Biography Essay"He was not of an age, but for all time." So wrote Ben Jonson in his dedicatory verses to the memory of William Shakespeare in 1623, and so we continue to affirm today. No other writer,...
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The English playwright, poet, and actor William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is generally acknowledged to be the greatest of English writers and one of the most extraordinary creators in human history.The ...
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Considered by critics, scholars, and the theater-going public the most important dramatist in the history of English literature, William Shakespeare occupies a unique position in the pantheon of great...
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"He was not of an age, but for all time." So wrote Ben Jonson in his dedicatory verses to the memory of William Shakespeare in 1623, and so we continue to affirm today. No other writer, in English or ...
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William Shakespeare's reputation is based primarily on his plays. With the partial exception of the Sonnets (1609), quarried since the early nineteenth century for autobiographical secrets allegedly ...
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In the essay below, Willson asserts that the opening scenes of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are, in effect, prophetic interludes. Willson argues that Shakespeare raises significant symboli...
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In the following essay, Allen comments on the diverse openings of eight plays—Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet—w...
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In the essay below, Nuttall evaluates the opening scenes of Hamlet, Twelfth Night,and the Tempest in terms of the challenge presented to Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists by the absence of a distin...
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In this essay, first delivered as a lecture in Vienna in April 1992, Smallwood describes a series of Royal Shakespeare Company productions in which directors prefaced the first lines of text with vari...
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In the following essay, Styan focuses on Shakespeare's stagecraft in the first scene of All's Well that Ends Well. He calls attention to specific ways in which the text underscoresȁ...
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In the essay below, Bergeron compares and contrasts the Prologues in Pericles, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen, and links the plays' Epilogues to their respective beginning speeches. He a...
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In this essay, Craik considers the manner in which Shakespeare employs stage directions and concluding couplets to achieve a sense of finality at the conclusion of a play's performance. Craik i...
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In the following essay, Beckerman surveys the final scenes of Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and histories. In his analysis of these, he distinguishes between the resolution (how the narrat...
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In the excerpt below, Jagendorf analyzes the discovery scenes in The Merchant of Venice, All's Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure in the context of the comic conventions of recapitula...
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In this essay, Curren Aquino discusses the concluding scenes of The Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labor's Lost. She judges that in each instance, the final scene effectively crystalliz...
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In the essay that follows, Howard challenges theories of comic structure which assert that Shakespeare's comedies inevitably conclude with the restoration of social order and the harmonizing of...
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In the following essay, Jensen contends that late twentieth-century commentators have placed too much emphasis on closure in Shakespeare's comedies. He believes they have evaluated Shakespeare&...
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In the excerpt below, Foreman identifies and discusses a set of features that he finds in the final scenes of Shakespeare's tragedies: the tragic figure's readiness for death, his or her...
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In this essay, Willson emphasizes the iteration, in Hamlet's final scene, of action, motifs, and language presented in the first scene. He further contends that by the end of the play, Hamlet h...
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In the following essay, Peat focuses on the ambiguities and mounting anxiety in the final scene of King Lear. Audience response to this scene repeatedly alternates between hope and despair. Peat asser...
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In the excerpt below, Booth proposes that the ending of King Lear is terrifying because Shakespeare renders us powerless to call on any of the usual defenses by which we might avoid confronting it dir...
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In this essay, Spinrad maintains that no formal dramatic theory or convention can adequately explain why the death of Lear is so profoundly moving. We weep, she suggests, because his death arouses our...
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In the essay below, Clayton focuses on the final couplets uttered by Desdemona and Othello, reading these lines as affirmations that love unites the tragic pair in a single identity. With these four l...
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In the following essay, Carroll argues that the ending of Romeo and Juliet is announced at the beginning, and is repeatedly articulated in succeeding scenes. Pointing out significant deviations betwee...
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In the following excerpt, Cox discusses how Shakespeare's tragedies often combine death and the comical to foster our acceptance of the protagonists' unavoidable fate and our anticipatio...
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In the following essay, Guthke examines the death scenes of several principal Shakespearean characters, and maintains that Shakespeare repeatedly questions the traditional idea that a dying individual...
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In the following essay, Leggatt evaluates the deaths of Lord Talbot and his son John in 1 Henry VI as Shakespeare's earliest portrayal of tragic heroes meeting their end.
Our habitual divisi...
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In the essay below, Foreman diagrams the variety of ways in which Shakespeare's tragic protagonists meet their ends. Looking closely at the deaths of the central characters in both the minor an...
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Critical Essay by Lawrence Danson
"'The Catastrophe is a Nuptial': The Space of Masculine Desire in Othello, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale," in Shakespeare Surve...
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In the following essay, Rubinstein explores the dream language and imagery of Shakespeare's dramas and the relation of these to Freudian psychoanalysis.
"We are such stuff / As dream...
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In the following essay, Kiefer surveys the interaction of fortune and occasion in Shakespearean tragedy, focusing on three tragic Shakespearean figures: Richard II, Brutus (of Julius Caesar), and Haml...
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In the following essay, Fabiny analyzes the image of the wheel of fortune and contends that the figurative turning of the wheel is a central organizing principle in Shakespearean tragedy, particularly...
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In the following essay, Field considers the reactions of characters in Twelfth Night to the whims of fortune and fate.
Most critics of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night agree that the central char...
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In the following essay, Waddington examines how the forces of fortune, justice, and Cupid dictate the fates of men and women in The Merchant of Venice.
Almost obligatorily, critics of The Merchant ...
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In the following essay, Kozikowski offers a reading of The Merchant of Venice that focuses on the play's lottery scenes as allegorical interludes depicting the rivalry of virtuous Love and capr...
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In the following essay, Walker contends that the moral allegory of Fortune featured in the first scene of Timon of Athens highlights the central theme of the play: the undesirability of owing one�...
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In the following essay, Harper contrasts Roman Polanski's naturalistic, psychological, and character-driven film adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth with Orson Welles's supernatur...
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In the following essay, Waters illuminates the significance of fate and fortune in Romeo and Juliet and explains how the intersection of chance circumstances, seemingly irrational forces, and human co...
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In the following essay, O'Rourke examines the conflict between divine omniscience and human free will in Macbeth and suggests that Shakespeare's drama ironically subverts both of these c...
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In the following essay, Andrews recognizes the profound influence of “Fortune, Fate, and the Stars” in Romeo and Juliet, but nevertheless contends that the deaths of these young lovers a...
