Examples Of Trickery In Much Ado About Nothing

Improved Essays
Much Ado About Nothing has trickery and deceit as central themes. In a very peculiar way, Shakespeare discovers how to have trickery and deceit lead to love and romance. A good amount of characters uses deception as ways to get what they desire and to make other characters rue the day. Throughout this play there is a significant amount of scenes that show this deception. It seems that in this play by using deceit, it will have a great turnout for themselves or other characters in this play and characters find love out of it. Despite all the dishonest and tricks that occur in this play characters find a way to have the end in a great or beautiful way. “... I will assume thy part in some disguise and tell fair Hero I am Claudio, and in her …show more content…
“Come hither, Leonato.What was it you told me of today. That your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick” (Shakespeare, Act 2 Scene 3 Lines 95-98) Claudio exclaims to Leonato but just only enough that Benedick hears. Afterwards, they discuss this to Benedick and inform him that Beatrice has fallen in love with him. They have overheard her talking with Hero and other girls that she has significant love towards Benedick. After the wedding Benedick and Beatrice discuss their love for each …show more content…
Shakespeare turns this into love and romance, or just even a happy ending for certain characters. After all this trickery four of the characters have found love from deception. Claudio and Hero become in love and married, because of some help from trickery when Don Pedro pretends to be Claudio to woo Hero. Also, when the friar announces Hero’s death to Claudio and his comrades, so Claudio can have remorse for his love Hero. Another significant event in this plays that shows trickery and deception maturing into love is when Claudio, Don Pedro, and Leonato tell Benedick that they have overheard a conversation that involved Beatrice confessing her love towards benedick which was false. After this event it made Benedick look at Beatrice in a whole new way and starts to fall in love with her, and once he confessed his love towards Beatrice she did the same. Even though this play has a lot of deception and trickery a lot of the characters seemed to have found love through these

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Beatrice Character Foil

    • 1007 Words
    • 5 Pages

    After a few wedding problems, Benedick and Beatrice finally declare their love for each other and get married alongside Hero and Claudio. In the play, Hero is the respectable and polite maiden just wishing she could have a husband to love. On the other hand, Beatrice is a stubborn and feisty woman who could do without a husband until the day she died. Even though they are complete opposites, they found ways to love each other as friends and they both highlight their characteristics as well. In the play, “Much Ado About Nothing”, by William…

    • 1007 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although this generates comedy through the slander and degrading of characters not the contrast in appearance and reality. However, film adaptations of the play can interpret the nature of Beatrice’s insults to Benedick and present that she is deceiving herself about her true feelings towards him. The audience can see this and is able to watch with anticipation and amusement as the revelation of the reality of true feelings between the two characters unfold. Her reference to Benedick and Cupid makes fun at Benedick’s fictional image of himself as ‘loved of all ladies’: she argues he is arrogant and that this is unlikely causing a contrast between his appearance and her reality thus creating a comedic effect on the audience.…

    • 313 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Foil characters help bring out the best traits within two characters. The novel Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is a novel revolving around the act of deception. Where Claudio, a young soldier, falls in love with Hero, the daughter of Leonato. They are to be married, but are deceived, therefore interrupting the marriage. Meanwhile Benedick, a soldier and man that swears against love, falls in love with Beatrice, the niece of Leonato, who also swears against love.…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Benedick says to Beatrice, “Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none” (Cite act1 scene1). He tells Beatrice he loves no one, yet he is attracted to her, giving mixed feelings. One wrong move and your life could be changed forever. The feeling of love can turn into despise real quick,…

    • 1083 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Much Ado About Nothing, when the men arrive back from battle Claudio meets a very quiet and lovely girl named Hero and instantaneously falls in love with her. Claudio confesses his affection for Hero to his two best friends, Benedick and Don Pedro, Benedick disapproves and leaves, whereas Don Pedro listens to Claudio’s predicament. After listening to Claudio’s troubles Don Pedro decides to help Claudio, and he makes a scintillating plan and tells Claudio, “If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it, And I will break with her and with her father, And thou shalt have her” (1.1, 261-263). Don Pedro explains that he will woo Hero in Claudio’s name. Claudio then approves of this, and the plan works effectively, in which Don Pedro deceives Hero.…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He is saying he truly loves her and would do anything for her. The fact that Benedick would kill his own friend because Beatrice asked him too, shows us that this is in fact, true love. Benedick and Beatrice have known each other for a while. We know this because after Benedick and Beatrice have one of their ‘battles of wit’, Beatrice says “I know you of old”. It is clear to us, the audience, that Beatrice and Benedick have a hidden love for each other.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Benedick maintains the belief that ‘he will live a bachelor’, although as the play proceeds, his feelings become clear and that he is ‘horribly in love’ with Beatrice. Beatrice and Benedick deceive each other again at the masquerade ball. While Beatrice pretends to not know that she is dancing with Benedick, she begins to insult him by calling him the “prince’s jester” and that “none but libertines delight in him”, all the while Benedick believes that he is deceiving Beatrice into thinking that he is someone else. There is another example of deceit at the masquerade ball involving Don John ‘the Bastard’.…

