Examples Of Deception In Much Ado About Nothing

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Harmless Lies Are lies always unacceptable? Although people generally think all the deception misleads people through lies and creates misunderstanding, white lies develop the plot and characters in the play, Much Ado about Nothing. In this piece, there are three social criticisms that are made from each deception; loving for appearance, conflict between two opposite people and distrust and sexism. These scenes show how the duplicity creates social criticisms and the white lies change the tragic event to a comedy. There are three main benevolent deceptions in the play; deceiving others to encounter romance, relationship and innocence. Characters misleads each other to achieve love. This scene shows how Don Pedro deceives Hero to love Claudio who is in one-sided love with …show more content…
“Pause a while, and let my counsel sway you in this case. Your daughter here the princes left for dead. Let her a while be secretly kept in and publish it that she is dead indeed. Maintain a mourning ostentation, and on your family’s old monument hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites that appertain unto a burial”. (A4 S1 L200-208) Friar Francis and Hero’s family deceive people about Hero’s death in order to get her virginity. Distrust is a social criticism in this scene because Claudio's distrust makes this whole climax. He only trusts what he sees and he ends up with regret of distrusting Hero in the first place. The sexism can be part of the social criticism in this scene, by seeing a poor innocent girl gets embarrassed on her wedding and looses her virginity without any proof or evidence. This dishonest would have led the play to a tragic ending, but the white lie maintain the comic tone of the play by solving the conflict. The characters support to prevent the dilemma by lying so that they could gain Hero’s chastity. Deception could lead the play from a tragic to a happy ending by resolving the