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In the following essay, Lloyd examines the destabilizing role of fortune in Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, observing Antony's affinity with the unpredictable powers of chance.
Pluta...
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In the following essay, Williamson views the goddess Fortune as the principal symbolic figure in Antony and Cleopatra, and finds that the tragedy of the drama is one of mighty individuals unwillingly ...
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In the following essay, Hallett investigates Shakespeare's combined emphasis on mutability, fortune, and time as defining forces in the pre-Christian world of Antony and Cleopatra.
Antony an...
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Here, Boose explores the phases of the marriage ceremony—separation, transition, and reincorporation—as a pattern for the father-daughter relationship.
The aristocratic family of Shak...
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In this essay, Dreher discusses the tragic fates of Ophelia, Hero, and Desdemona maintaining that all three women are victims of patriarchal oppression,
Shakespeare offers three examples of young w...
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In the essay below, Hart assesses the function of the father-daughter device in Shakespeare's romantic comedies and the varied problems that arise from that relationship.
Father and daughter...
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In the essay below, Frey examines the complex and timeless responses of daughters to familial pressures.
Shakespeare's plays often open with generational conflicts that point up distressing ...
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In the following essay, Hoy argues that it was the psychological climate of the late romances which allowed Shakespeare to create an ideal feminine figure in the form of a daughter.
Behind all the ...
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In the following essay, Bache chronicles Lear's growth throughout the play, from his desire for a son to his acceptance of his daughter.
One of the genuine pleasures of reading Shakespeare c...
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In the following essay first delivered at the 1977 conference on Shakespeare in Performance, Novy discusses the imbalance of power between Lear and his daughters, and observes that Cordelia tries to k...
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In the essay below, Levin examines the problems with the thematic approach to Shakespeare's tragedies in general, and the feminist thematic approach to the tragedies in particular. Levin observ...
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In the following essay, Adelman traces developments in Shakespeare's treatment of male friendship from the early to middle comedies through the tragedies and late romances.
In this essay, I ...
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In the following essay, Morse explores the antipathy between male friendship and romantic love dramatized in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is widely agreed to be the leas...
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In the following essay, Weller evaluates The Two Noble Kinsmen as a play that examines a fundamental conflict between friendship and marriage.
Like most Elizabethan depictions of symmetrical friend...
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In the following essay, Jagendorf examines the depiction of male friendship and heterosexual love in The Merchant of Venice, arguing that Shakespeare's play features a strong contrast between t...
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In the following essay, Mallette claims that The Two Noble Kinsmen contains two sets of homosocial friendship bonds—those of Arcite/Palamon and Emilia/Flavina. The critic contends that these bo...
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In the following essay, Stewart examines the idealized friendship of Palamon and Arcite in The Two Noble Kinsmen and notes that their friendship, which is defined by medieval codes of chivalric honor ...
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In the following essay, Wimsatt centers on the speech of the Player King in Act III, scene ii of Hamlet, which mentions the mutability of friendship, and contends that Shakespeare portrayed the motifs...
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In the following essay, Davidson interprets the title figure in Timon of Athens as a Renaissance emblem of failed friendship.
The realization that iconographic tableaux appear at central points in ...
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In the following essay, Blits contends that the antique virtue of manliness is the basis of true friendship in Julius Caesar.
The city of Rome had besides its proper name another secret one, known ...
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In the following essay, Evans suggests that friendship is a fundamental theme in Hamlet and analyzes Hamlet's relationships in the drama, particularly his strong bond with Horatio.
In 1958, ...
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In the following essay, Adelman traces developments in Shakespeare's treatment of male friendship from the early to middle comedies through the tragedies and late romances.
In this essay, I ...
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In the following essay, Berggren surveys the woman 's role in Shakespeare's plays as an archetypal figure of innate power that elicits both fear and adoration in men.
Despite all the...
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In the following excerpt, Novy explores Shakespeare's changing use of gender imagery in his comedies, later tragedies, and romances.
In an earlier chapter I connected the fact that Shakespea...
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In the following essay, Bamber studies the role of the feminine "other" in Shakespeare's comedies as a figure that avoids change, development, and decisionmaking.
In Shakespea...
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In the following essay, Helms provides a feminist critique of Shakespeare's female roles in performance and envisions "a theatre where patriarchal representations of femininity can be tr...
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In the following excerpt originally published in 1975, Dusinberre discusses Shakespeare's use of women in male disguise as a means to more fully explore the nature of femininity.
The boy ac...
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In the following excerpt, Howard contends that cross-dressing, while destabilizing the "notion of fixed sexual difference" in Shakespeare's plays, is nevertheless part of a conser...
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In the following essay, Weiss offers an overview of the major characters and themes of the two parts of Henry IV, maintaining that through the character of Prince Hal, Shakespeare constructs a play th...
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[In the essay that follows, Black analyzes the "comic discourse " in the Henry IV plays and argues that while discourse in Shakespeare's history plays is typically limited, the co...
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In the following essay, an expanded version of a lecture given at the Shakespeare Association America in 1973, Hawkins examines the competing claims of virtue and lineage over the right to rule in Hen...
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In the following essay, Calderwood assesses Shakespeare 's use of metaphoric language to explore the nature of kingship in Henry IV, concluding that Shakespeare emphasizes the redemptive value ...
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In the following essay, Baines argues that, despite what many critics have previously argued, Shakespeare portrays Bolingbroke in a sympathetic manner and that this depiction of the future king highli...
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In the following essay, Rebhorn compares the "rhetorical kingship" of King Henry IV, which relies more heavily on visual effects than on words to persuade, with Prince Hal's skill...
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In the excerpt that follows, Reese offers a brief discussion on the character of Hotspur, maintaining that, despite Hotspur's admirable qualities and charm, the young knight dies having learned...
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In the following essay, Fehrenbach argues that while King Henry's failure to be viewed as Henry IV 's protagonist is "understandable, " the characterization of the king has...
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In the following analysis of Henry IV, Part Two, Bergeron maintains that Falstaff serves as the means by which Shakespeare explores the concept of "ahistory."
In the tavern scene in 1...
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In the following essay, Boose and Burt discuss Hollywood's influence in the popularization of Shakespearean drama in the late 1990s, noting the changes wrought by filmmakers in an attempt to ap...
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In the following essay, Davidson proposes that in the context of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, the term iconography may pertain to every visual aspect of a stage production. He also maintains ...
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In the following excerpt, Simonds focuses on analogies between Prospero and Orpheus, the mythical demigod who employed music and eloquence to civilize brutish men and induce harmony in his kingdom.
...
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In the following essay, Traister investigates the character of King John as an example of a Shakespearean monarch lacking his "second body, the public image of majesty and power."
Com...
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In the following essay, Chaudhuri contends that in the character of Henry V Shakespeare reveals "an integrated and purposive development of a new Renaissance ideal of kingship" in which ...
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In the following essay, McCoy explores the theatrics of royal ceremony and antends that Shakespeare's later history plays undercut the majesty of ceremony and expose its " 'made-u...
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In the following excerpt, Figes provides a historical overview of kingship and claims that Shakespeare 's plays serve the function of the "chronicling and dramatization of the history of...
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In the following excerpt, Eure surveys themes of justice and law in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, and King Lear.
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is...
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In the following essay, White studies the endings of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, maintaining that the playwright experiments with combining the finality of a comic ending with the "...
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In the following essay, Levin contends that in his romantic comedies, Shakespeare explores the conflict between romantic and antiromantic values, such as the opposition between love and the desire for...
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In the following essay, Gajowski argues that in Shakespeare's love tragedies, Shakespeare emphasizes the humanity common among male and female characters, despite culturally enforced conception...
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In the following essay, Pendlebury examines the development of Shakespeare's treatment of marriage in his plays, noting that in the early comedies, the prospect of marriage is of primary signif...
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In the following essay, Neely examines the way in which marriage—achieved and postponed or destroyed—influences the structure and themes of Shakespeare's plays. Neely maintains th...
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In the following essay, Cook discusses many of the particulars of Elizabethan marriage laws and customs and then explores the way in which Shakespeare's plays address or correspond to real-life...
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In the following essay, Simonds studies Shakespeare's dramatization of the Protestant marriage ideal in Cymbeline through his references to classical emblematic imagery of the elm and vine.
...
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In the following essay, Hopkins regards marriage as the source of tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello.
‘All comedies end with a marriage,’ said the ma...
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In the following essay, Cook illuminates differences between Shakespeare's dramatic representations of marriage and the social customs of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.
Courtship and marr...
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In the following excerpt, Desens remarks on the efforts of women in such works as The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, Cymbeline, and Othello to create an equal union between...
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In the following essay, Neely suggests that Shakespeare's comic marriages demonstrate varied patterns of disruption, postponement, or dislocation brought about by feminine resistance, female fe...
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In the following excerpt, Dessen discusses Shakespeare's adaptation of allegorical figures to his “late moral plays,” particularly regarding Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, and...
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In the following essay, Auden surveys the dramatic relevance of vocal and instrumental music in Shakespeare's plays.
Musick to heare, why hear'st thou musick sadly, Sweets with sweets...
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In the following essay, Dunn construes Ophelia's songs in Act IV, scene v as emblematic of resistance to—and estrangement from—the patriarchal order that links music with female s...
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In the following essay, Dunn argues that Lady Mortimer's song in Act III, scene i of Henry IV, Part 1 represents a singular moment of a woman's domestic, erotic voice in a play dominated...
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In the following essay, Greenfield discusses the integral function of music in several Shakespearean plays. She focuses on musical imagery in Richard II; Lorenzo's discourse on music in Act V, ...
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In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1971, Ingram explores Shakespeare's unconventional use of military music in the English history plays, especially Henry VI, Part 1. ...
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In the following essay, Styan reviews many occasions of music and dance in Shakespeare's plays, arguing that their principal function is to manipulate audience response.
My first premise is ...
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In the following essay, Schmidgall compares Shakespearean play texts to musical scores. Schmidgall argues that, like operas, Shakespeare's plays are designed to appeal to audiences more attuned...
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In the following essay, Brooke analyzes the juxtaposition of naturalism and myth in All's Well That Ends Well, Macbeth, and several other Shakespearean dramas.
It seems that it is myth and a...
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In the following essay, Rico follows Shakespeare's treatment of the Pygmalion myth in his dramas The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale.
&...
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In the following essay, Girard endeavors to reconstruct Shakespeare's view of mythology, and claims that Shakespeare employed myth to dramatize an essential “mimetic crisis” in hu...
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In the following essay, Simonds describes the figures of Coriolanus and Volumnia in Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus as personifications of the Roman gods Mars and Juno, respectively.
Shakes...
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In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1963, Ravich presents a psychoanalytic overview of Shakespeare's eleven earliest plays and highlights the dramatist's concept...
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In the following excerpt, Holland surveys the patterns of psychological criticism typically applied to Shakespeare's plays.
The Psychological Continuum
Freud, in describing human personality...
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In the following essay, Wheeler explores the psychological polarities associated with seeking self-fulfillment in Shakespeare's late tragedies and romances.
In the earlier phases of his care...
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In the following essay, Crewe examines the “racializing potential” of Shakespeare's drama and poetry, arguing that “race is ubiquitous in Shakespeare's work.”...
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In the following essay, Nixon focuses on the anticolonial interpretations of The Tempest set forth by African and Caribbean intellectuals of the period from the late 1950s to early 1970s.
&...
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In the following essay, Takaki probes The Tempest's relation to the English colonization of America, interpreting Caliban as representative of a “savage” American Indian figure.
...
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In the following essay, Hendricks examines Shakespeare's “figurative evocation” of India in A Midsummer Night's Dream, probing “the play's complicity in the r...
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In the following essay, Singh studies postcolonial readings of The Tempest, which emphasize the role of Caliban as a prototype of the modern revolutionary due to his engagement in a power struggle wit...
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In the following essay, Fuchs extends typical colonialist interpretations of The Tempest to include the play's references to European imperialism in Ireland and the Islamic Mediterranean.
It...
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In the following essay, Leininger discusses the oppression of women and non-whites—personified in the characters of Miranda and Caliban, respectively—in The Tempest.
Shakespeare...
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In the excerpt below, Hall evaluates the racial and sexual threat to imperial culture posed by Caliban and Cleopatra in The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra, respectively.
Colonialist readings of T...
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In the following essay, MacDonald explores the implications of a black Cleopatra who uses her sexuality to thwart Roman imperial power.
In Act I of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, the Qu...
