Belonging is inevitable, and everywhere we go whether we notice it or not it is a prominent feature. Authors will exploit this core human attribute to create interest in the readers, evoke emotions and to explore the basics of human life. What does belonging mean to you? An example of this belonging is found in both Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and William Shakespeare’s Othello. In both of these plays, the playwrights have manipulated the concept of belonging and explored the belonging of humans to create strong characters in their texts.
Achieving meaning in Drama There are various ways in which a playwright can achieve meaning in a drama play. It could be from the costumes the actors are wearing to how much emphasis the actor is putting in a word. These things not only add meaning to a drama play, but it also helps the viewer understand the play better. Things like the use of space and body gestures can make a huge impact and help the audience to see what the playwright is trying to interpret to them. Like I had mentioned above, the costumes that the actors wear are key in the meaning of the drama play.
Mark Brozel's Shakespeare Retold version of Macbeth takes the original tragedy and makes it relevant to today using a range of cinematic techniques in order to engage viewers of TV drama and reignite interest in Shakespearean tragedy. This process involves the use of sound track, camera angles, and dialogue but most importantly a clever appropriation of ideas embedded in the original text. 'Macbeth Retold’ uses themes, an altered plot to be more accessible to a modern audience and exaggerated characters to have an effect on viewers. Brozel also utilises setting to create an emotive atmosphere. Just as the play opens with the witches, so does the film.
A paradox is aimed to create an understanding when two self contradictory phrases are juxtaposed and hence, it is used to underline a specific statement for which the audience may perceive as an insight for future events, a motif, a theme or even a countless entendre. Throughout the play Macbeth, Shakespeare is able to incorporate various paradoxes into his play most notably ‘’fair is foul and foul is fair’’. The use of this paradox opens a threshold and highlights imperative themes in the play such as good and evil, depicted by the witches, empowerment and masculinity portrayed by Lady Macbeth, and also, loyalty and treachery in relation to King Duncan. The paradox also reveals several motifs of the film, and an insight into certain characteristics. The paradox, ‘’fair is foul and foul is fair’’ appears as a rhyming couplet at the end of Act 1, it also acts as a double entendre, as it can be perceived as that the witches are describing themselves, their appearances our foul, though their prophecies are appealing and hence, fair for Macbeth.
In these extracts, however, the male characters take on these feminine roles. In reality, in both extracts, the women are the stronger, more dominant figures. In this essay I will explain how Dickens and Shakespeare, through form, language and structure, have managed to relate the marital relationships to settings in these extracts. The form of ‘Macbeth’ is a drama/play performed to an audience. Setting is achieved through the use of stage directions, characters words and their actions.
Macbeth Discuss the role of imagery in the tragedy Macbeth. How important is imagery to the play and in what ways is it depicted? Imagery is an essential technique in the evolving of the plot and characters in Macbeth. The importance of imagery to Macbeth is extremely valuable, as the technique is employed strongly throughout the play by Shakespeare. Through imagery, Shakespeare is also able to reveal Macbeth’s true character, most dominantly through clothing imagery, light and darkness imagery, and blood imagery.
Authors often use vivid descriptions and sensory enriched words to attract one of the five major senses (hearing, touch, taste, smell and sight) to convey an action, image or event; the lure of the imagery is what keeps the reader attuned. The sensory enriched technique of imagery also arouses the reader’s emotion creating a deeper connection between the world of the reader and the literary work. Threatening images, unnerving scenes, evil and death will prompt the reader to become attuned since these images provoke unsetting emotions. In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses imagery
In William Shakespeare’s well-known play, Richard III, the use of various linguistic techniques such as symbol, imagery and metaphor are found within the text and are all elements that contribute in bettering the play. Throughout the text, symbols are used to help in characterizing specific characters, particularly the eponymous; imagery is used to evoke meaningful visuals and emotional responses and to help explore and communicate the text’s underlying themes; and metaphors are used as a method of conveying certain messages and meanings across to the audience in concise and interesting ways. Together, the achieved effect of these three techniques helps to considerably add to the power and effectiveness of the play. There are a considerable number of symbols that appear in the text, most of which are associated with Richard. They are aimed at portraying and emphasizing his sinful nature and monstrosity through his physicality and explicit physical representations of him.
He was writing about ideals and ideas that were still developing in the time in which he was living. It was as though Shakespeare could defy stereotypes of the era and address problems that were common and constant throughout society. Also his use of language, the rich and full words, some of which he created himself, are somewhat a measure of his own ability and work together in the creation of a new way of communicating ideas. 4. How did he enrich Elizabethan theatre?
Write about the significance of disguise and mistaken identity in Twelfth Night Shakespeare’s use of disguise and mistaken identity is significant to the plot of Twelfth Night as it is the thread that runs through the entire fabric of the play; and is instrumental in providing confusion, misunderstanding, and ultimately – love. Almost all of the characters in this play either carry out some sort of identity deception, or are deceived by someone else doing much the same thing. Primarily we have the play’s protagonist, Viola, who resorts to gender deception in order to get a job in what is essentially a male dominated society. It is noteworthy to mention that in Shakespeare’s time, female roles were played by males, and the idea of a male playing a female who disguises herself as a male is doubly ironic, creating an even greater comic element, and in effect would have been hilarious to the theatre goer. We also have Malvolio, who dresses in what is effectively a disguise to impress Olivia, and Feste who acts like a fool when he clearly is not, and disguises himself as a pastor in order to trick Malvolio.