Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no dishonesty shall appear in me.
-Borachio
Much Ado About Nothing Act II, Scene ii, Line 9
The ring of Gyges. That’s where we’re going today.
So without getting into too much context, what we have with today’s line is Borachio’s answer to Don John. The Don has asked Borachio how he can prevent Count Claudio’s marriage, a marriage that Don John is not happy about. Without telling him how, Borachio is saying, in today’s Totally Random line, that he’ll have to use trickery, but that he won’t be caught. Don John’s replay to that?
Show me briefly how.
Don John does not appear to be bothered with the use of dishonesty.
Which leads us to today’s discussion (and Gyges fabled ring): are we all like Don John? Are we all much more concerned with not being caught than we are with doing the honest thing? The ring of Gyges was an ancient fable. The ring made the user invisible. Plato tied this to one of his observations which was couched in a question: Do we do the right thing because we really feel some altruistic need to do it, or are we just afraid to be caught doing the wrong thing? If we had a ring that made us invisible and we knew we wouldn’t get caught, would we do a lot of stuff (steal, cheat on tests, etc, etc) that we otherwise wouldn’t?
It’s pretty clear that Don John is not going to pass the Plato/Gyges ring test. Would you?
How about this? Any chance this could be Gyges ring? It's pretty old, kind of strange, and I don't remember where it came from. And I have no idea what that writing on it says. Maybe it says Gyges! That would be exciting, wouldn't it?
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