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In the following essay, Washington argues that the figure of Aaron transcends the Renaissance representation of blacks “as stereotypical dramatic emblems of evil.”
At the end of a tra...
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In the following essay, White contends that Aaron in Titus Andronicus subverts the Elizabethan notion that equates blackness with evil.
“Mislike me not for my complexion,” the Prince ...
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In the following essay, Battenhouse surveys 150 years of commentary on the Christian aspects of Shakespeare's art.
Many ordinary readers have felt instinctively that Shakespeare and the Bibl...
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Critical Essay by Robert G. Hunter
Hunter, Robert G. “Shakespeare's Comic Sense as It Strikes Us Today: Falstaff and the Protestant Ethic.” In Shakespeare: Pattern of Excelling N...
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In the essay below, Fortin asserts that a Christian reading of King Lear is as compatible with the “facts” of the play as a secular one, but that neither one is authoritative. Noting tha...
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In the following essay, Sinfield discusses the connection between Hamlet's reference to “a special providence in the fall of a sparrow” and the question of whether the play'...
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Critical Essay by James C. Bryant
Bryant, James C. “Shakespeare's Use of Religious Controversy in King John.” In Tudor Drama and Religious Controversy, pp. 129-49. Macon, Ga.: Me...
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Critical Essay by Roy Battenhouse
Battenhouse, Roy. “Henry V in the Light of Erasmus.” Shakespeare Studies 17 (1985): 77-85.
In this essay, Battenhouse evaluates Henry V in terms of ...
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In the following essay, Hassel calls attention to similarities in substance, style, and structure between Richard III and the Book of Revelation. Characterizing the play as a vivid depiction of earthl...
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In the following essay, Cantor identifies devotion to religious principles as the quality that links Shylock and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, asserting harmony is only achieved by the defeat of ...
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Critical Essay by G. M. Pinciss
Pinciss, G. M. “The ‘Heavenly Comforts of Despair’ and Measure for Measure.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 30, no. 2 (spring 199...
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In the essay below, Shafer charts what he sees as Hamlet's temporary abandonment of Christian principles for the precepts of humanism—and his ultimate reversion to orthodox religious val...
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In the following essay, Hunt discusses the attitudes toward providence expressed by various characters in Twelfth Night, as well as the play’s satirical treatment of Puritanism.
Much has bee...
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In this essay, Lupton maintains that in Othello religious difference is more significant than racial difference, for—according to Renaissance doctrine—if the Moor was a Muslim rather tha...
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In the following essay, Tippins offers a reading of King Lear that attempts to mediate between absurdist or pessimistic interpretations of the play and religious or redemptive ones.
At the heart of...
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In the essay below, Beauregard asserts that Roman Catholic teachings regarding sin, repentance, and salvation are central to the plot and characterization of All's Well that Ends Well. The firs...
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In the following essay, Battenhouse surveys 150 years of commentary on the Christian aspects of Shakespeare's art.
Many ordinary readers have felt instinctively that Shakespeare and the Bibl...
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In the following essay, Prosser surveys a number of examples of Shakespearean characters who either choose or decline to pursue personal vengeance. She finds no evidence that Shakespeare's play...
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In the following essay, Neill discusses the theme of revenge in Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Tempest. He asserts that Hamlet and Macbeth are antitypes—the first seeking to preserve the past and the...
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In the following essay, Baker examines the rites of passage that the characters undergo in As You Like It and suggests that Shakespeare intended the theatrical experience of life in the Forest of Arde...
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In the following essay, Clary discusses the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in A Midsummer Night's Dream in terms of the ritual of wedding-night revelry. The critic argues that although traditiona...
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In the following essay, Burckhardt proposes that the hyperbolic, ceremonial language of Henry VI, Part 1 perfectly matches the play's dramatic action, in which the characters are impelled to di...
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In the following essay, Fujita contrasts Hal's arrival in regal costume and procession in Act V, scene v of Henry IV, Part 2 with Falstaff's appearance in dirty and disheveled clothes, a...
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In the following essay, Cohen views the combat between Hal and Hotspur in Act III, scene ii of Henry IV, Part 1 as a ritual purification of the violence that has engulfed England.
Hotspur is a char...
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In the following essay, Black contends that Act IV, scenes ii-iii of Richard II validate rather than mock the stately rituals of the deposition scene that precedes them. The critic argues that during ...
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In the following essay, Palmer points out the subtlety of Shakespeare's depiction of pageantry and ceremony as political tools in Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V.
A single d...
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In the following essay, Harrier examines Richard's conduct in Act III, scene iii of Richard II. In the critic's opinion, the king's increasing inability to preserve the ritual sho...
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In the following essay, Cole compares Hamlet to Xerxes, the protagonist of Aeschylus's The Persians, arguing that because Hamlet has been denied the catharsis of traditional funeral rites, he b...
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In the following essay, Rose compares the political strife in Julius Caesar with the divisiveness that roiled the Protestant church in Elizabethan England. The critic contends that the late sixteenth-...
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In the following essay, Kendall argues that the elaborate ceremony surrounding the trial by combat between Edgar and Edmund in Act V, scene iii of King Lear betrays the hollowness of the ritual and hi...
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In the following essay, Mead contends that the ritual slaying of Alarbus in Titus Andronicus, intended as a means of appeasing the dead Andronici and forestalling further violence, instead initiates a...
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In the following excerpt, Liebler focuses on the violations of ceremony in King Lear and Macbeth.
In Double Trust: Structures of Civilization in Gi; in Double Trust: Structures of Civilization in ki...
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Martin Scofield, University of Kent
I. Universality and Difference
Most critics in the eighteenth century, unlike academic critics today, were confident of at least one assumption about great l...
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In the following lecture, originally delivered at the University of Michigan in 1970, Arthos argues that Shakespearean drama represents the synthesis of classical source material and the medieval Chri...
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In the essay below, Leech argues that in such plays as Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare's choice of a Greek setting "was bound up with his desire for experiment and ...
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In the following essay, the Martindales examine Shakespeare 's picture of the Greek world by focusing on the playwright's treatment of the story of Troy in Troilus and Cressida.
Shakes...
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In the following excerpt, Velz examines the ways in which previous scholars and critics have portrayed Shakespeare's conception of Greece and Rome.
In 1680 Nahum Tate was quite positive abou...
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In the essay below, Muir analyzes Shakespeare's handling of Roman themes, maintaining that despite certain trivial anachronisms, the playwright's "knowledge of the Roman world and...
