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Literatura isabelina resumos
Literatura Isabelina (Universidade de Coimbra)
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In Shakespeare’s time, the term “tragedy” was most
closely associated with a set of dramatic conventions
established by the ancient Greeks and most famously
theorized by Aristotle in his Poetics. According to
Aristotle, a tragedy should center on a protagonist of
noble birth, such as a prince or a queen. Though high
born, the protagonist of a tragedy has what Aristotle
called hamartia, or a tragic flaw. A tragic flaw is a
negative character trait, like excessive pride or jealousy,
which causes the protagonist to follow a dangerous path
in pursuit of something they aren’t supposed to want.
Along this path, the protagonist makes errors of
judgement that bring chaos to their community,
resulting in the protagonist’s own isolation, suffering,
and eventual downfall. Typically in tragedy the
protagonist recognizes their mistakes, but only once it’s
too late. The ancient Greeks believed tragedy had a
social value because the audience shares closely in the
hero’s suffering and, once the drama is over,
experiences an emotional release known as catharsis.
Similar to the classic Greek tragedies, Shakespeare’s
tragedies almost always feature a noble-born hero who
makes a mistake, with disastrous consequences for both
the hero and the larger community. King Lear, for
instance, tells the story of a well-respected ruler who
has an unreasonable desire for his daughters to express
their unconditional love for him. Unable to see through
his eldest daughters’ lies, he makes the terrible mistake
of bequeathing his kingdom to the wrong heirs. Lear’s
error of judgment causes a great deal of suffering, and
by the time he realizes his mistake many people have
died, including Cordelia, his only honest daughter. Faced
with his downfall, Lear himself dies of grief. Like Lear,
many of Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes suffer from
symbolic blindness. Othello’s blindness to an enemy’s
malevolence leads him to trust the enemy more than his
own wife. Macbeth’s blindness to the meaning of the
witches’ prophecies convinces him he is invincible. In
both cases, the protagonists’ failure to discern truth
results in widespread confusion and multiple deaths—
including their own.
Though Shakespeare was influenced by the norms of
Greek tragedy, his tragedies do not adhere formulaically
to the norms of Greek tragedy. For one thing,
Shakespeare’s tragedies frequently contain many
elements more typical of comedy. This endows
Shakespearean tragedies like Hamlet with more
psychological complexity and emotional variety than
traditional Greek tragedies. Shakespeare also gives
traditional tragic themes a new spin. Consider the
theme of fate. In conventional tragedies fate often plays
an important role in determining the hero’s actions.
Shakespeare certainly uses fate as a theme in his
tragedies, though sometimes in unexpected forms. In
Macbeth, for instance, fate assumes a supernatural
form in the trio of prophesying witches. Shakespeare
also complicates the theme of fate by emphasizing the
protagonists’ inner turmoil more than the play of
external forces. In Romeo and Juliet, though the famed
lovers are described as “star-crossed” and hence
marked for a tragic fate, it remains debatable whether
they have made a fatal error that led to their downfall,
or whether their tragic ends represent the sacrifices
necessary to get the warring Montagues and Capulets to
acknowledge the folly of their feud. Such complications
make it unclear whether Shakespeare’s tragedies offer
the same kind of catharsis that Greek tragedies were
said to provide.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet is considered of the most
thematically-rich works of literature in the English
language. The tragic play, which follows Prince Hamlet
as he decides whether to revenge his father's death by
murdering his uncle, includes themes of appearance vs.
reality, revenge, action vs. inaction, and the nature of
death and the afterlife.
Appearance vs. Reality
Appearance versus reality is a recurrent theme within
Shakespeare’s plays, which often question the boundary
between actors and people. At the beginning of Hamlet,
Hamlet finds himself questioning how much he can trust
the ghostly apparition. Is it really the ghost of his father,
or is it an evil spirit meant to lead him into murderous
sin? The uncertainty remains central to the narrative
throughout the play, as the ghost's statements
determine much of the narrative’s action.
Hamlet’s madness blurs the line between appearance
and reality. In Act I, Hamlet clearly states that he plans
to feign madness. However, over the course of the play,
it becomes less and less clear that he is only pretending
to be mad. Perhaps the best example of this confusion
takes place in Act III, when Hamlet spurns Ophelia
leaving her utterly confused about the state of his
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affection for her. In this scene, Shakespeare brilliantly
reflects the confusion in his choice of language. As
Hamlet tells Ophelia to “get thee to a nunnery,” an
Elizabethan audience would hear a pun on “nunnery” as
a place of piety and chastity as well as the
contemporary slang term “nunnery” for brothel. This
collapse of opposites reflects not only the confused
state of Hamlet’s mind, but also Ophelia’s (and our own)
inability to interpret him correctly. This moment echoes
the broader theme of the impossibility of interpreting
reality, which in turn leads to Hamlet's struggle with
revenge and inaction.
Literary Device: Play-Within-a-Play
The theme of appearance versus reality is reflected in
the Shakespearean trope of the play-within-a-play.
(Consider the often-quoted “all the world’s a stage”
remarks in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.) As the
audience watches the actors of the play Hamlet
watching a play (here, The Murder of Gonzago), it is
suggested that they zoom out and consider the ways in
which they themselves might be upon a stage. For
example, within the play, Claudius’s lies and diplomacy
are clearly simple pretense, as is Hamlet’s feigning
madness. But is not Ophelia’s innocent acquiescence to
her father’s demand that she stop seeing Hamlet
another pretense, as she clearly does not want to spurn
her lover? Shakespeare is thus preoccupied with the
ways we are actors in our everyday life, even when we
don’t mean to be.
Revenge and Action vs. Inaction
Revenge is the catalyst for action in Hamlet. After all, it
is the ghost’s injunction to Hamlet to seek revenge for
his death that forces Hamlet into action (or inaction, as
the case may be). However, Hamlet is no simple drama
of vengeance. Instead, Hamlet continually puts off the
revenge he is supposed to seize. He even considers his
own suicide instead of killing Claudius; however, the
question of the afterlife, and whether he would be
punished for taking his own life, stays his hand. Similarly,
when Claudius decides he must have Hamlet killed off,
Claudius sends the prince to England with a note to
have him executed, rather than doing the deed himself.
In direct contrast to the inaction of Hamlet and Claudius
is the forceful action of Laertes. As soon as he hears of
his father’s murder, Laertes returns to Denmark, ready
to wreak revenge on those responsible. It is only
through careful and clever diplomacy that Claudius
manages to convince the enraged Laertes that Hamlet is
at fault for the murder.
Of course, at the end of the play, everyone is revenged:
Hamlet’s father, as Claudius dies; Polonius and Ophelia,
as Laertes kills Hamlet; Hamlet himself, as he kills
Laertes; even Gertrude, for her adultery, is killed
drinking from the poisoned goblet. In addition, Prince
Fortinbras of Norway, who was searching for revenge for
his father’s death at Denmark’s hands, enters to find
most of the offending royal family killed. But perhaps
this fatally interlocking network has a more sobering
message: namely, the destructive consequences of a
society that values vengeance.
Death, Guilt, and the Afterlife
From the very beginning of the play, the question of
death looms. The ghost of Hamlet’s father makes the
audience wonder about the religious forces at work
within the play. Does the ghost’s appearance mean
Hamlet’s father is in heaven, or hell?
Hamlet struggles with the question of the afterlife. He
wonders whether, if he kills Claudius, he will end up in
hell himself. Particularly given his lack of trust in the
ghost’s words, Hamlet wonders if Claudius is even as
guilty as the ghost says. Hamlet's desire to prove
Claudius's guilt beyond all doubt results in much of the
action in the play, including the play-within-a-play he
commissions. Even when Hamlet comes close to killing
Claudius, raising his sword to murder the oblivious
Claudius in church, he pauses with the question of the
afterlife in mind: if he kills Claudius while he is praying,
does that mean Claudius will go to heaven? (Notably, in
this scene, the audience has just witnessed the difficulty
Claudius faces in being able to pray, his own heart
burdened by guilt.)
Suicide is another aspect of this theme. Hamlet takes
place in era when the prevailing Christian belief asserted
that suicide would damn its victim to hell. Yet Ophelia,
who is considered to have died by suicide, is buried in
hallowed ground. Indeed, her final appearance onstage,
singing simple songs and distributing flowers, seems to
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indicate her innocence—a stark contrast with the
allegedly sinful nature of her death.
