Essays on Plays

Shakespeare uses his play “Much Ado About Nothing” to highlight the difficult nature of love. He uses characters, themes and ideas in the play to draw attention to different styles of love. The different types of love obvious in this play are: authentic love, mixed in with superficial and idealistic love. Additionally, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130,...

Antonio was very merciful in the end when he gives half of shylocks property back to him. This is because if he knew if he did show mercy, he knew that shylock was always going to seek revenge for the property that Antonio and the state of Venice stole from him. For example, Antonio showed...

When first reading Oedipus the King, one of the three Theban Plays, written by Sophocles around 440 B.C., it was, to put it simply, a repulsive story about a man who kills his father and marries his mother all because of a prophecy made before he was even born. The last thing I wanted to...

 Would you kill to get ahead, to get what you want? Well, that’s what Macbeth did, and look where he is now. He killed and murdered all of the people he thought he loved and cherished… and all because of his craving vaulting ambition for the crown. Manipulated by Lady Macbeth and the witches He...

England in the late 19th Century was a time of great change in terms of women’s rights but also a time where society was ruled by strict social conventions governing how they interact with others. The introduction of the 1870 Women’s Property Act signposted a new dynamic in the relationship between man and wife; a...

 Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, is a dramatic play that takes place in a time where women’s rights weren’t considered. The role of a woman during the Elizabethan era was to be quiet, subservient and dependent on men. The original version of the play, by Shakespeare, tends to focus on social status, resulting...

The concept of textual conversations is greatly explored throughout both Margaret Atwood’s Hag-seed and the text of its origins, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. One textual conversation that is evident in both texts is the idea of freedom and imprisonment, both metaphorical and literal. This is further explored through the main protagonists of Prospero from The...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet essentially explores an individual’s struggle to attain certainty and remain virtuous in a morally ambiguous world. When Hamlet learns the truth of his father’s death, he realizes that his world has transformed into one of deceit and struggles in order to overcome the disintegration and betrayal of his supposedly loyal relationships. He is...

The Tempest and Hag-Seed have a variety of themes but power, politics, and revenge stand out. The three issues go hand in hand and the authors had a particular interest in them and the description of the portrayal of the three themes forms the basis of this analysis. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero and Antonio’s...

For a long time, individuals have been segregated for their religion and their beliefs on money. The equivalent has occurred in William Shakespeare’s epic play, The Merchant of Venice. This play is about Antonio, a racist merchant, who applies for a new line of credit from a Jew, called Shylock. This credit will support Antonio’s...