Ian Charleson Essays

  • Hamlet and Othello: Ophelia and Desdemona

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ophelia and Desdemona play the role of the "innocent lady" in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello. The roles of these characters provide a sense of completeness, faithfulness, and obedience to the leading male figures. In both plays, these innocent ladies end up dying. These deaths are both due to a false rejection of love. Othello kills Desdemona because he believes her love is false, and Ophelia dies ultimately because she reads Hamlet's mask of madness as rejection. These deaths exemplify the pattern

  • The Importance of the Marching Season to the Peace Process

    579 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Importance of the Marching Season to the Peace Process Every July, Orange Order marches take place to commemorate the Battle of The Boyne of 1690. Since the beginning of ‘The Troubles’ in 1969, the sectarian divide, essentially in the geographical areas of Northern Ireland, has become synonymous with the hopes and fears of the two ideologies yet who still remain poles apart. Parades and marches by the respective sides, reinforce this confrontation. The marches have often been a flashpoint

  • Time is a major theme in Ian McEwan's The Child In Time.

    2083 Words  | 5 Pages

    Time is a major theme in Ian McEwan's The Child In Time. "Time is always susceptible to human interpretation. And though time is partly a human fabrication, it is also that from which no parent or child is immune." Time is a major theme in Ian McEwan's 'The Child In Time'. He treats the subject irreverently, 'debunking chronology by the nonlinearity of his narrative.' - Michael Byrne. McEwan uses the setting of Stephen's dull committee as the backdrop for his daydreaming. Even Stephen's

  • macbeth

    596 Words  | 2 Pages

    MACBETH, it is probable, was the last-written of the four great tragedies, and immediately preceded Antony and Cleopatra.(note 1, p 331]. In that play Shakespeare's final style appears for the first time completely formed, and the transition to this style is much more decidedly visible in Macbeth than in King Lear .Yet in certain respects Macbeth recalls Hamlet rather than Othello or King Lear. In the heroes of both plays the passage from thought to a critical resolution and action is difficult,

  • King Lear: A Man More Sinned Against Than Sinning?

    1338 Words  | 3 Pages

    King Lear—A Man More Sinned Against Than Sinning? A King is supposed to have all that he needs without having to worry about anything in his late years. Yet King Lear, in Act 3, Scene 2, cried out in pitifully: “I am a man / More sinned against than sinning.'; Although Lear has made a huge mistake in the first scene of the play in dividing up his kingdom and banishing his two dearest people, the sins his two other ungrateful daughters have done him is far greater than the extent of Lear’s

  • The Director's Notes on Richard III

    882 Words  | 2 Pages

    flattered. Also she falls into Richards arms more easily because she is feeling very insecure seeing as she has no one left to care and protect her because of Richard killing both her husband Edward, and her father-in-law to King Henry Vl. In the Ian Mckellen version of the play I think the scene is made much more climatic by the fact that the body of Edward (Anne’s husband) was there the whole scene, reminding her of what Richard had done. During the whole of this scene I think that Richard

  • Hooking the Reader in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love

    988 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The beginning is simple to mark". This is the opening sentence of Ian McEwan's novel "Enduring Love", and in this first sentence, the reader is unwittingly drawn into the novel. An introduction like this poses the question, the beginning of what? Gaining the readers curiosity and forcing them to read on. The very word "beginning" allows us an insight into the importance of this event, for the narrator must have analysed it many a time in order to find the moment in which it all began, and so

  • How Women Are Portrayed Within Macbeth

    2693 Words  | 6 Pages

    William Shakespeare has many interesting female characters throughout all of his different types of works. Some of his women are leading ladies while others are just supporting characters that help move the story along. No matter the depth of the characters’ role, each lady gives some type of unthinkable personality trait that would be unique to women during Shakespeare’s time. Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear all have female characters that portray women who wouldn’t be seen during the time of William

  • Man and God in Frankenstein and Jurassic Park

    791 Words  | 2 Pages

    Man and God in Frankenstein and Jurassic Park Not since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, has an author captured such a theme in their work in a way that is magical and captivates the reader.  Michael Crichton's science fiction novel Jurassic Park  portrays what happens when man plays God: his imperfections cause things to go terribly wrong.  The story's, plot, setting, point of view and characterization all add to an atmosphere of fear and raise readers' consciousness about the consequences

  • The Opposition to Human Cloning: How Morality and Ethics Factor in

    2868 Words  | 6 Pages

    into a human or animal egg cell, thereby beginning the life of a new human individual who has only one parent and who is genetically identical to that parent. The once impossible idea of cloning became a reality in 1997 when Scottish embryologist Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced that a cloned sheep named Dolly was born. Dolly was created by removing the nucleus from a sheep egg cell and replacing it in the nucleus of a cell taken from the udder of another