Hamlet grapples with the question of suicide in his
famous "to be, or not to be" soliloquy. In thus
considering suicide, Hamlet finds that “the dread of
something after death” gives him pause. This theme is
echoed by the skulls Hamlet encounters in one of the
final scenes; he is amazed by the anonymity of each
skull, unable to recognize even that of his favorite jester
Yorick. Thus, Shakespeare presents Hamlet’s struggle to
understand the mystery of death, which divides us from
even seemingly the most fundamental aspects of our
identity.
As a tragedy, Macbeth is a dramatization of the
psychological repercussions of unbridled ambition. The
play's main themes—loyalty, guilt, innocence, and fate
—all deal with the central idea of ambition and its
consequences. Similarly, Shakespeare uses imagery and
symbolism to illustrate the concepts of innocence and
guilt.
Ambition
Macbeth’s ambition is his tragic flaw. Devoid of any
morality, it ultimately causes Macbeth’s downfall. Two
factors stoke the flames of his ambition: the prophecy of
the Three Witches, who claim that not only will he be
thane of Cawdor, but also king, and even more so the
attitude of his wife, who taunts his assertiveness and
manhood and actually stage-directs her husband’s
actions.
Macbeth’s ambition, however, soon spirals out of
control. He feels that his power is threatened to a point
where it can only be preserved through murdering his
suspected enemies. Eventually, ambition causes both
Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s undoing. He is defeated
in battle and decapitated by Macduff, while Lady
Macbeth succumbs to insanity and commits suicide.
Loyalty
Loyalty plays out in many ways in Macbeth. At the
beginning of the play, King Duncan rewards Macbeth
with the title of thane of Cawdor, after the original
thane betrayed him and joined forces with Norway,
while Macbeth was a valiant general. However, when
Duncan names Malcolm his heir, Macbeth comes to the
conclusion that he must kill King Duncan in order to
become king himself.
In another example of Shakespeare's loyalty and
betrayal dynamic, Macbeth betrays Banquo out of
paranoia. Although the pair were comrades in arms,
after he becomes king, Macbeth remembers that the
witches predicted that Banquo’s descendants would
ultimately be crowned kings of Scotland. Macbeth then
decides to have him killed.
Macduff, who suspects Macbeth once he sees the king’s
corpse, flees to England to join Duncan’s son Malcolm,
and together they plan Macbeth's downfall.
Appearance and Reality
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know,”
Macbeth tells Duncan, when he already has intentions
to murder him near the end of act I.
Similarly, the witches utterances, such as “fair is foul and
foul is fair”, subtly play with appearance and reality.
Their prophecy, stating that Macbeth can’t be
vanquished by any child “of woman born” is rendered
vain when Macduff reveals that he was born via a
caesarean section. In addition, the assurance that he
would not be vanquished until “Great Birnam Wood to
high Dunsinane Hill Shall come against him” is at first
deemed an unnatural phenomenon, as a forest would
not walk up a hill, but in reality meant that soldiers were
cutting up trees in Birnam Wood to get closer to
Dunsinane Hill.
Fate and Free Will
Would Macbeth have become king had he not chosen
his murderous path? This question brings into play the
matters of fate and free will. The witches predict that he
would become thane of Cawdor, and soon after he is
anointed that title without any action required of him.
The witches show Macbeth his future and his fate, but
Duncan’s murder is a matter of Macbeth’s own free will,
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and, after Duncan's assassination, the further
assassinations are a matter of his own planning. This
also applies to the other visions the witches conjure for
Macbeth: he sees them as a sign of his invincibility and
acts accordingly, but they actually anticipate his demise.
Symbolism of Light and Darkness
Light and starlight symbolize what is good and noble,
and the moral order brought by King Duncan announces
that “signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine / On all
deservers" (I 4.41-42).”
By contrast, the three witches are known as “midnight
hags,” and Lady Macbeth asks the night to cloak her
actions from the heaven. Similarly, once Macbeth
becomes king, day and night become indistinguishable
from one another. When Lady Macbeth displays her
insanity, she wants to carry a candle with her, as a form
of protection.
Symbolism of Sleep
In Macbeth, sleep symbolizes innocence and purity. For
instance, after murdering King Duncan, Macbeth is in
such distress that he believes he heard a voice saying
"Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep, Sleep
that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care." He goes on to
compare sleep to a soothing bath after a day of hard
work, and to the main course of a feast, feeling that
when he murdered his king in his sleep, he murdered
sleep itself.
