Shakespeare’s dramatic theatre performances have long endured the test of time. His tales of love and loss, and even some history, make a reader think about events in their own life and what they wish to accomplish in life. Though written for the stage, Shakespeare’s plays have life lessons that readers of the great works can take put into effect in their own lives. Some may say that his plays are out dated, and are something of the past; though they were written in the 1600’s, they have morals and themes that can apply to life. “You've got to contend with versification, poetic license, archaisms, words that we don't even use any more, and grammar and spelling that were in a state of flux when the works were written,” says Pressley in an attempt to explain how to read Shakespeare. Once read and understood, however, one can start to compare and contrast different plays. The ways in which Shakespeare’s two plays King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing are similar out numbers the instances they are different, even though one is a Shakespearian tragedy while the other is a comedy.
Each play has a sub-plot that combines with the main plot toward the end, and the two sub-plots contribute to the overall outcome of each story. Lear is a tragedy, where two men, one a king and the other a nobleman, are betrayed by their children. The main plot is that of King Lear, who gives his power over to two of his three daughters, who in the end turn their backs on him. After Lear is thrown out into a severe storm by Gonreil and Regan, his daughters, he curses them and tells the weather to do its worst. “But yet I call you servile ministers,/ That will with two pernicious daughters join/ Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head/ So old and white as ...
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Web. 19 Jan. 2014. fromlink.cfm?new=display_rpo/indexcriticism.cfm&qs=>. Carroll, Joseph. "An Evolutionary Approach to Shakespeare's King Lear."
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Shakespeare's comedies A Midsummers Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing have many parallels while Measure for Measure is a problem play with a completely different tone. Comparing and contrasting these three plays provides insights into the views of Shakespeare concerning comedy.
Shakespeare, William; Much Ado About Nothing; Washington Square Press; New York, NY; New Folger Edition May 1995
Relationship problems are very common, not only in novels but also in everyday life. Lear starts the entire dilemma of hate and destruction by his foolish desire for flattery. He divides his kingdom between two of his daughters and the never ending crave for power and wealth begins. As we can assume from the play's title, Lear and his daughters are part of the main plot.
King Lear’s play was something that I had never read before. It was so confusing to me, the way they talked with such big words. The characters in the play were so competitive, and selfish. Lear’s daughters were so cruel, except for Cordelia. She actually wanted to take care of her father unlike the other two girls that were just into Lear’s materials. The way Goneril and Regan rather he stays outside in the crazy thunderstorm, instead of him staying with them. The girls were already so envious and competitive with each other; the situation didn’t make it any better. Lear just wanted to love on them, and them love and give him attention, but he couldn’t get that from them. The women in the play controlled the men, while the men listened to them while they demanded orders.
Barton, Anne. Introduction. Much Ado About Nothing. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. 361-365.
Shakespeare, William; Much Ado About Nothing; Washington Square Press; New York, NY; New Folger Edition May 1995
For the theater-going people of the Elizabethan age, there were many hardships. Many of them experienced poor living conditions and treatment. All of them faced the dangers of a comparatively underdeveloped medical knowledge which often left the young and elderly to die of common diseases. The magic of Shakespeare is not only that historians can learn of otherwise undocumented details of the 1500's, but also that all readers can discover the many similarities between Shakespeare's day and now. These similarities reside heavily not only in speech, but also the human condition. When compared with the people we know today, Shakespeare's characters exhibit only skin-deep differences. Some identical language expressions may owe their modern existance to Shakespeare's presence in literary education, but identical emotional reactions surely cannot stem solely from the lecture hall. The English inhabitants of the 16th century, as seen through William Shakespeare's eyes, experienced the same love, hate, and jealousy that we do today. Just as our modern films and music often include implied moral lessons, so too does Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice. All its primary characters and themes of unstable love and exploitation culminate into one simple message about the key importance of loving oneself.
By using just the right combination of words, or by coming up with just the right image, Shakespeare wrote many passages and entire plays that were so powerful, moving, tragic, comedic, and romantic that many are still being memorized and performed today, almost four centuries later. But the greatness of Shakespeare’s ability lies not so much in the basic themes of his works but in the creativity he used to write these stories of love, power, greed, discrimination, hatred, and tragedy.
Clark, W.G., and W. Aldis Wirhgt, eds. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Vol 2. USA: Nd. 2 vols.
Shakespeare, William. Much Ado about Nothing. Ed. Paul Werstine, Barbara A. Mowat, and Gail Kern. Paster. New York: Simon &ump; Schuster Paperbacks, 1995. Print.
Like all great artists, William Shakespeare is thoroughly conscious of his medium. His plays consistently call attention to the theatrical. "With Shakespeare the actable and the theatrical are always what come first" (Frye 5). In fact, the metaphor of performance is central to the Shakespearean canon. "When we are born we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools," Lear declares to Gloucester (IV.vi. 178-179). "All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts" (As You Like It, II.vii. 139-142). This self-referentiality reflects a concern that the audience not be passive in its participation, and that the boundaries of the theatrical experience not be restricted to the stage. Shakespeare layers connotations and meanings into his plays that reward the self-conscious auditor.
Shakespeare’s plays are a product of the Elizabethan theatrical context in which they were first performed. A lot of pressure was put on Shakespeare as he wrote his plays because he was not allowed to upset the royal family. His style would have been different than others in those times and a lot more thought has gone into his writing than people listening would think. Usually, the audience take for granted the cleverness and thought of Shakespeare’s writing, however, now we have studied and gone into great detail about Shakespeare’s writing, we can appreciate it more than they did:
Shakespeare's King Lear is a play which shows the consequences of one man's decisions. The audience follows the main character, Lear, as he makes decisions that disrupt order in his Kingdom. When Lear surrenders all his power and land to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him, the breakdown on order in evident. Lear's first mistake is to divide his Kingdom into three parts. A Kingdom is run best under one ruler as only one decision is made without contradiction. Another indication that order is disrupted is the separation of Lear's family. Lear's inability to control his anger causes him to banish his youngest daughter, Cordelia, and loyal servant, Kent. This foolish act causes Lear to become vulnerable to his other two daughters as they conspire against him. Lastly, the transfer of power from Lear to his eldest and middle daughter, Goneril and Regan, reveals disorder as a result of the division of the Kingdom. A Kingdom without order is a Kingdom in chaos. When order is disrupted in King Lear, the audience witnesses chaotic events that Lear endures, eventually learning who truly loves him.
Therefore one can say that the sub plot very much mirrors the main plot in terms of direct parallels that run among characters as well as the main themes and it is used by Shakespeare in order to emphasise the degree of tragedy in this play as well as evil’s triumph over innocence and good and both plots particularly highlight the point, in Act one, that “nothing comes from nothing”, thereby evil does not come from nowhere, something always comes from something
There are those who think that King Lear is a play that sets out to discuss matters of the state and how it is affected by personal matters rather than the other way around, where Shakespeare zeroes in on King Lear and his daughters to make for an example of how not to act when one gets to a certain age. However, while Shakespeare did use the setting of the state, the play does not revolve around politics, despite the issue of inheritance and power, but rather revolves around the father and daughter relationship that King Lear has with his three daughters. To understand King Lear is to understand the longing of a father's heart. This essay will be exploring different texts as well as the play itself in order to argue that contrary to the notion