Shakespeare's Plays essay topics
You are welcome to search the collection of free essays and research papers. Thousands of coursework topics are available. Buy unique, original custom papers from our essay writing service.
-
Rigidity Of Social Class In The Play
2,104 wordsIn Shakespeare's time, the English lived with a strong sense of social class -- of belonging to a particular group because of occupation, wealth, and ancestry. Elizabethan Society had a very strict social code at the time that Shakespeare was writing his plays. Social class could determine all sorts of things, from what a person could wear to where he could live to what jobs his children could get. Some families moved from one class to another, but most people were born into a particular class a...
-
Shakespeare And Anne Hathaway
887 wordsA complete, authoritative account of Shakespeare's life is lacking; much supposition surrounds relatively few facts. His day of birth is traditionally held to be April 23; it is known he was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. The third of eight children, he was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a locally prominent merchant, and Mary Arden, daughter of a Roman Catholic member of the landed gentry. He was probably educated at the local grammar school. As the eldest...
-
Portia's Character
942 wordsWhen William Shakespeare wrote, The Merchant of Venice, he included a female character that influences the play dramatically. In most of Shakespeare's plays, the women have little power and intelligence. In The Merchant of Venice, however, Portia is a woman that saves the life of a man with her wit and intelligence. Another woman created by Shakespeare that posses qualities similar to Portia is Beatrice, from Much Ado about Nothing. Both women add to the main themes of the play because of their ...
-
Same As Petruchio And Katherine
1,475 wordsImportance of the Induction in The Taming of the Shrew British Literature April 17, 2005 Many acclaimed scholars argue that the Induction in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is unnecessary and irrelevant to the main plot. (Bloom, 28) Shakespeare placed the induction into The Shrew for a specific dramatic purpose. The comedic tone of the play would be lost without the induction, resulting in a more literal interpretation of the play thus leaving the reader unable to distinguish the a...
-
Edward De Vere
1,350 words... first to identify the Earl of Oxford as the author of the works by William Shakespeare. From this book sparked a wildfire of debate surrounding the issue of authorship, creating passionate supporters on either side of the issue. "The Oxford ians", as de Vere's many supporters are known, have long ago established their own society and remain dedicate to the cause of proving his authorship. In 1975, the Encyclopedia Britannica (15th edition) commented that, "Edward de Vere became in the 20th c...
-
Shakespeares The Merchant Of Venice
514 wordsThe authors achievement is when he is able to leave an everlasting imprint on his Audience. William Shakespeares fictional characters, in The Merchant of Venice greatly influenced the way I view the world and myself. So, how is one of Shakespeares characters related to me Through Shakespeares ability to create multidimensional characters possessing every human characteristic possible, I was not only able to sympathize, but was also able to relate to most of the personages. When reading the play,...
-
Character Of Puck
497 wordsA Midsummer Night's Dream: Role Of Puck Darryl Chance The role and character of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, is not only entertaining but quite useful. William Shakespeare seems to have created the character of Puck from his own childhood. In Shakespeare's time it was believed that fairies and little people did exist. Whenever something went wrong around the farmyard or house or village, incidents such as buckets of milk 'accidentally's pilling over, or tools suddenly...
-
Evident The Women's Role In Shakespeare's Tragedy
1,793 wordsIn Shakespeare's tragedies and his plays in general, we can come across several types of female characters. Their influence with other characters and their purpose or role, often underestimated like women themselves, will be this essay's main subject. Women in Shakespearean plays have always had important roles, sometimes even the leading role. Whether they create the main conflicts and base of the plays, or bring up interesting moral and cultural questions, they have always been put in challeng...
-
Shylock's Bond
1,707 wordsShow how the plot of 'The Merchant of Venice' is apparently fanciful but in reality exactingly structured". The Merchant of Venice is a fairy tale. There is no more reality in Shylock's bond and the Lord of Belmont's will than in Jack and the Beanstalk". H. Granville-Barker, in Prefaces to Shakespeare. This is one way of looking at the play, reading it or enjoying the performance. But it can be a contradiction to our actual feelings about this complex play. 'The Merchant of Venice' might appear ...
-
Shakespeare's Original Audience
2,415 wordsWhat is it about the works of William Shakespeare that appeal to us today? Is it the poetry, the violence, the humor, or the romance? Is it because all of these things relate to our times? No. These aspects of Shakespeare's plays have always appealed to audiences. Shakespeare's plays are timeless, and due to this enduring significance, the Bard's works have easily translated to film. Scarcely a Shakespearean play has not been made and remade numerous times into to a movie, and more often than no...
-
Shakespeare Like Prospero
1,171 wordsThere can be no doubt that The Tempest contains numerous references to the theater, and while many of Shakespeare's plays make reference to the dramatic arts and their analogy to real life (e. g., "all the world's a stage"), it is in this, his last play, that the Bard most explicitly acknowledges that the audience is viewing a show. Thus, in the play's final scene (Act I, scene i., ll. 148 ff), Prospero tells his prospective son-in-law Ferdinand that the revels at hand are almost at an end, that...
-
Ass Head On Bottom
745 wordsA Midsummer Night's Dream Humour Helps Humour is often the key to any good performance. In the Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night's Dream the playwright William Shakespeare utilises humour as a tool to both enlighten the viewer and to create an interesting play. One very humorous character, in this play, is the weaver Nick Bottom. One funny line that was used when an actual ass-head had been placed on him is when Bottom speaks of his friends knavery as to try to make an ass of him ( , i, 110)...
-
Shakespeare In His Play Othello
1,327 wordsQ-Why is a bride's dress always white A-To match the appliances! Even though society has made great strides in trying to equalize women and men, there was a time when women were viewed as nothing more than a man's property. Shakespeare in his play Othello writes his male characters to view women in much the same demeaning way. In this play one can see two examples of women and the view their husbands place upon them. Both Desdamona and Emilia are victims of the chauvinism of their husbands. Marr...
-
Troilus And Cressida
1,658 wordsTroilus and Cressida appeals to the iconoclastic and sceptical temperament of the contemporary era. Its anxieties about the problems of locating stable values and meanings, and its distrust of the claims of military and political authority, have obvious applications to the personal and public crises of today. Discuss this statement in relation to Shakespeare's play. Troilus and Cressida was probably written around 1602, although scholars are not entirely sure of the exact date. Around the time o...
-
Pyramus And Thisbe Play
2,062 wordsTwo themes present in many of Shakespeare's plays, the struggle of men to dominate women and the conflict between father and daughter, form a large part of the dramatic content of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the first act both forms of tension appear, when Theseus remarks that he has won Hippolyta by defeating her, "Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword" (1.1. 16), and via the conflict between Egeus and Hermia. Adding to this war of the sexes are Lysander and Demetrius, both wooing Hermia away...
-
Used Fools In Many Of His Plays
2,870 wordsIn Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Feste, the fool, is not a main character; he does play a major role within the play. Like many of Shakespeare's other clowns and fools, Feste provides the audience with amusement and a realistic view of Elizabethan society. While he does play the role of the fool, Feste seems to make many statements throughout the play indicating that he is quite intelligent. His way with words and general knowledge suggests that he is actually very bright and well read. Feste som...
-
Usage In Shakespeare's Play
1,067 wordsSince plays first began, writers sought a way of formulating sequences of events into an order which brings about meaning to the reader. Over time, many writers have come and gone, some more influential than others, but a set of rules or standards that probably stick out into the minds of all English majors are the Poetics of Aristotle. They served as guidelines in our history to manufacture the "ideal narrative" in which everyone could follow, similar to what we now refer to in the present day ...
-
A Plea For Tolerance In The Merchant Of Venice
825 wordsThe Merchant of Venice is a romantic play, written around 1597 AD, by William Shakespeare. It is mainly about the beautiful things in life, like love and friendship. However, the play also has a darker side. Firstly, the Venetians in the play are very antisemitical, they hate the Jewish ethnic group. Moreover, they do not only hate the Jews, they hate everybody that is considered different than themselves. Finally, when reading the play it becomes apparent that the Venetians are very hypocritica...
-
Critical Essays On Shakespeare Plays
3,162 wordsA Critical Analysis Of A Midsummer Night " sA Critical Analysis Of A Midsummer Night's Dream Mandy Conway Mrs. Guy nes English 12 16 March 2000 A Critical Analysis of? A Midsummer Night's Dream? William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is? They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare's comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This ext...
-
Much Ado As An Italianate Play
951 wordsAssess The Influences Of Italy And Spain Assess The Influences Of Italy And Spain On ' Much Ado About Nothing' It has been estimated that at least one third of the plays performed between 1549 and 1640 had either Italian sources or locations. In most cases it was both. The influence of Italian literature onMuch Ado' is probably the most convincing evidence for this judgement. Bandello's story has a number of main themes: class conflict, the role of Fortune and the rival claims of male friendship...