Similarly, after he sends killers to murder Banquo,
Macbeth laments being constantly shaken by
nightmares and by "restless ecstasy," where the word
"ectsasy" loses any positive connotations.
When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost at the banquet,
Lady Macbeth remarks that he lacks “the season of all
natures, sleep.” Eventually, her sleep becomes disturbed
as well. She becomes prone to sleepwalking, reliving the
horrors of Duncan’s murder.
Symbolism of Blood
example, before killing Duncan, Macbeth hallucinates a
bloody dagger pointing towards the king’s room. After
committing the murder, he is horrified, and says: “Will
all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from
my hand? No."
Banquo’s ghost, who appears during a banquet, exhibits
“gory locks.” Blood also symbolizes Macbeth’s own
acceptance of his guilt. He tells Lady Macbeth, “I am in
blood / Step't in so far that, should I wade no more, /
Returning were as tedious as go o'er”.
Blood eventually also affects Lady Macbeth, who, in her
sleepwalking scene, wants to clean blood from her
hands. For Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, blood shows
that their guilt trajectory runs in opposite directions:
Macbeth turns from being guilty into a ruthless
murderer, whereas Lady Macbeth, who starts off as
more assertive than her husband, becomes ridden with
guilt and eventually kills herself.
If there is a single element that unites all Shakespearean
comedies, it is a wedding, or several weddings, at the
end of the play. Although not all of the fourteen plays
classified as comedies in the First Folio are particularly
light-hearted or humorous, all end with at least one
marriage. The convention of ending a comedy with a
wedding provides the audience with assurance that
whatever conflicts arise in the play will not have lasting,
negative consequences for the protagonists or society at
large. Unlike the fatal conflicts of Shakespeare’s
tragedies, conflicts in his comedies are reconciled before
serious harm can come to anyone. Because the
audience knows the discord is only temporary, we don’t
take the foibles and misfortunes of the characters
seriously, and we trust they will end the play happier
than they began. Consider the difference between
Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet, both of
which feature a character who fakes her own death. In
contrast to Much Ado, where the truth of Hero’s
deception is revealed before anyone comes to harm,
Juliet’s deception in Romeo and Juliet tragically leads to
the real deaths of both herself and Romeo. As this
comparison suggests, the plots of Shakespeare’s
comedies frequently resemble the plots of his tragedies,
but they have happier outcomes.
Blood symbolizes murder and guilt, and imagery of it
pertains to both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. For
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Shakespeare’s comedies represented a significant
departure from the classical comedy that had
dominated the stage prior to his arrival in London.
Whereas classical comedies were fairly straightforward,
Shakespearean comedies introduced a number of
elements that made for more complicated plots.
Classical comedies typically opened with an already
established pair of lovers, and they told of how these
lovers had to overcome some obstacle or another to
confirm the legitimacy of their union. Shakespeare,
however, did not write comedies with already
established lovers, and instead placed the emphasis of
the plot on the process of wooing itself. The Taming of
the Shrew thus tells the story of Petruchio, who must
labor to break through Katherine’s ill-tempered nature
and win her affections. In other plays, such as Love’s
Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Shakespeare multiplies the number of lovers, which
leads to preposterously intricate plots. In yet other
comedies, such as Twelfth Night and The Merchant of
Venice, Shakespeare uses disguise as a significant plot
device that adds further levels of complication, yielding
a rich source of dramatic irony. The audience, who
knows more than the characters, can laugh at the
amusing predicaments that characters get themselves
into with their own foolishness.
The trickery of Puck’s magic flower, the central plot
device, is the clearest symbol of this theme, as it is
responsible for so much of the foiled perception of the
characters of the play. With this theme, Shakespeare
points out that while our actions may often be bold and
full of confidence, they are always based on our
perception of the world, which is fragile and
changeable. Lysander, for example, is so in love with
Hermia he would elope with her; however, once his
perception is changed (through the magic flower), he
changes his mind and pursues Helena.
Similarly, Shakespeare encourages us to consider our
own perception as it is involved in watching the play.
After all, the famous closing soliloquy, delivered by the
trickster Puck, invites us to consider our time watching
the play as a "dream," just as Helena, Hermia, Lysander,
and Demetrius think that the events that occurred were
themselves a dream. Thus, Shakespeare involves us as
the audience in his foiling of our perception, as he
presents us with fictional events as if they had really
happened. With this closing soliloquy, we are put on the
level of the Athenian youths, questioning what was real
and what was a dream.
