Deceit in "Much Ado about Nothing"
...m. Around the same time Hero and Ursala were staging the same type of conversation for Beatrice, who was also very opposed to marriage, to over hear concerning how much Benedick loves her. This story of deceit ends well, when Benedict and Beatrice consummated their love for each other at the end of the play. Don John, the bastard brother of Don Pedro had to be the pure epitome of evil. He is responsible for ninety percent of the deception in this play. It starts when he told Claudio that Don Pedro had asked Hero for her hand in marriage, after Claudio had told him of his plans to marry her. Although this was one of the fastest resolutions of deceit in the play, Beatrice quickly brought the sad Claudio to Don Pedro who announced that Claudio and Hero were to be wed. The second deceitful act Don John devises is to trick Claudio into seeing what seemed to be his fiancé having sex and being convinced it is Hero being unfaithful to him. When Claudio told Hero that he saw her being unfaithful, she fainted. The trick Don John pulled played out until Dogberry and Verges (the watch), caught Borachio and Conrad and made them confess to staging the scene and Dogberry got called an ass. Don John had to have serious mental issues, causing tremendous trouble without any adequate reason. You could possible think that he was in love with Hero, or that he was jealous of his brother and the other men who were capable of more than a few words. My theory on Don John’s hate is that he was angry that his fellow soldiers and best friends, that had sworn to remain bachelors, were all getting married and were planning to stay in Messina. The last and most disturbing deceit in the play happens when Hero is told by Claudio that he saw her being unfaithful to him and she fainted. Hero fainted and was carried off no one knew what h...