Shakespeare On Trial - Critical Review In a well-rehearsed and entertaining performance, the team from Shakespeare On Trial (Sam, Bella and Paul) present a unique play which contrasts and compares various interpretations within William Shakespeare’s works. The performance focused on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet”. The entire performance was based on talk shows which demonstrated the different interpretations of Shakespeare’s works, through discussions, arguments and brief scenes. The performance allows the audience to look past their own opinions of Macbeth or Shakespeare, and enables them to appreciate different interpretations of the plays; enhancing their understanding. Despite the absence of special lighting, costumes or a large troupe, the team was able to present a captivating performance which kept the audience entertained from beginning to end.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) has successfully continued to engage audiences through its dramatic treatments of soliloquies and asides. It has retained value as being worth critical study in both an Elizabethan and modern context – this may be said due to its mirroring of human nature in society, thereby depicting the thematic concepts of struggle and disillusionment. Shakespeare’s use of dramatic and language techniques, consisting of much great symbolism and metaphorical language, illustrates the dramatic irony and action of textual integrity in Hamlet. Thus these salient notions are achieved through Hamlet’s speech directed towards a society that reflects both an Elizabethan and modern contemporary context, whereby audiences reflect upon the depiction of humanity’s struggle in a disillusioned reality. In Hamlet’s third soliloquy, there are echoes of struggle and disillusionment which are illustrated as important concepts in dealing with Shakespearean language throughout the play of HAMLET.
In King Lear, Shakespeare successfully creates his own vocabulary and rules of grammar that assist in revealing the emotional intensity in the spoken words of a character. Tragedy is the highest form of drama therefore the diction would have to be adequately developed for the audience to gain an appreciation of the genre. This is particularly true to King Lear in Shakespeare’s reconstruction of sentences in order to heighten the emotional intensity of the character. In Lear’s speech the separation of verb and subject with long delaying or expanding interruptions conveys to the audience a sincerity of thought making the action seem genuine, familiar; compelling the audience to feel a sense of pity or fear (catharsis). According
Act 1 Scene 5 – Romeo and Juliet How does Shakespeare make Act 1 Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet so exciting? Act 1 Scene 5 is one of the most important parts of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because this is the scene when Romeo and Juliet first meet and it is love at first sight. Shakespeare has made this an enjoyable scene because he has used lots of emotions to make it more exciting and dramatic. Shakespeare makes the start of Act1 Scene 5 quite exciting because the serving men are preparing for some sort of party; this makes the atmosphere from the stage go into the audience because everyone is ready for what is going to happen next. Shakespeare also makes people know how rich Capulate is by the serving man saying “save me a piece of marchpane” marchpane was very expensive.
Alfieri immediately draws the audience into the play. Alfieri speaks to the audience directly, through his role as the chorus. They see him as someone they can believe, because he is part of them. He is also on the outside looking in. Through Alfieri’s appearance and informal language he manages to draw the audience in by running his fingers through his hair and grinning “You wouldn’t have known it, but something amusing has happened”.
And as it is characteristic of comedy or any other representative of the spectrum of dramatic genres, all the themes and ideas implied by the author are fulfilled or performed by characters, heroes of a play, through their speech, feelings, actions and behavior. The characteristic feature of dramatic genre to reveal some themes and motifs of the play through the characters’ speech is present in A Midsummer Night Dream. For this particular essay I have elected to dissect two prominent characters of this play, Puck and Bottom, to decipher whether they bear essential differences or possess similarities, and the effect these characters display in regard to the overarching themes of the play. For starting point I’ve chosen the cue of Puck, which we observe in the first scene of the third act: “Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound,/ A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire,/ And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,/ Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn”. When considering this, one will assuredly notice that this character is capable of changeability.
Andrew Davies purposely used that technique to mirror Shakespeare’s thematic technique to create similar effect. I also noticed that the positioning of the character is quite interesting, in every conversation between Jago and Othello, Jago is always the one in higher position. This aims to symbolise Jago’s power, control and manipulation over Othello. This also gives an imagery of Jago being the puppet master who controls everything behind the scene. Shakespeare’s Othello is a tragedy so it is most crucial that the adaptation keeps the important aspects which make the play what it is.
Conclusion Shakespeare always used the same elements of tragedy when he wrote his tragedies. These tragedies can be compared easily, especially Macbeth and Hamlet. Shakespearean tragedies use supernatural incidents to intrigue the reader's interest, and they consist of a hero that has a tragic flaw (sometimes the desire for the supernatural) which causes him to make a fatal mistake. Shakespeare followed this pattern in all of his tragedies; therefore the similarities between Macbeth and Hamlet can easily be defined and discussed. Shakespeare immediately started Macbeth with a supernatural scene.
Through imagery, Shakespeare is also able to reveal Macbeth’s true character, most dominantly through clothing imagery, light and darkness imagery, and blood imagery. With the aid of these images, Shakespeare is able to show the true nature of Macbeth and his development as a character through the course of the play. The presence and importance of imagery in Macbeth is often unnoticed and underestimated, but it plays a vital role in the development of the plot and the characters. Although Macbeth is a relatively short play, it is full of imagery. It is present in some form in all five acts, through a variety of themes such as fair and foul, nature, blood, light and darkness, birds, sleep and clothing.
Shakespeare’s stories go beyond time and culture. Shakespeare’s inspiration is seen in many different modern stories. “Modern storytellers continue to adapt Shakespeare’s tales to suit our new world” (Why was Shakespeare Important). In addition to Shakespeare being such a great story writer, “he had summarized human emotions better than any author ever has” (Why Shakespeare). The emotions that Shakespeare expressed in his writing still are existent in modern day society today.