Control Versus Disorder
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers
incredible thematic richness and depth. Many of the
themes
are
intimately
related,
showcasing
Shakespeare’s seamless storytelling ability. For example,
being able to control oneself or, in the case of the male
characters, to control the women of the book, requires
being able to trust one’s perception and thus to be able
to act on it. In giving the theme of fooled perception a
central place, Shakespeare destabilizes much more for
the characters of his play.
Foiled Perception
A recurrent theme throughout Shakespeare’s plays, this
theme encourages us to consider how easily we may be
fooled by our own perception. Mention of eyes and
"eyne," a more poetic version of the plural, may be
found throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Furthermore, all characters find themselves unable to
trust their own eyes, as, for example, Titania finds
herself in love with an ugly donkey-headed fool.
Much of the play centers on the inability of the
characters to control what they think they have a right
to control. The main plot device of the love potion
flower is an excellent example of this: the characters
may feel they should be able to decide who they love.
However, even the queen of the fairies Titania is made
to fall in love with a donkey-headed fool; the loyal
Lysander is similarly made to fall in love with Helena and
to spurn Hermia, whom he had loved so arduously
hours before. The device of the flower thus alludes to
our inability to control our feelings, so much so that it
may feel like we are controlled by an external force. This
force is personified in Puck, the mischievous fairy jester,
who himself is unable to control his actions, mistaking
Lysander for Demetrius.
Similarly, the male figures attempt throughout the play
to control the women. The start of the play is an early
indication of this theme, as Egeus appeals to the
authority of another man, Theseus, to control his
daughter in her disobedience. Ultimately, Egeus is
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unable to get his way; Hermia and Lysander are set to
marry at the end of the play.
Theseus, however, is one character whose authority
remains more or less unquestioned; he represents the
ability of humanity to assert its will and see it
actualized. After all, if the lawfulness of Athens is
juxtaposed to the chaos of the fairies’ forest outside,
then there is some level at which human order can
prevail.
Literary Device: Play-Within-a-Play
Another recurring theme in Shakespeare’s works, this
motif invites viewers to consider that we are also
watching a play, thus parroting the theme of foiled
perception. As this theme often functions in
Shakespeare’s plays, we notice that the characters we
are watching are actors, despite the fact that we
become so emotionally involved in their storyline. For
example, as we, Shakespeare’s audience, watch
Shakespeare’s actors watching a play, we would
normally be invited to zoom out and consider the ways
in which we ourselves are involved in a play in our
everyday lives, for example, how we might be fooled by
the disingenuous acting of others. However, in the case
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play that is
performed, The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Pyramus
and Thisbe, is notably terrible, so much so that its
audience interjects its own humorous comments.
However, Shakespeare still encourages us to consider
the ways we are involved in foiled perception. After all,
although the play-within-a-play is clearly a play, we are
invited to forget the frame narrative that surrounds it:
Shakespeare’s play itself. By presenting a terrible play by
which no one is fooled, Shakespeare makes more
explicit the ways that we are, in fact, deceived by good
actors. Again, in our everyday lives, sometimes we are
so fooled by our false perception that we feel some
fairy, like Puck, could be slipping us a magic potion
without us realizing.
Challenging of Gender Roles, Female Disobedience
The women of the play offer a consistent challenge to
male authority. A popular idea at the time of the play’s
writing was that of the “Great Chain of Being,” which
outlined the world’s hierarchy: God ruled over men,
who had power over women, who were superior to
beasts, and so on. While we see with the marriage of
Theseus and Hippolyta the preservation of this
hierarchy, particularly despite Hippolyta’s mythical
status as empowered Amazon queen, the very first
scene shows another woman going against this
hierarchy. After all, Hermia’s commitment to Lysander is
in direct contradiction of her father’s desires. In the
same vein, Titania explicitly disobeys her husband in
refusing his order to hand over the changeling boy.
Helena, meanwhile, is perhaps one of the most
interesting women in the play. She attributes her
cowardly and demure nature to her femininity,
chastising Demetrius: "Your wrongs do set a scandal on
my sex; / We cannot fight for love, as men may do" (II,
i). She does, however, still pursue Demetrius, rather
than the other way around. Although she does not win
him through her pursuit explicitly, Oberon sends Puck to
enchant Demetrius with the love potion once he
witnesses her display of love. While her power must still
be channeled through a male source, Helena ultimately
gets what she wants.
