Much Ado About Nothing Deception Analysis

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The Idea of Deception In the play "Much Ado About Nothing" by William Shakespeare, the idea of deception is one of the important themes. Infact, in the name itself, Shakespeare used the word "noting" which is a pun on "nothing" In shakespeares time this word signals to the audience what the play is about. The pun shows that even before the play begins the title suggests the theme of the play. Deception as a theme is shown mainly through the main characters and the setting help makes the idea clear. All the main characters show different types of deception and the results, Beatrice's self deception about her love for Benedick, Don John's evil ploy/deception to destroy hero and Don Pedro good deception to make benedick and beatrice fall in love. Even though all this is deceit these things can lead to very different…show more content…
Beatrice is a proud lady and wants to protect herself from a broken heart like she had in the past. It is assumed that Beatrice and Benedick had a past realtionship. Beatrice starts her deception by her man hating attitude. "I'd rather hear a dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loves me." " At the end, when beatrice started to love benedick, she still, even to herself denyed it in order to protect herself and her love for him. Though also at the same time she wanted Benedick to utter the words of love to her first so in her words she tried to not accept or deny him and didn't entirly reject the idea of them being in love. "But belive me not and yet I lie not. I confess nothing nor I deny nothing." This qoute is told to benedick by beatrice while they were trying to be honest to eachother, Shakespeares choice of wording shows that the character couldn't quite pick what to say. Self deception as a point is very important to the play because it makes the audience think "why do we do this?" It also makes the audience ponder on the that that this hapends as a way to protect
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