To What Extent Do You Believe that The History Boys and Love's Labour's Lost are Satires on Attitudes to Scholarship?
In The History Boys and Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare and Alan Bennett both satirise scholarship to various degrees. Love’s Labour’s Lost overall is more satirical; however, there is also an obvious element of satire in The History Boys. In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare heavily satirises education and the pompous nature of some of those who consider themselves scholarly, particularly through the verbosity and pretentious nature of characters such as Holofernes and Armado, as well as the deluded ideas that the King and his Lords have on scholarship. On the other hand, in The History Boys, Bennett presents several views on education, especially through the two contrasting teaching styles of Hector and Irwin, and their respective merits, the ranging spectrum of the definitions of history given throughout the play, and the way he uses the character of Hector as a satire of traditional attitudes to scholarship.
In Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare satirises scholarship by painting a picture of a man who is convinced of his superior intelligence, but is actually a fool, using Don Armado, who greatly exaggerates the number and length of words he puts into his speech, along with his creation and misuse of words. An example of this is in Act V Scene 1, when he talks about meeting the princess 'in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon'. He uses the word 'posterior' absurdly, although technically makes sense, as it means towards the rear end, but is usually used to describe a human backside. Furthermore, he insinuates that he is a superior person intellectually, by referring to ...
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...ngaging in illegal activities, and even goes so far as to try and justify it, highlights his moral short-sightedness and makes him the ultimate parody of a rigid schoolmaster.
Overall, the both of the plays use satire to an extent, but in The History Boys there is far less satire, more differing definitions of History, and attitudes to teaching - in fact the main difference is that it is orientated more around teaching than learning. In Love's Labour's Lost, the whole play is arguably a satire of attitudes of education, with nearly all of the characters serving in their own way as a satire.
Works Cited:
Love's Labour's Lost, William Shakespeare
The History Boys, Alan Bennett
Artsalive.ca. 2004. Love's Labour's Lost Study Guide. [online] Available at: http://www.artsalive.ca/pdf/eth/activities/loves_labours_guide.pdf [Accessed: 6 Dec 2013].
Use of Satire in Pride and Prejudice & nbsp; & nbsp; Satire is used in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen to show the deficiencies in morals and ethics of the characters that Austen disapproves of. Satire is used to "attack" characters and to bring about change. The different character types she satirizes are "suck-ups," hierarchical, and/or ignorant. & nbsp; Austen disapproves of Mr. Collins and that is why she attacks and satirizes him. Mr. Collins is a "suck-up." His living with Lady Catherine has caused him to demoralize himself.
Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1993.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Kittay, Eva Feder. Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.
Shakespeare, William, and Burton Raffel. Romeo and Juliet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Print.
Shakespeare’s tragedies have been studied and recreated time after time in the 400 years since his career. However, through this time, it has become increasingly difficult to keep students engaged with interpretations of decent relevance and relatability. Magnus Cross discusses the magnificent adaptation of Macbeth by Mark Brozel and its importance in today’s English education.
Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Although William Shakespeare is considered to be one of the most revered and well-renowned authors of all time, controversy surrounds the belief that he actually produced his own literary works. Some rumors even go so far as to question the reality of such a one, William Shakespeare, brought on by paralleling the quality of his pieces with his personal background and education. With such farfetched allegations, it persuaded others to peek into the person we all are taught to learn as “Shakespeare”, but who is actually the person behind these genius works of literary promise and enlightenment? To some, Shakespeare is as much accredited to his works as frequently as you see his name placed. To others, Shakespeare is a complex enigma into which we the people are supposed to unravel; the true author behind a falsely-given pseudonym. The debate pertaining to the true authorship of William Shakespeare’s works are still questioned in today’s society.
The contention that Shakespeare’s histories are in fact political drama appears to fall uneasily on the ears of modern readers. One reason for this could be the fact that we, as a society, have blurred the connotation of politics to the vaguest of notions – narrow at times, yet far too inclusive. A young reader is likely to view politics as election and debate, a sort of ongoing candidacy. Indeed, this may be a valid modern definition, if somewhat limited. For our purposes, however, this definition is not sufficient to establish a starting point from which to examine Shakespeare’s presentation of political drama.
3 Dec. 2013. Kerschen, Lios. A. A “Critical Essay on ‘Romeo and Juliet’. ” Drama for Students. Ed.
Prior to Shakespeare’s ascendancy on the English stage, Bloom argues, there was no concept of the individual self, just types. These types persist in Shakespeare’s plays as residual stock characters displaying humours, like Malvolio (melancholic) and Hotspur (choleric). In Shakespeare these crude concepts of personality give way to major and minor characters who evolve and grow almost within themselves. They possess a special energy that touches all other characters within the play. But it is Bloom’s provocative remark, "Shakespeare invented us," that stretches us beyond our conditioned response to the plays and invites us to define a new relationship with Shakespeare. Bloom argues that Shakespeare so interpenetrates our consciousness and our cultural existence that we do not know the boundary between him and us.
Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1993.
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...
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.
Although, as tempting it may be to state that Shakespeare was misogynistic, he was simply a vehicle in which the thoughts of ninety-nine per cent of the Renaissance male population could be expressed. Shakespeare has combined his highly sophisticated inner understandings of the Renaissance period with the five elements of fiction writing; character, setting, plot, theme and style, to create a text that remains a literary classic both shaped by its context and aided in the transformation of future contexts.