Electra fights with her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s lover, Aegisthus, because she feels betrayed by them as they killed her father. When Electra and Orestes are finally reunited, they plot against their fathers killers, and finally kill them. The play has several themes, such as vengeance and deception which are extenuated by the heightened realism style of the play. In Electra’s introductory speech, I would emphasises her agony of her father’s death, as this is the main reason the character is vengeful. To fit with the heightened realism of the play, I would exaggerate the mental pain that the character is going through by associating some lines with physical pain, such as ‘But my mother, and her bed mate Aegisthus, Split open his head with a murderous axe’.
The magistrates made laws and decided the most important decisions affecting the state. When Emperor Augustus died, popular elections were outdated. It was expected instead that the imperial household would produce the successor to Roman power. The power had moved from the hands of the people, to imperial rulers, their households, and their heirs. This dramatic change was the culmination of civil strife and open warfare that created the conditions for powerful men to dominate the state, and to exclude the will and
The play starts off with the prologue outlining what has happened in Verona. Shakespeare used Verona as the setting for his play as it was known to be a place of murderous feuds and passionate love affairs. The prologue immediately introduces us to the feud and hatred shared between the two families, Capulet’s and Montague’s. “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny”. Here the audience is left with an unanswered question as to how the feud started and from the prologue we are left wondering if anger and hate will lead to the death of the two “ star crossed lovers”.
|Claudius and his True Intentions | | | |A brief essay on the motifs of Claudius from Hamlet | | | |3/2/2013 | | | |RamonJoseph Alaysa | Ramon Alaysa English 4AP Mrs. Quassy 3/2/13 Claudius and his True Intentions In the infamous play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Claudius, the manipulative and conniving new king, rises and falls due to his one fatal flaw, his thirst for power. In order to obtain this power he murdered his own brother the former ruler of Denmark, stepped onto the throne, and married his brother’s wife Gertrude. Although his goal has been achieved, his anxiety, the form of fear in losing his power, and his multiple dominating effects on characters of the play has led to his plot in killing Hamlet resulting with Claudius lying on his own death bed. Nevertheless, Claudius’ intentions were not of good will but of evil and in the end costs him is own life. Claudius's chief interest is in achieving and retaining power as the king of Denmark.
Julius Caesar Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar was murdered by Brutus despite Brutus’s allegations of Caesar’s quest for dictatorship status and supports his argument by manipulating the people’s emotions. Antony’s purpose is for the people to mourn for their lost leader through Brutus’s lies so that they would seek revenge on him. Antony speaks in a driven but sarcastic tone for the citizens of Rome. Marc Antony persuaded the people using pathos, ethos, and logos. In regards to their leaders murder, the Romans turned against the senate, there for Antony’s speech was more persuading than Brutus’s.
Richard at the beginning of the play reveals his plot to kill his brother Clarence in order to eliminate successors to the throne. Act 1 Shakespeare’s use of pun in the line ‘Brother, farewell,’ is said by the Duke of Gloucester with such earnestness that it is interpreted as a simple departure by George, however, there is an underlying message of ‘rest in peace Clarence’ which is later exposed in Richard’s aside. In Act 5, after the brutal death of Richard, pondering how England has remained under a time of tyranny and betrayal, with the use of alliteration, Richmond says as a part of his ending speech “brother blindly shed the brother’s blood”. This, while emphasising the greed of Richard where he has lost all morality and killed his biological brother in order to gain power, further emphasises Shakespeare’s indirect intention to bring forward the theme of karma. It also targets Elizabethan audience obliquely as it displays Shakespeare as an authentic man who believes in fate.
Richard starts his campaign to prove he is evil by setting his two brothers against each other in order for Edward to eliminate Clarence so that Richard may make it one step closer to the throne. One of Richards more evil plans is to seduce Anne and marry her even though he feels no love for the women whose husband and father in law he killed in cold blood. Richards’s lies are consistent through the play as he manipulates and deceives his way to the throne and is the last way that he attempts to prove himself a villain. The love and compassion felt by fellow family members is lost on the twisted Richard who deceives and manipulates his brothers into hating each other to the point where Edward uses his power to send his brother Clarence to prison. One of Richards’s skills is the ability to influence the actions on almost all the other characters in the play except for the majority of the women who see him for the villain that he truly is.
Hong Nhung Truong Lanz English 4 CP 11/09/2011 The Downfall of Lady Macbeth In Macbeth by Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth shows her realistic personality when she becomes adhere to a sense of guilt and horror at the end of the play. As Lady Macbeth’s lust for power begins, she becomes more sinister and manipulative. She persuades her husband, Macbeth, to kill the king and accuse the king’s sons of killing their own father in order for her husband to take over the throne. She does not know the cause and effect she is helping to build something in progress, but it is not her power to stop when things goes out of hands. However, at the end, Lady Macbeth displays the feeling of guilt of killing so many people and realizes what she did before was all wrong.
One quintessential part of the plot deals with Hamlet’s struggling with his mother’s incestuous betrayal to his father until he finally confronts her, which is embodied in his dramatic monologue in Act 3 Scene IV. The reasoning behind why Hamlet gives this monologue is that he wants his mother, Gertrude, to see what crime and sin she has committed and to make her feel guilt for it. Towards the end of the first half of his monologue, Hamlet provides a harsh reality check to Gertrude, declaring “This was your husband: look you now, what follows. Here is your husband; like a mildew’d ear” (Lines 63-4). This section clearly depicts Hamlet’s intent of trying to erect guilt in Gertrude by contrasting her former and present husbands.
Hamlet in his first soliloquy demonstrates his disgust that his mother has allied herself in love and in politics with her late husband’s brother, so soon after his death, “frailty, thy name is woman... to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets”. Claudius is clearly established as the villain in Hamlet, murdering his own brother and then plotting to kill Hamlet. He lies and is deceitful toying with the notion that the appearance of things is not their reality. The audience is privy to the ‘reality’ of Claudius ‘deed’, and of his guilt, through an aside, climactically stating, “then is my deed to my most painted word. O heavy burden!”.