who hides and what is hidden? how does deceit function in the world of the play, and how does it help the play comment on life in general? a central motif in the play is trickery or deceit, whether for good or evil purposes. counterfeiting, or concealing one's true feelings, is part of this motif. everyone seems to lie; good characters as well as evil ones engage in deceit as they attempt to conceal their feelings: beatrice and benedick mask their feelings for one another with bitter insults; don john spies on claudio and hero; don pedro and his 'crew' deceive benedick and beatrice.
Shakespeare and Marlowe use trickery and deception to present their characters with certain qualities. Prospero is presented as powerful and vengeful at the beginning by conjuring the tempest using magic to trick the characters on board. Throughout the play he becomes wiser and leans the values of forgiveness of those who have deceived him. Faustus is a character that is put in the position of power and doesn’t use it for valid purposes. He’s useless tricks display vanity and indicate his wastefulness to the audience.
The Tragedy of Macbeth was written around 1605 by William Shakespeare, and is a play about the downfall of man in his search for kingship. This play is brilliantly structured to show the dangers of temptation, ambition and greed, as well as showing the darker side of humanity. Shakespeare casts three witches who are shown as manifestations of evil and are described as “unnatural” to do this. They only appear 3 times in the play, however there presence has a huge impact as they are linked to every major event, and they move and per-pell the story and action on. They dramatically enhance the play with their ugliness and foulness adding curiosity and darkness and thus drawing Elizabethan crowds in and also the king, James 1st who was deeply interested in demonology.
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
9/19/12 Madness in Literature Several authors utilize the aspect of “madness” to emphasize a point, to warn of a maleficent force, or to simply entertain. Two such examples of this technique being used are “Macbeth,” by William Shakespeare, and “Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Bronte. Within these stories, one main character of each story, Macbeth and Catherine Earnshaw, respectively, undergoes a change in nature to become “mad.” The madness of the characters illustrates an argument for the “unnatural” impetus yielding “unnatural” results. In both of these two works, the impetus that leads to each character’s madness involves a deviation from their natural state or behavior that is never resolved, but instead is allowed to compound, causing
Moliere was a french play writer and actor who was considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. Moliere wrote two types of plays: the farcical comedies and high comedies, it is very clear that Tartuffe falls into the comedy of character. Commedia Dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked types which began in Italy in the 16th century and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios and is the craft of improvisation. The characters that Moliere created seemed ridiculous because they deviate from decorum and the rules of Neoclassicism. The characters IL Capitano and Tartuffe both display similar characteristics in terms of them both being pretenious, cowardly liars that are very hypocritical.
Hamlet and True Insanity Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet presents two different types of psychotic behaviors through the characters Hamlet and Ophelia, but only one character truly goes insane. Shakespeare utilizes this theme of madness to create dimensional characters through forming the question of whose insanity is real and which character is simulating it. Hamlet’s lunacy is applied to make it seem as if he does not know Claudius killed Hamlet Sr., and this escalates as the plot prolongs and becomes a significant part of the play. The cause of Ophelia’s insanity is not because of her father’s death alone; many characters pushed her to her wits end and indirectly caused her to commit suicide. Ophelia’s exotic behavior begins in Act Four
Stoppard uses his play to mock the conventions of cosy crime fiction as some believe theatrical whodunits are inevitably shallow and dull thus Stoppard only delineates the obvious. Stoppard focuses on the melodramatic style of The Mousetrap that involves the audience in clues and suspense with complications and revelations at the end of each act through his notion of absurdist theatre. He exaggerates the conventions of the crime fiction genre through combining elements of British comedy in his play where the audience is aware of such humour. By utilizing the audiences’ knowledge of detective fiction as an iconic British genre he henceforth creates a parody and pastiche in The Real Inspector
Beckett challenged the traditional structure of comedy developed by the Greeks which was order, disorder, new restored order. Living in a post war generation and a time where modernism was evolving literature he utilised certain elements to reform traditional comedies. He incorporated elements of Vaudeville and Absurdity to transform the repetitive and comparable nature of the comedies that preceded Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot contains two identical acts in which ‘nothing happens...twice’ however the literary devices that Beckett uses often creates drama and excitement within the dialogue and stage directions rather than the action itself. He writes using a long stream of consciousness causing the language to lack any real sense of coherent structure when it is first read.
He was writing poems and plays, and his involvement with theatre troupes and acting is disparagingly condemned in a 1592 pamphlet that was distributed in London, attributed to Robert Green the playwright titled "Groats Worth of Witte" haughtily attacking Shakespeare as an "upstart crow"; "Yes trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger's hart wrapped in a Player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Iohannes fac totum [Jack-of-all-trades, Master of none], is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. O that I might entreate your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses: & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired