Unities of Time (Shakespear)

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In the formation of his plays Shakespeare makes use of certain play writing devices called unities. These help to order the plot line of the play and would be recognizable to his audience. The unities of time (one time frame, usually over 24 hours), place (one setting) and action (one plot/ zero subplot) are a big part of Shakespeare’s plays in although he treats them with a certain flexibility to ensure the pace and interest are kept going. Even if only one or two of the unities are used, as demonstrated in The Tempest, there is a single setting all the way through; the island, and only one time frame i.e. the play does not go on for days on end and it uses close to real time. The only way in which it deviates from this convention is with the unity of action; it has three plots going on at once and two of them are not necessary to the main plot. Othello also uses some of the unities, for instance after the first act the play is confined to the island of Cypress, the play takes place in as close to real time as possible and also the plot is single so there are no subplots to distract from the main one. In the confined setting of the island it is easy for Shakespeare to build his own version of society. It was cut off from the world they were so used to. The balance of power changed around due to the mind games of Iago and Prospero. Shakespeare uses his model of society to magnify and decrease certain aspects of it so they are much more easily seen, for instance in both Othello and The Tempest the subject of race and prejudice were talked about much more in the plays than they probably were in real life at time when they were written. Shakespeare was allowed to do this because in a microcosm even though it is expected to represent society it does not necessarily have to be an accurate representation, it’s almost like holding a concave mirror to the real world; all
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