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In the essay below, Hunter provides a detailed account of the Tudor conception of Roman history. The critic additionally shows how Shakespeare's portrayal of political events during the Republi...
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In the following essay, Miola explores the nature of Elizabethan classicism and advocates an organic approach "to the problem of coherence in Shakespeare's Rome," arguing that the...
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In the following essay, Wells provides an overview of the role of Roman values in Renaissance culture generally, and concludes with a discussion of Shakespeare's handling of these values.
Ge...
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In the following essay, Miola explores the ways in which Shakespeare used and adapted the poetry of Vergil throughout his career.
Surprisingly slight and desultory is the extant criticism on Vergil...
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In the following essay, Bate examines the profound influence of Ovid on Renaissance culture and Shakespeare's works. The critic additionally provides an overview of the Elizabethan educational ...
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In the essay below, Spencer shows how Renaissance attitudes towards ancient Greece, derived ultimately from unfavorable accounts in Latin sources, informed Shakespearean drama.
A few years ago, in ...
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E. Pearlman, University of Colorado, Denver
Here is some familiar dialogue from The First Part of King Henry the Fourth:
Hotsp. Fie vpon this quiet life, I want worke. Lady. O my sweet Har...
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E. Pearlman, University of Colorado, Denver
The enactment of the deaths of Talbot and his young son John in The First Part of Henry the Sixth is by all odds Shakespeare's first great t...
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In the following excerpt, originally published in 1947, Partridge studies Shakespeare's outlook and attitude toward sex and bawdiness, and examines both the sexual and non-sexual elements of ba...
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In the following essay, Kermode examines the ways in which various critics have interpreted Shakespeare's language, including his use of sexual innuendo and bawdy.
In his recent book, The Ge...
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In the following essay, Andreas discusses the school censorship of the bawdy elements in Romeo and Juliet, and contends that students, in order to fully appreciate Shakespeare, need to be taught the w...
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In the following essay, Colman cautions against reading too many indecent elements in Shakespeare, and finds that many critics distort the significance of bawdy in Shakespeare's works.
Now i...
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In the following essay, Ross studies the dual effect of certain word groups, or “bawdy clusters”—words that take on indecent meanings when they occur in clustered references.
C...
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In the following essay, Perret examines Shakespeare's use of bawdy in The Taming of the Shrew, and contends that the purpose of the bawdy is to comically introduce serious values.
In consid...
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In the following excerpt, Frantz studies the bawdy language of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and maintains that a reader's understanding of the play is enriched by a knowledge of Renaissance erot...
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In the following essay, Scragg argues that a passage from Act II, scene v of Twelfth Night—in which Malvolio reads the forged letter—can be read as both a bawdy joke and as a warning aga...
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In the following essay, Bly examines Juliet's use of bawdy puns in Romeo and Juliet, and considers the influence of her character on the comic heroines of Henry Porter's The Two Angry Wo...
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In the essay below, Leech argues that while Shakespeare does honor sixteenth-century attitudes toward the value of history to some degree, the playwright also transcends—both in literary expert...
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In the essay below, Ricks examines the relationship between politics and history in Tudor—and in particular, Shakespearean—historiography, maintaining that Shakespeare's historiog...
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In the essay below, Holderness maintains that many of Shakespeare's plays, especially the English history plays, were intentional acts of historiography. In particular, Holderness analyzes the ...
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In the following essay, Wikander examines the nature of Shakespeare's historiography in the English history plays, demonstrating the way in which Shakespeare incorporated elements of the mediev...
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In the following essay, Hunter studies the way in which Elizabethans viewed the treatment of history in history plays.
Since the First Folio says that Shakespeare wrote history plays I think there ...
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In the following essay, Ellis discusses Shakespeare's fools as figures who represent worldviews fundamentally different from those of the majority of society.
I
Of all the characters in lite...
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In the following essay, Ellis marks Parolles' progress from knave to fool in Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well.
Shakespeare's plays often include characters ready ...
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Below, Willeford views the character of Hamlet as a tragic fool.
According to an anecdote, the cross-eyed Ben Turpin fell into his métier as a slapstick comedian in the silent films from the...
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In the following essay, Cox explores Shakespeare's blending of comedy and death, principally through the use of laughter and clowning, in his tragedies.
As death coverges with humor in Shake...
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In the essay below, Asnani offers an overview of Shakespeare's fools, notably Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool.
The meaning of the word Fool has undergone a considerable change sinc...
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In the essay that follows, McMullen examines the fool's role as a satirical voice in Shakespeare's plays.
As an entertainer, the fool has always been a prime target for laughter. But ...
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In the following essay, Mullini investigates Shakespeare's use of fools to disrupt hierarchical order and the conventions of language.
The title of this paper suggests most of the dramatic a...
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Below, Skura surveys Shakespeare's use of clowns in his plays, and their popularity with both Elizabethan and modern audiences.
For a long while Shakespeare's clowns were an embarrass...
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In the following essay, Felver describes the fool roles in the plays of Shakespeare's middle period (1599-1607) that were likely performed by the versatile comedic actor Robert Armin.
This f...
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In the following excerpt, Kaiser analyzes Falstaff's position as the "wise fool" of the Henriad.
"But Falstaff, unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe the...
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In the essay below, Evans observes developments in Shakespeare's dramatic representation of the fool character as they coincide with the appearance of Robert Armin as a member of Shakespeare&#x...
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In the essay that follows, Hart probes Shakespeare's presentation of fools in his romantic comedies from A Midsummer Night's Dream to Twelfth Night.
The Romantic Comedies are carefull...
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Paola Pugliatti, University of Florence
Paul Valéry said that history is "the most dangerous compound that the mind's chemistry has ever produced," because "it ...
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Maurice Hunt, Baylor University
Granted Queen Elizabeth's touchiness concerning the subject of royal bastardy, Shakespeare ran a risk in King Richard III by focusing questions of basta...
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Michael Keevak, National Taiwan University
In 1795 a young man named William Henry Ireland, then about eighteen years of age, fabricated a series of Shakespearean forgeries that, for the space of...
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In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1971, Levenson contends that silence in King Lear is integral to the play's structure, characterization, and thematic development.
...
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In the following essay, Manheim stresses Henry VI's humanity and compassion, characterizing him as a man of integrity who is shocked into silence by the treachery and brutality of England...
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In the following essay, Jagendorf evaluates the motif of silence in Hamlet, arguing that it permeates the dramatic action and underscores the play's representation of truth as subjective and th...
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In the following essay, Greene points out that although Prospero occasionally uses language to constrain or coerce, his special powers of healing are affected by silence, show, and music. Greene maint...
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In the following essay, Garber surveys Shakespeare's onstage silences, his use of the indirect mode of representation—that is, characters' reports of events that occur offstage&#x...
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In the following essay, McGuire describes the way five late-twentieth-century productions of Measure for Measure depicted the muteness of Angelo, Barnardine, Claudio, Juliet, Mariana, and Isabella in ...
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In the following essay, Rovine contrasts the silence of women in Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies. In the comedies, he contends, it generally conveys acquiescence, while in the tragedies it...
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In the following essay, Rovine associates the silence of male characters in Shakespeare's comedies with their social alienation, and the silence of men in the tragedies and histories with a var...
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In the following essay, Lyons maintains that Isabella's transformation from volubility to silence is a reverse image of the metamorphosis of Ben Jonson's Epicoene from submissiveness to ...
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In the following essay, Taylor focuses on the inscrutability of characters' reports of events in Much Ado about Nothing that are not represented on stage. Emphasizing the subjectivity of these ...
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In the following essay, Luckyj asserts that Volumnia's speechlessness in Act V, scene v of Coriolanus represents not triumph but despair, for she understands that her son will die because he yi...
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In the following essay, Marshall claims that Titus Andronicus offers a profoundly misogynistic view of male-female relations through its presentation of women as estranged, alienated, and silenced.
...
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In the following essay, Lechter-Siegel traces Isabella's movement from articulate, rational speech to submissive silence, contending that the change in her discourse reflects the Duke's ...
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In the following essay, Luckyj relates Renaissance notions of female reticence as decorum or defiance to the silence of women in King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida.. She contends th...
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In the following essay, Berge links the disappearance of the Fool and Cordelia's final silence to Lear's failed search for self-knowledge. In the critic's judgment, although the k...
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In the following essay, Kermode evaluates the conjunction of speech and silence in Shakespeare's plays, with special reference to the way in which speechlessness can be a form of eloquence.
...
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In the following essay, Bate focuses on Hero's passivity and her provisional dispatch to death—the ultimate silencing. Noting how frequently other characters speak of her or allude to he...
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In the following essay, Luckyj relates Renaissance notions of female reticence as decorum or defiance to the silence of women in King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and Troilus and Cressida.. She contends th...
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In the following essay, Berge links the disappearance of the Fool and Cordelia's final silence to Lear's failed search for self-knowledge. In the critic's judgment, although the k...
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In the following essay, Kermode evaluates the conjunction of speech and silence in Shakespeare's plays, with special reference to the way in which speechlessness can be a form of eloquence.
...
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In the following essay, Garber surveys Shakespeare's onstage silences, his use of the indirect mode of representation—that is, characters' reports of events that occur offstage&#x...
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In the following essay, Rovine associates the silence of male characters in Shakespeare's comedies with their social alienation, and the silence of men in the tragedies and histories with a var...
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In the following excerpt, Berkeley examines the theory of class bias associated with heredity—or "blood"—as it exists in Shakespeare's dramas.
"bloud Has De...
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In the following essay, Berry surveys class issues raised in Shakespeare's Roman plays and Timon of Athens.
Titus Andronicus
Peter Brook, who in 1955 directed the play's most celebrat...
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In the following essay, Kastan explores the nature of social crossdressing on the Shakespearean stage.
We be men and nat aungels, wherefore we know nothinge but by outward significations.
...
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In the following essay, Greer considers representations of social class in the audiences, players, and characters of Shakespearean drama.
Dr. Gary Taylor, in an important book that was given too sh...
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In the following essay, Carroll studies the speech and political views of the underclass in Shakespeare's plays.
In an essay published in Shakespeare Survey 38, the historian E.W. Ives analy...
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In the following essay, Love contends that All's Well That Ends Well is a dark comedy associated with the corrupting power of class.
However distinctive their separate approaches to the play...
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In the following essay, Moisan investigates three comic exchanges between members of differing classes in Shakespeare's plays, which he suggests hint at social inversion but ultimately leave th...
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In the following excerpt, Holbrook discusses Shakespeare's dramatic inversion of social hierarchy in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.
"To begin, then, wit...
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In the following essay, Lanham argues that Shakespeare created a unique kind of poetics in his sonnets by superimposing a rhetorical or "play" discourse upon a serious one. The critic po...
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In the following excerpt, Ferry calls attention to the poet-lover's assertions that through his manipulation of language he can transform nature and substitute the laws of poetic order for thos...
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In the excerpt below, Bermann discusses Shakespeare 's unique creation of a dramatic lyric, focusing on Sonnet 87 to illustrate how the poet evokes a sense of interior dialogue and involves the...
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In this essay, Hammond explores the sources of readers ' uncertainties about the predominant tone of the sequence and the mood of individual sonnets. Focusing on Sonnets 1-19, he illustrates th...
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In the following essay, Dubrow challenges assumptions that Shakespeare's sonnet sequence has a two-part structure and a linear plot, and contends that the traditional association of the Friend ...
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In the excerpt below, Colie regards Shakespeare's sequence as an exercise in reappraising the conventions and limitations of the traditional sonnet, calling attention to Shakespeare's in...
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In the following essay, Sedgwick distinguishes between homosocial bonding and homosexuall desire in the sonnets. Asserting that the poems depict male-male love in the context of social institutions th...
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In this excerpt, Smith describes some features that distinguish Shakespeare's lyrics from other sixteenth-century English sonnet sequences, including his subjectivity, his focus on love after s...
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In the excerpt below, Bredbeck proposes that Shakespeare 's sonnets represent a critique of language as a means of restricting expressions of desire to a single gender or sexuality. Focusing on...
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In the following essay, de Grazia asserts that in terms of Elizabethan cultural imperatives, the primary scandal of Shakespeare's sequence is the depiction, in the final twenty-eight lyrics, of...
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In this essay, Krieger scrutinizes the internal logic of several sonnets in which the movement from one set of images to another appears spontaneous yet is, in his judgment, the result of a conscious ...
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In the following essay, Hecht examines the types of love which are expressed in Shakespeare's sonnets. He also compares the poetical imagery in the sonnets with that found in Shakespeare'...
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In the following excerpt, Wilson examines the sonnets which describe the love that the "Poet, " or Shakespeare, feels for his young male "Friend. " After asserting that the...
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In the following excerpt, Witt evaluates the sonnets which focus on the poet's "mistress," or "the Dark Lady, " as opposed to the poems which center around the poet&...
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In the following excerpt, Weiser briefly contrasts the idealized love of the sonnets in what he calls the "Fair Youth section" with the "destructive" and "distressin...
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In the following excerpt, Martin discusses the manner in which the sonnets deal with positive self-love—a trait that he describes as "necessary, if the self is to survive and not disinte...
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In the following excerpt, Hedley contends that self-love or narcissism is pervasive in Shakespeare's sonnets. After observing that the sonnet genre in general can be perceived as one where the ...
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In the following essay. Smith draws on the writings of T. S. Eliot to show how the voice heard in the sonnets is directed both toward itself—in the form of a soliloquy or meditation—and ...
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In the following essay, Klause closely examines the apparent inconsistencies in the poetic voice of the sonnets. While acknowledging that the aging "Poet" of the sonnets sounds "h...
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In the following essay, Matchett maintains that the plot of King John focuses on the issue of the “right” to the throne, and studies the claims to the throne of Arthur, John, and the Bas...
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In the following essay, Rackin identifies a conflict between two Renaissance theories of history, providentialism and Machiavellianism, as alternate explanations of historical causation. This conflict...
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In the following essay, Carroll states that the way in which Richard III explores the failure of ritual reflects the political concerns of the 1590s related to the succession issue. Carroll concludes ...
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In the following essay, Lane reflects on the ways in which King John addresses the succession crisis of the 1590s, at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Lane explains that the play explores th...
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In the following essay, Wintle and Weis examine the relationship between James I's legitimacy issues and Macbeth's concern with succession and legitimacy as revealed through the play�...
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In the essay below, Kurland argues that Hamlet portrays the controversy surrounding James's succession to Queen Elizabeth's throne. The political world of Hamlet, explains Kurland, is in...
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In the following essay, Baldo contrasts the styles of rule of Queen Elizabeth and King James and studies the way in which James's aloofness is reflected in Macbeth. Baldo explains that whereas ...
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In the following overview, Micheli outlines the authorship controversy, noting that while Shakespeare 's life is for the most part a mystery, there is no evidence against his claim as author. M...
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In the following essay, Phillips and Keatman assess the theory of Christopher Marlowe as the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare, maintaining that while Marlowe was "arguably capable ...
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In the following essay, Taylor urges that the poem "Shall I Die? " must be accepted as Shakespeare's until evidence can be brought forth against this claim. The author cites verba...
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In the following essay, Foster maintains that both internal and external evidence indicate that the ascription of "Shall I Die?" to Shakespeare is wrong. Foster notes that the verbal par...
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In the following essay, Abrams argues that signs of Shakespeare's authorship of the poem "The Funeral Elegy " are evident in the poem's allusions to the theatrical professi...
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In the essay that follows, Duncan-Jones asserts that the poem 's tone, imagery, and literary allusions establish a profile for the author of the poem—one that does not fit William Shakes...
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In the following essay, Marder reviews the arguments against Shakespeare and—after disputing the cases of Bacon, Marlowe, and Oxford as authors—argues that "there is nothing in th...
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In this essay, Ogburn reviews the public documents connected with "Shakspere of Stratford, " suggesting that among the baptismal records, marriage licenses, legal proceedings and wills, ...
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In the following essay, Challinor surveys ten arguments against the man from Stratford being the Shakespeare who wrote the plays and poems.
. . . Since this book does not aim to supplant the effort...
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In the following essay, Bethell discusses the parallels between Hamlet and the life of Edward de Vere, and insists that the experiences of de Vere—most notably his courtly life and familiarity ...
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In this essay, Matus attacks several anti-Stratfordian arguments, explaining some of the apparent gaps in what is known about Shakespeare's life.
The new reading room of the Folger Shakespea...
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In his reply to Matus 's essay (above), Bethell counters Matus 's Stratfordian arguments, maintaining that evidence of the connection between Shakespeare and the Earl of Oxford cannot be...
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In his reply to Bethell 's essay (above), Matus disputes the Oxfordian chronology asserted by Bethell and defends the "country bumpkin " from Stratford as the author of the works ...
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Cynthia Marshall, Rhodes College
So thoroughly does Shakespeare's work encompass our sense of textual possibility that even his apparent missteps take on interest and meaning. The Fool�...
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In the following essay, Toliver follows Shakespeare's increasingly ambiguous and complex treatment of the theme of time from the sonnets and early comedies to the late romances. He calls partic...
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In the following essay, Bayley links the absence of value and meaning in Troilus and Cressida to the omission in the play of any sense of past or future in the lives of the characters.
The weight a...
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In the following essay, Montgomery focuses on the depth and emotionalism of Shakespeare's conception of the present in the sonnets. In most of the sonnets to the young man, the critic contends,...
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In the following essay, Quinones identifies three principal concepts of time in Shakespeare's works: augmentative time, whose potentially destructive power may be averted; contracted time, whos...
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In the following essay, Kaula discerns two different time perspectives in sonnets 1-126, and analyzes the sonnets' syntax, rhetoric, and imagery in order to explain the disparate strategies the...
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In the following essay, Turner examines the associated themes of love and time in Shakespeare's sonnets. He argues that even though these verses depict time as corrupting all material or extern...
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Philip J. Finkelpearl, Wellesley College
The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare and Fletcher's adaptation of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale," can be dated in 1613...
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Speech is often the strongest indicator of personality and motivation in Shakespearean histories and comedies. Each turn of phrase is a small insight into the essence of the character. Stringing to...
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The Life of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was born in a town called Stratford -upon-Avon. His father was a glove maker, who was also chamberlain and a bailiff. William's mother, Mary Arden...
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What is friendship? According to Aristotle, friendship is reciprocated goodwill. You must direct your thoughts and actions toward another person for their own good and the good of yourself. I can agre...
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The works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare are masterpieces. These plays and poems have never seen their equal. However, evidence suggests that Shakespeare of Stratford could not, and d...