  • King Lear

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    King Lear, Abbey exhibited King Lear, another of his large, dramatic pictures, at the Royal Academy in 1898; the painting was accompanied in the catalog by these lines from Act I, scene i: Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you. I know what you are; And, like a sister, am most loth to call Your faults as they are named. Love well our father. To your professed bosoms I commit him. But yet, alas! stood I within his grace, I would prefer him to a better place. So

  • William Shakespeare's Richard III

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    falsely represented by Shakespeare’s play and fight avidly to clear his name of any and all crimes. Because of the uncertainty surrounding his true character, Richard III is an intriguing personality to put into modern culture, which is exactly what Ian McKellen does in his rendition of the infamous ruler. However, McKellen’s portrayal of Richard III preserves the basic personality of Shakespeare’s character and continues the idea of Richard III as tyrant and murderer; there is no doubt that McKellen

  • How Soaps Attract Their Target Audience

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    How Soaps Attract Their Target Audience I n this essay, I am going to compare Eastenders and Neighbours. I will identify the key ingredients shared by different soaps and examine ways in which such key ingredients differ from one soap to another. The key ingredients to soaps are that they last for years. The soaps are usually serial and are set in a specific location e.g. Albert square in Eastenders. In soaps, they all have characters, which appeal to a specific audience. Here are

  • The Alexander Techniques

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    helps singers and musicians to get rid of tension in their body, it helps to make a performance less tense , livelier and graceful. [3]"It has been taught for decades in all the UK’s top music and drama schools. Many performers rate the AT highly – Sir Ian McKellan, Judi Dench, Sting and Paul Mc Cartney, with his late wife Linda. Two Olympic Gold Medal rowers have studied the Alexander Technique."[3] Alexander technique now is famous all over the world with many teachers having the skill to teach this

  • An Impossible Atonement

    649 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Professor Brian Finney’s essay “Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement,” he suggests that any attempt at atonement is “bound to fail,” and so the most one can do to repent their mistakes is to “imagine the feelings of others.” In many cases, visualizing oneself in the position of another can play a large role when seeking forgiveness. However, in Briony’s case, her attempt to use corrective fiction to make amends for the mistakes of her childhood is not enough for her to achieve

  • Reflection On The Theme Of Moral Agency In Shakespeare's Othello

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Reflect on the theme of agency in the three plays we have studied in this course. What is agency? How do characters lose or gain it? What role does it play in the structure and thematic layering of each play? If you wish, you may want to discuss its relevance to your own life (although this personal note is not required) “Agency is the capacity to act, and ‘agency’ denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. It has been argued that agency can and should be explained without reference

  • Theme Of Loyalty In Shakespeare's King Lear

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Shakespeare’s plays consist of complex characters which compare and contrast in a way that an analysis of these characters reveal the theme of the play. In King Lear, the play’s foils reveal the main theme of loyalty. A foil is a character who contrasts with another character to emphasize certain traits. In the play, the theme of loyalty is portrayed as a difficult quality to find among people and it is something that is demonstrated not just through words but through actions as well. Loyalty

  • Unlikely Love In Social Class In Atonement By Ian Mcewan

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    Social Class: Atonement by Ian McEwan In the novel Atonement by Ian Mcewan an unlikely love is formed between Cecilia and Robbie. Unlikely because Robbie was the son of a servant who worked in the house that cecilia and her family owned. As strange as this love was it all came to a stand still when Briony Cecilia”s younger sistervwalks into the library and witnesses Cecilia and Robbie relating to one another in a way that Briony is just too young to understand. As her curiosity festers she comes

  • Briony Tallis 'Coming Of Age In Atonement'

    2195 Words  | 5 Pages

    1. The theme of coming of age is featured throughout the entire novel Atonement because of how people grow up and change during their lifetime. McEwan expresses his opinion on whether people remain the same or change as they grow up and mature by covering 64 years of events in Briony Tallis’ life. He begins by showing Briony’s young and innocent mind in Part One, where she falsely accuses Robbie of raping her cousin Lola. She is unable to tell the difference between her own fantasies and the realities

  • Loyalty In King Lear

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    From the banishment of Kent and Cordelia till his death King Lear in William Shakespeare's play The Tragedy of King Lear is blind to the signs of loyalty. In the play, Lear has decided to step down from his throne and evenly distribute his kingdom to his three daughters : Goneril, Cordelia, and Regan. However, each of them must proclaim their love for him first, Goneril and Regan easily win Lear over by flattering and praising him. On the other hand Cordelia, Lear’s favorite, who truly loves him