Through Nowra’s play the ideas contrasting delusions and realisms are explored in a way to keep the audience in limbo. Theatrical devices have been put in place to ensure the viewers look beyond the stereotypes the mentally ill have been given in society. The play within a play adds complexity to these “normal people who have done extraordinary things, thought extraordinary thoughts.” Also the use of darkness and the burnt out theatre are important devices in distinguishing between illusion and reality. The play within a play is a device used to remind the audience that they are watching a play. The reality that the audience are watching characters rehearse the opera ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ causes the audience to reflect, upon their own ideas about love, fidelity and whether being loyal to a political idea is more important than being loyal to a person.
The tone of Miller’s stage directions and dialogue ranges from sincere to parodying, but, in general, the treatment is tender, though at times brutally honest, towards the protagonist’s plight. The ‘American Dream’, ‘abandonment’ and ‘betrayal’ also work as important themes within the play. Many critics describe Death of a Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States. After World War II, the United States faced profound and irreconcilable domestic tensions and contradictions. Uneasy with this American milieu of denial and discord, a new generation of artists and writers influenced by existentialist philosophy and the hypocritical postwar condition took up arms in a battle for self-realization and expression of personal meaning.
The music implies control. By using the music when we see Eva in the first scene, Samuels intends for us to get a sense of foreboding from it, implying Eva’s near future and telling us that the “villain” is already there, already in control of the whole tale. This creates a sense of inevitability that lasts through the whole story. “EVA puts the book down. Music stops.” This shows that Eva is out of his control for now.
Lewis Nowra’s play, Cosi is made successful through his use of language forms such as symbolism, dramatic techniques like the use of monologues and key themes such as the nature of madness. The theme of madness is contextually relevant to the time period the play was set in when mental health was a taboo subject and there were turbulent political and social times. The Vietnam War had separated Australian society and the sexual revolution was changing the original ideas of love and fidelity. Nowra’s play is successful because it investigates key issues of the times in an engaging and humorous way to involve the audience in 1970’s Australia. The burnt out theatre in which the patients perform the play in is symbolic in many ways.
There is a duality to the character of Hamlet, as his madness changes from a performance to true insanity throughout the play. Initially, in Act 1 Scene 5, Hamlet is coerced by the ghost and decides that he will “put an antic disposition on”. This is the main use of dramatic irony in the play, as the audience knows Hamlet’s madness is performed. However as the play develops and changes, so too does Hamlet’s madness. Act 3 Scene 4 is the main turning point for Hamlet’s madness.
The most obvious examples of disguise and deception are Viola disguising herself as a boy, Cesario, Maria and Sir Toby playing their trick on Malvolio, and Orsino’s ‘love’ for Olivia, a beautiful countess who he does not meet until the final scene. Therefore, deception is the most dominant theme present in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Orsino is one of the very first characters to experience self-deception, where Orsino quotes: ‘If music be the fool of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.’ (I.1.1-3) Here, The Duke is associating Olivia with food, which Shakespeare chose to use because on the Twelfth Night there would be a huge festival where food was the main source of entertainment. However, it is also immediately clear to the audience that Orsino is in love with being in love, and not with
He wanted them to feel the performance could happen in everyday life. This included the magic if which means if an if was to happen in real life. He wanted the actors to feel the part and become the charecters. • Commedia dell’arte style of theatre is using masks and clowning. It is mainly visual theatre and the actors.
Like Cordelia, the Fool is honest, but his comical language masks his honesty. The Fool enters the play while Cordelia exits, which most Shakespearean scholars suggest that the Fool is a spiritual twin that connects with Cordelia-“Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool/to lie: I would fain to learn to lie”-because he leads Lear onto the road of sanity and truth and when Cordelia reenters she represents his heart and sanity that have been reborn-“Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep/we put fresh garments on him.” However, when the Fool enters the play, he wastes no time and reminds Lear of “nothing.” Indeed, there is a subversion of values, by dividing his kingdom he has become the “all licens’d Fool.” The Fool also tells Lear that he has become “an O without a figure,” because he has given away his scepter, his rod-which represents his manhood-and his whip which suggest that he has become the child to his daughters. The Fool like Edmund is a luminal character because he is sui generis. He cannot be labeled because he is a wise man and a Fool. Throughout the play he is marginalized because he is a Fool, but since he is the Fool no one pays attention to him and he uses this title as an advantage to speak of the truth.
Hamlet is the one in power in this scene, running his plan, playing as much with the other characters, as with words. Scene 2, Act 3 is very significant to the plot: it is the first time Hamlet puts a plan into action to advance his revenge. It is also relevant to notice that this passage highlights a very important theme in the play: the parallel between acting and playing. The play within the play uses illusion to discover the truth about Claudius’ guilt. This underlines the thin wall between pretending in real life and acting in a play.
Through his use of verbal language techniques and devices, Shakespeare develops loving as an unwanted, painful, disease throughout his play Twelfth Night that ultimately can turn men into monsters. He both conveys this warning to the audience and makes the play interesting and attention grabbing for them by skilfully using metaphors, comparison, emotional language, rhyme and allusion. Twelfth Night is a timeless piece of literature thanks to the intricate verbal techniques that Shakespeare weaves with a purpose into the play. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare portrays love as a “hunger” to show that we are pained by it when we cannot satisfy it, drawing similarities between the ache of loving someone to “hunger pains”. He also uses a metaphor to convey his opinion that the need for love is as great as the need for food.