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BIRTH AND PARENTAGE
SHAKESPEARE IS BY FAR THE GREATEST NAME IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.YETHIS BIOGRAPHY IS, ` `BUILT UPON DOUBTS AND THRIVES UPON PERPLEXITIES". ONLY THE BAREST OUTLINES ARE KNOWN FOR CERT...
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So many people in this world have written love poems to express their love or to give other love feelings. Byron and Shakespeare are two of those so many people. These two poems are similar and then a...
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In order to be considered "great," a person must make one or more significant contributions to society. Whether it be Jonas Salk's discovery of a vaccine to prevent polio or Michael Jordan's remark...
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In life every one will meet many people that say that they are your friend, but you will make only a few true friends. What is a friend? In the dictionary a friend is defined as one that is not host...
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What is friendship? Friendship is a relationship between one person and other, that he/she likes. He/she treat them special and better than other that he/she does not like. of Friendship helps peopl...
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Shakespeare's plays and poems taken together have quality of impersonality or super personality, transcending limitations that one normally finds in a single author.If we try to understand Shakespeare...
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Shakespeare, a fraud? I believe that Shakespeare is fake, and that he is actually Edward de Vere. Some people may think that Shakespeare is actually a really person or, some may even think that Shakes...
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William Shakespeare. His name comes up and most people tend to cringe. Many remember studying this literary figure in school, but a deep appreciation for his writings are rarely developed through si...
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William Shakespeare was a son to John Shakespeare and mother Mary Arden. He was born in sometime in late April, 1561 in Stratford. There is no record for his birth, but his baptism was recorded by the...
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"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks"
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid ...
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"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"" These famous words were written by William Shakespeare, one of the most well known poets throughout the world. He was also a playwright and actor. Some of hi...
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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Ethan Brozka
Poet Biography paper
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"" These famous words were written by William Shakespeare, one of the most well known poets throughout ...
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"To be, or not to be: that is the question." "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." "Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe"" William Shakespeare, author a...
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As Shakespeare displays different tones, his use of literary mechanisms varies in all of his plays. He continuously uses prose and poetry to give different moods to the plays, thereby creating themes....
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Friendship
"Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure." This quote is a Jewish saying. People have many different thoughts as to what the meaning of friendship is, but honestly is there just one...
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Some critics and other readers of Shakespeare's plays argue that he treats women with disrespect. However, he actually treats them with a great amount of respect. Shakespeare has been criticized by ma...
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Shakespeare like all writers had many things occurring around him when he wrote his plays, poems, and sonnets. Things such as religious background, wars at the time, or even what friends and family ar...
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William Shakespeare, more than any other writer, has pushed the English language to its limits, even stretching them where necessary. His work is innovative and packed with meaning and by studying it ...
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William Shakespeare
W illiam Shakespeare is often referred to as the most famous and undisputedly the best scriptwriter there has ever been for producing such plays as Mac Beth, Romeo and Juliet, ham...
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Imagine yourself sitting in class, ridiculously bored. You are reading a novel when you suddenly lose control of yourself and fall asleep. Although your teacher probably finds the...
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Poetry is a piece of the heart and a piece of the soul. It is something that one writes to show the innermost parts of oneself. William Shakespeare has a way of moving people with his sonnets of lo...
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The first line of Sonnet 130 starts off criticizing Shakespeare's mistress. He talks about how empty her eyes are (My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,"). Most men tell women how much their eye...
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The goal of this piece of writing is to make a comparative study of the various works of Shakespeare, but not as they are presented in their written form. Rather, I am choosing to explore and compare...
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Men of Power
In the plays, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare we are presented with a clear picture of love and politics and how the two mixed do not stand a chance. The poli...
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How has the language of Shakespeare's time evolved over the years and is it expected to keep adapting to these changes?
Language is continuously changing and evolving due to the needs and demands of ...
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It is accurate to say that in the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare's contemporaries did not hold the Jews with high regard (often mocked or portrayed as villains) and there has been much controversy over...
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Did you ever wonder if the stories told in history books are a mere shadow of the truth? A conspiracy to throw off any unwanted investigation? Scholars have debated the true identity of the beloved po...
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As you like it is remarkable among Shakespeare's comedy plays for ending with four marriages. Love is the central theme of the play. Through his characters, he shows his viewpoint about love. I am goi...
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"O Romeo. O Romeo, where for thou are Romeo?" That's the famous quote from one of William Shakespeare's famous play, Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare has written 36 plays, 154 sonnets, and 2 narrative p...
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The three poems of my choice, On Monsieur's Departure, Sonnet 130 and To His Coy Mistress, written in Elizabethan verse, sonnet form and metaphysical style, respectively, can be classified as lyrics b...
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"Critical Analysis of `Pity Me Not Because the Light of Day'"
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote "Pity Me Not Because the Light of Day" in 1921. Millay had been involved with a married man just before wri...
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Introduce students to Shakespeare's work and to the world in which Shakespeare lived. Cross-cultural activities are based on Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and several sonnets.
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Today is Monday, April 23, the 113th day of 2007. There are 252 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:April 23, 1564, is believed to be the birthdate of English poet and dramatist Will...
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The bard, or not the bard, that is the question.Some of Britain's most distinguished Shakespearean actors have reopened the debate over whether William Shakespeare, a 16th century commoner raised i...
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British playwright and poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is
still popular in Japan not only on the stage but in TV dramas and
animated cartoons.
Two pieces were broadcast on the network...
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Ian McKellen says playing the title character in William Shakespeare's "King Lear" is more nerve-racking than his recent Hollywood film roles.Singapore is the first stop on the Royal Shakespeare Co...
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George Bernard Shaw will join William Shakespeare next season at the Stratford Festival of Canada, with Christopher Plummer starring as Julius Caesar in a revival of Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra."A...
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Prague (dpa) - An agent for former Czech president Vaclav Havel
drew a final line under a bitter scramble over which Czech theater
would open the iconic client's long-awaite...
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It was supposed to be a two-hour Shakespearean comedy show attended by 700 sixth- through 12th-graders.But it was not to be.About 40 minutes into a touring company's performance of "The Complete Wo...
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Question 1 of 10:After confessing to his parents that he wanted more than anything to be an actor,
John
gave up a career in what?
Law
MedicineAccountancyArchaeologyQuestion 2 of 10:Which soon-to-...
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William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
Critical Essay by Robert F. Willson, Jr.
Words and Characterization in Shakespeare
Shakespeare
Today in history - April 23
