is laid upon your hate That heaven finds means to kills yours joys with love” (V, iii, 291-293) “For there never was a story of more woe, then this of Juliet and her Romeo” (V, iii, 309-310) Tragedy- Reinforced by the death of Mercutio as it is seen by Levin as quite an ironic end, as he has been the satirist- “represents the play moving from Romantic comedy to Romantic tragedy.” Comparing Comedy & Tragedy- Tragedy tends to isolate where comedy bring together, to reveal the uniqueness of individuals rather than what they have in common with others. Examples have been shown with the progression of Juliet whom begun in tragic settings as an only child mother “But one, poor one, one poor, and loving child” (IV, v. 46) whilst Romeo friar reflects on then as “two in one” (II.iv.37) yet again when taking the potion “my dismal scene I needs must act alone.” (IV.iii. 19) reflected in the setting of each of them dying
Of course MAAN follows Shakespeare’s traditional comedy structure but modern critics have their own agenda that a comedy, being such a complex genre, should conform to. Since the time of the ancient Greeks critics have struggled to define it, Plato described it as a series of events you would ‘blush to practice yourself’. Susan Snyder who writes for the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Company, states that - ‘Comedy involves men of middling estate, its perils are small scale, its outcomes peaceful’. This is an excellent summary for the majority of Shakespeare’s plays; however it is not necessarily accurate in relation to MAAN. It is true to say that a comedy involves ‘men of a middling estate’, in MAAN the protagonists share the company of the Prince Don Pedro, and are socially superior to the watchmen such as Dogberry and Verges.
Is Benedick the comic hero of the play? How far do you agree with this statement? Suggesting if Benedick is the comic hero of Much Ado About Nothing is difficult to pin point a precise hero as each character possess a different comical trait. For the reason that each character during the play being a character to laugh at or with for respite after tragic events, for instance Dogberry’s use of malapropism mocks authority and makes fun of those who are in it. Devices that are used by Benedick and Beatrice are Bawdy language, word play and puns, which are very different compared to Dogberry’s According to Aristotle the idea of comedy comes from speculation concerning men dancing, signing and cavorting around the image of a phallus.
• Elegy is also considered an epic poem: ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events • In the elegy, mention of Mercutio was left out and positive comments of Romeo’s behaviour, believed that Benvolio was homosexual. • Situation: Mercutio and Tybalt verbally and physically fight, resulting in the deaths. • Importance of passage: scene is considered the turning point of the play because it is where Romeo becomes exiled and the plan created by the Friar and the deaths come into play. • Structure: Component of elegy: dactylic hexameter followed by dactylic pentameter, with iambic pentameter for the second stanza/paragraph (from line 165) • Dactylic hexameter: meter used in an elegy, for the first line. Follows this pattern: — U | — U | — U | — U | — u u | — X (note that — is a long syllable, u a short syllable and U either one long or two shorts and X is an ancep (long) syllable).
To what extent is Blanche a tragic hero in ‘Streetcar Named Desire’? Aristotle believed that a tragic hero could be summarised as a male of generally a high social standing (such as a king or a prince) who possessed a fatal flaw that would result in their downfall. Aristotle displayed this view of a traditional tragic hero in his book ‘Poetics’- a major work that discusses literary and dramatic theory. However, over time the stereotypical image of a tragic hero has transformed, for instance in 1949 the Arthur Miller essay ‘Tragedy and the Common Man’ contradicts Aristotle and states that tragedy can also portray ordinary people in a domestic environment. Williams’ play is an example of a modern tragedy and Blanche is a complex tragic hero, as she is embodying both the traditional aspects of a tragic hero, but also introducing the new ideologies simultaneously.
About anyone within the world of literature could connect The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Masque of the Red Death together with their unnerving connotations. Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe refined bloodcurdling stories for that time and both helped in setting the bar for horror. Two themes found in Poe and Irving’s work include Ignorance and Imagination vs. Reality. Edgar Allan Poe’s work portrayed much spook.
Poet T.S. Eliot infamously referred to Titus as “one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written,” while playwright Edward Ravenscroft dismissed it simply as a “heap of rubbish” (Shakespeare, 399). Yet for all of Titus’s grotesque horrors, the violence that seemingly repulsed Eliot and company should not be viewed as erratic, uncalculated acts. Rather they should be understood as representations of a wider, symbolic significance. It is through dismemberment, and the dismemberment of hands in particular, that the play can be seen through an emblematic perspective to signify the justification of vengeance and the loss of political and personal agency.
How is Othello Portrayed in Act Two – Noble or a Credulous Fool? Tragedy may be defined as a serious play in which the protagonist passes through stages of misfortune leading to a final catastrophic demise. A measure of the success of a tragic hero is unmitigated catharsis perhaps because it is a genre which holds a mirror to what is desired by society. In the play ‘Othello’ (1603), the tragic hero consists of Aristotelian qualities. Othello is in many ways is presented in Act Two as noble hero, but at the same time he can be foolish.
Charles Lamb states that Malvolio “becomes comic by accident”. His criticism portrays Malvolio as a tragic character. Lamb describes Malvolio’s dialect as “that of a gentleman, and a man of education.” Predisposed with Malvolio’s dialect and seemingly noble manner is hubris which leads to his downfall in the play. In Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’, Malvolio is not a tragic character but, the fool of the play in that he is a scapegoat for mockery and entertainment. Aristotle in ‘Poetics’ defined comedy as “an imitation of inferior people-not, however, with respect to every kind of defect; the laughable species of what is disgraceful.
Commonly regarded as Euripides’ most controversial work, Medea is a powerful story of how one’s impassioned love can turn into furious hared. As a tragedy, it is completely unlike the Aristotelian work, yet it has a nerve jarring impact due to the unforseen climax. Throughout the play, Euripides has positioned minor characters to subsidize the major characters. The clever work of Euripides also suggests that the less significant characters are used in the play to develop the plot of the play and also to reveal and recall the events that could not have been shown. As a result of this, secondary character present dramatic importance throughout the play.