    • 1475 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Furthermore, Don Pedro’s perfect approach to deception creates an influential effect on Beatrice. Like Benedick, Beatrice also overhears a conversation meant to persuade her thinking, and she reflects on what she heard: “And Benedick, love on; I will requite thee, / Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand” (III.ii.117-118). While Benedick’s line, when he overhears a similar conversation, and Beatrice’s line are in completely different sections of the play, they almost seem like a call and response. Shakespeare sets up this parallel to emphasize how the deception used on them has brought them together; they think and feel the same way–even when they are not in the same place. Soon after she admits her newfound love for Benedick, Beatrice states, “For others say thou dost deserve, and I /…

    • 1895 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Act 4, scene 1 is the wedding scene. In this, Claudio, Don John and Don Pedro cruelly 'expose' Hero. Only Benedick, Beatrice and Friar Francis believe in her innocence. Even Leonato, Hero's father, is convinced of her guilt. Friar Francis and the remaining characters devise another plan in which they would deceive people.…

    • 1198 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Sure, I think so, And therefore certainly it were not good. She knew his love, lest she make sport at it” (Shakespeare Act III, scene i). This quote was said by Beatrice's cousin to convince Beatrice that Benedick was hiding his love out of his fear of being rejected by her. Ideas such as this were planted in Beatrice's and Benedick's heads and eventually shattered the lies that they had convinced themselves to be the truth. In the end, their misconceptions were brought to light when…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Claudio stated “Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curses: ‘O sweet Benedick, God give me patience.’” (2.3.154-156). When Claudio says this, Benedick’s love switch turns on yet he swears that he only has to love her because she loves him. Out of this lie, Benedick and Beatrice put their differences, or more like similarities aside…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Furthermore, both men, when they finally fall in love, love hard. Both Bendick and Claudio showed this in the play Much Ado about Nothing. Benedick did this by doing whatever Beatrice asked to him to do while she was upset about Hero being “dead”. Claudio showed this by wanting to marry Hero so soon and being so devoted to her. One major similarity between the two men that is necessary to point out, is their love for drama and deception.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    "The courtship of Benedick and Beatrice has a beautiful observed reality, a poise and maturity, a refreshing humour which makes the operatic main plot seem absurdly unreal. " It is clear that Beatrice and Benedick are in love from the first we see of them; it is not simply through the Prince's intervention that the seeds of love are sown between them. When Beatrice is informed that Don Pedro and his party are coming to Messina, her first thought is for her 'Senior Mountanto'. Within four spoken lines of his arrival Benedick is quarrelling with his 'Lady Disdain'. From the very beginning then their thoughts and speeches are occupied with each other.…

    • 2794 Words
    • 12 Pages
    • 4 Works Cited
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    One of the concepts Shakespeare explores in Much Ado About Nothing is that of the different natures of relationships. Throughout the play, Shakespeare sets up two distinct pairs of lovers, both exemplifying a different model of relationship. Shakespeare contrasts two ideals of relationships, one of which being a relationship of immediacy based on necessity and a need to fulfill social norms, and the other being a relationship that is based on genuine feelings of love that are cultivated slowly and thoughtfully over time. The conversation between Anthony, Leonato, Beatrice, and Hero in Act Two Scene One, regarding how Hero should respond to her impending proposal, contributes to this exploration of differing types of love by juxtaposing the nature of relationship that Anthony, Leonato, and Hero subscribe to with the differing ideal of relationship that Beatrice favors.…

    • 1452 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    They had a past relationship, yet their ties to each other had been cut because of Benedick. Unlike Hero and Claudio, Benedick and Beatrice had a history, which meant they knew each other's personality. Before they embarked on their new relationship, they would constantly bicker. The reason behind their new relationship was not by free will but it was because their love was manipulated from the outside. The friends of Beatrice and Bendick decided to speak about how they loved each other with the intentions of the two over-hearing or “noting” this information.…

    • 1082 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays