“Love’s Labour’s Lost” has never been one of Shakespeare’s most accredited plays. It is nothing like Romeo and Juliet, which has been told in numerous different ways and many different adaptations. Actually, “Love’s Labour’s Lost” has only two movie adaptations, which includes Kenneth Branagh’s version that was released in 2000. Branagh shows a completely different take on Shakespeare’s original text. In fact, he cut the original text down to 25 percent and filled in the gaps with 1930’s musical numbers. Shakespeare wrote “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in the mid 1590’s to be performed in front of Queen Elizabeth. However, Kenneth Branagh’s setting of his version is in Europe during the 1930s. Nevertheless, in both versions the main basis of the story remains the same and so do the names of the characters. And yet, they are told completely differently.
“Love’s Labour’s Lost” is one of Shakespeare’s least popular plays. It was not actually acted out for more than 200 years after Shakespeare’s death and it was the only one that was not staged in the 18th century. Shakespeare is best known for using his highly descriptive words so that the plays can be told without big elaborate scenes and dramatic music. His word usage tells the story all on its own. And “Love’s Labours Lost” is no different with its poetic and highly elaborate use of language. This ultimately makes the play very difficult to act out on stage and be understood by the viewers.
However, Kenneth Branagh’s version of “Love’s Labours Lost” is a romantic Hollywood musical. He used “25% of Shakespeare's original text in his movie” (Carson) and filled in the parts that he omitted with music from 1930’s musicals, which includes songs from the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Irving Ber...
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...ur's Lost?" Guardian News and Media, 27 Mar. 2000. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/mar/27/classics.artsfeatures
Kenrick, John B. "Love's Labour's Lost (2000)." A Review. 25 Mar. 2000. http://www.musicals101.com/labours.htm
Love's Labour's Lost. By Kenneth Charles Branagh and William Shakespeare. Perf. Nathan. Lane and Adrian. Lester. Pathé Picture & Intermedia Films; Shakespeare Film Company, 2000. DVD.
Scott A. O. “Film Review: What Say You, My Lords? You’d Rather Charleston.” Love’s Labour’s Lost. 9 June 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9900E0DD103FF93AA35755C0A9669C8B63
Shakespeare, William. “Love’s Labour’s Lost” D.C. Health & Company, 1917. Google Book Search. http://books.google.com/books
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Love's Labour's Lost.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/labours/characters.html
“Don’t waste your love on someone who doesn’t value it.” In the play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare exposes the life of two young lovers in the Renaissance period fighting for something they cannot live without; each other. Although fate takes its toll, the everlasting feud between two families, conditional love by parents, and the irresponsibility’s of father and mother like figure are the main causes in the death of Romeo and Juliet. The idea of love is something that is valued in this play from many different aspects of characters, lines, and scenes. Shakespeare leaves the minds of readers soaring over not why it happened, but who was at fault.
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is a film that converts Shakespeare’s famous play into a present-day setting. The film transforms the original texts into modern notions, whilst still employing Shakespearean language. Compared to Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, Luhrmann’s picture is easier for a teenage audience to understand and relate to because of his modernisations. Despite the passing of four centuries Shakespeare’s themes of love, hate, violence, family and mortality remain the same regardless of the setting.
The Elizabethans thought of it merely as "a wittie and pleasant comedie" ; Samuel Johnson remarked that "all the editors have concurred to censure [it]" ; and William Hazlitt opined, "If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be this." It was not until well into the twentieth century that Love's Labour's Lost really came into its own, and this fact alone may be enough to make a case for it as Shakespeare's most forward-looking play. It is its ending in particular, an unexpectedly grim conclusion in which nothing is actually concluded, that has appealed to modern sensibilities and made Love's Labour's Lost the Shakespeare play for the twentieth century. Trevor Nunn makes this point emphatically in a recent National Theatre production that presents Love's Labour's Lost as a tale of society's passage out of the nineteenth century in the devastation of World War I. Though neither this idea nor any other aspect of his production is entirely novel, it emerges as possibly the darkest interpretation of the play yet presented, taking the disturbing qualities that have so delighted modern audiences and pressing them to their limits and beyond.
In Shakespeare’s writing of Love's Labour's Lost he shows us some of the struggles that men and women will always deal with, in a man’s timeless struggle for a female’s heart. His characters in this book do not always achieve their ends. A majority of the play tends to focuses on many of its character's flaws instead of their virtues. First, the men of the play try to make sacrifices in order to better their minds and their studies. King Ferdinand of Navarre and three of his lords: Dumain, Longaville, and Berowne, take a vow to abandon the pleasures of the world for three years to pursue knowledge and keep themselves company with the use of only books in order to gain respect as scholars. Ferdinand draws up a contract wh...
William Shakespeare has provided some of the most brilliant plays to ever be performed on the stage. He is also the author of numerous sonnets and poems, but he is best known for his plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. In this essay I would like to discuss the play and movie, "Romeo and Juliet", and also the movie, Shakespeare in Love.
William Shakespeare once told us, "All the World’s a Stage" —and now his quote can be applied to his own life as it is portrayed in the recent film, Shakespeare In Love. This 1998 motion picture prospered with the creative scripting of Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman and direction of John Madden. The combined effort of these men, on top of many other elements, produced a film that can equally be enjoyed by the Shakespeare lover for its literary brilliance, or for the romantic viewer who wants to experience a passionate love story.
has a few lines in it which shows that the play is about love and
What is so interesting about Shakespeare's first play, The Comedy of Errors, are the elements it shares with his last plays. The romances of his final period (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest) all borrowed from the romantic tradition, particularly the Plautine romances. So here, as in the later plays, we have reunions of lost children and parents, husbands and wives; we have adventures and wanderings, and the danger of death (which in this play is not as real to us as it is in the romances). Yet, for all these similarities, the plot of The Comedy of Errors is as simple as the plots of the later plays are complex. It is as though Shakespeare's odyssey through the human psyche in tragedy and comedy brought him back to his beginnings with a sharper sense of yearning, poignancy, and the feeling of loss. But to dismiss this play as merely a simplistic romp through a complicated set of maneuvers is to miss the pure theatrical feast it offers on the stage - the wit and humor of a master wordsmith, the improbability of a plot that sweeps...
In today’s world the quality of the art form called writing is said to be somewhat diminishing, it is important for English literature to keep some studies of classic literature, such as Shakespeare. I think well rounded education must have a strong foundation in both modern and classical literature, for the foundation in classical literature, an in-depth study of Shakespeare’s works would be more than sufficient. Not only was Shakespeare so skilled in his writing that he has become a significant point in the history of literature, but a majority of his works were written on such basic human themes that they will last for all time and must not be forgotten.
In the play “Romeo and Juliet”, Shakespeare shows that love has power to control one’s actions, feelings, and the relationship itself through the bond between a destined couple. The passion between the pair grew strong enough to have the capability to do these mighty things. The predestined newlyweds are brought down a rocky road of obstacles learning love’s strength and the meaning of love.
Burt, Richard. "The Love that Dare Not Speak Shakespeare’s Name: New Shakesqueer Cinema" in Shakespeare the Movie. Ed. Lynda E. Boose and Richard Burt. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. 240-268.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a play commonly viewed and known as a true love story; however, after analyzing several hints portrayed by the protagonists, it is evident that Shakespeare did not intend to make Romeo and Juliet seem like a true love story but a criticism of how superficial society’s view on love is.
The classic play Romeo and Juliet by the famous playwright William Shakespeare is one of the most beautiful love stories of all time and has captured and inspired readers everywhere. Regardless of the fact that it was written in the 1500’s, it is still being performed and extolled today. There is a multitude of reasons for such continuance of the play. First of all, its everlasting themes of love and hate enable people to deeply relate to the story. Secondly, its memorable characters deeply imprint on the minds of readers. And lastly, above all, is its magnificent language which many writers today regard in awe. These three elements make the acclaimed play, Romeo and Juliet, one of the most timeless stories of our lives.
Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night revolves around a love triangle that continually makes twists and turns like a rollercoaster, throwing emotions here and there. The characters love each another, but the common love is absent throughout the play. Then, another character enters the scene and not only confuses everyone, bringing with him chaos that presents many different themes throughout the play. Along, with the emotional turmoil, each character has their own issues and difficulties that they must take care of, but that also affect other characters at same time. Richard Henze refers to the play as a “vindication of romance, a depreciation of romance…a ‘subtle portrayal of the psychology of love,’ a play about ‘unrequital in love’…a moral comedy about the surfeiting of the appetite…” (Henze 4) On the other hand, L. G. Salingar questions all of the remarks about Twelfth Night, asking if the remarks about the play are actually true. Shakespeare touches on the theme of love, but emphases the pain and suffering it causes a person, showing a dark and dismal side to a usually happy thought.
Shakespeare's comedies can be recognized in terms of plot, structure and characters. We can see that Shakespearean comedies follow the same structural pattern, a basic plot on which the play is based. For example, a key feature of all comedies is that they depend upon the resolution of their plots. However, Shakespeare's comedies are distinguishable, as some are classed as comic dramas and others as romantic comedies. In comic drama, there is usually a motif of a place where reality and the unreal merge, the roles of characters are reversed and identities are mistaken or lost. This place may take on the form of a feast or celebration, or it may be presented as a place segregated from the normal society, such as the wood in A Midsummer Night's Dream. When scenes are set in this place, the ordinary rules of life and society do not apply. There is always an experience of chaos, which must be resolved in order for the play to become a true comedy.