, some 19th century linguists, such as José María Sbarbi or Serafín María de Sotto – who was actually a historian – wanted to see the origin of the expression in this, in the sense that so much effort was not worth it, “it was more noise than anything.”
However, the saying had been used long before and profusely, so much so that it is surprising that it was overlooked. With the same meaning as today, which is already strange in phraseology, it appears in the Book of Good Love (1330), by the archpriest of Hita, or in La Celestina (1499), attributed to Fernando de Rojas, and we could continue.
What's more, some authors of the Golden Age even took the trouble to explain its origin, which is much more basic than it might seem. In The Why of Sayings (1955), the paremiologist José María Iribarren echoed the Spiritual Discourses on Genesis, the work of a 17th century priest in which he reads: “What nuts have most is noise and Many times they are empty inside, and thus, the noise is more than the nuts.”
Another possibility is the one raised by Sebastián de Horozco (1510-1579) in his Book of Glossed Proverbs, Proverbs and advice that any father should give to his son: “This literally understood proverb is clear because few nuts in a sack (large sack) of fabric) they make a lot of noise and seem more than what they are.”
Proof of the popular roots of the idiom, by the way, is that in Spain the comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1598), by Shakespeare, was translated as Much Ado About Nothing. Some specialists have considered it daring to translate the title of a work using an idiom, such as the Argentine Pablo Ingberg, who said that it is “highly incorrect, inappropriate and disorienting.” However, perhaps it was necessary, since in Spanish there is no other way to say “a lot about what is actually nothing,” which would be the literal translation from English.