Ambition In Shakespeare
How does the theme of ambition weave through
Shakespeare’s plays? In 21st Century Western culture
we generally regard ambition as a ‘good’ thing. School
children are urged to be ambitious, while employers
shake their heads at job candidates who appear to lack
ambition. In these times of gender equality it is seen as
quite normal that boys and girls, men and women,
should harbour the same ambitions and are encouraged
to pursue them into the workplace and up the ladder of
promotion.
The meaning of the word has evolved into something a
bit different from its earlier meaning. In Shakespeare’s
time, and in his plays, ambition is not a positive drive.
The result of ambitious behaviour is a downfall through
some counter force, as a reaction to it. That often takes
the form of revenge – different kinds of revenge,
sometimes by a person, sometimes by fate, and
sometimes by nature. It seems that Shakespeare
thought of ambition as a doomed effort to rise above
the ordinary and establish oneself above it. In that effort
a man (or woman) will offend – offend individuals,
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society or nature – and will therefore have to be
brought down if equilibrium is to be restored. That is
essential, although, in Shakespeare, as is always the
case in his plays, it is never quite as simple as that.
In Shakespeare’s great revenge tragedy, Hamlet, in
Claudius’ ambitious bid to become king he murders his
brother, Hamlet’s father. That leads to Hamlet’s decision
to bring him down by avenging his father’s murder. In
many of Shakespeare’s tragedies and history plays
ambition plays a role but when we think about ambition
in Shakespeare, our minds usually spring to that great
expression of human ambition and its consequences,
the play, Macbeth, and we can use Macbeth as an
example of one of the ways Shakespeare uses the
theme of ambition.
Ambition in Macbeth is far from a straightforward
illustration of the theme (there are many significant
Macbeth ambition quotes). For a start, it engenders a
debate in the mind of the audience as to who the
ambitious character is. In terms of classical tragedy
Macbeth fits the bill. He’s a hero, virtually worshipped
by the other feudal lords of Scotland. When he gets the
idea that he can become king he believes that all he has
to do is kill the king, he will be elected king, and that will
be that. The rest of the play works that idea through
and throws up its various complications. In the end the
hero, by now regarded as a hellish villain, is brought
down.
That is a very simple view of it, and one can, of course,
see it that way if one would like to: the story is gripping,
and that’s what it seems to tell us. But what about Lady
Macbeth? Macbeth’s basic decency, his nature, full of
‘the milk of human kindness,’ stalls him, as his rational
thinking, with all its implications, almost stops him.
However, Lady Macbeth, using all the tactics at her
disposal – her sexuality, emotional blackmail, flattery –
ensures that he carries out the murder. So where does
ambition lie in this play? With him, with her, or with
both? Perhaps both, but they are two different models
of ambition.
And then, Macbeth’s downfall. It seems on the surface
that he is brought down by a human force that comes
against him, and that makes for a very exciting story, but
the downfall is a revenge for the killing of Duncan that
operates on several levels.
Apart from the Aristotelian model of a flawed hero who
brings about his own downfall by one of his actions, the
protagonist does not live in a vacuum. He is part of the
natural order, which he offends as he goes about
murdering a king who holds his position by right, in
terms of the order of things, and by overthrowing the
king Macbeth is subverting nature. An Elizabethan
audience would have seen such an act as an ‘unnatural’
deed. They would also have known that nature and
society will both take systematic revenge. Macbeth
knows that and it worries him right from the start. He
says: ‘…we but teach/Bloody instructions, which being
taught, return/To plague the inventor.’
Ambition, therefore, and the killing of the divinely given
king, entails a series of violations of the natural order, all
of which return to haunt Macbeth relentlessly. And
nature takes the most terrible revenge. In violating
nature Macbeth forfeits the benefits of its regenerative
power. He becomes an insomniac unable to benefit by
the regeneration that sleep brings: he enters a world of
interminable sleepless nights. In their attempt to
deprive the next generation of their lives and
inheritance he and Lady Macbeth die prematurely, in
childlessness. Nature is the real avenger and Malcolm
and Macduff only its human agents.
And so, as is the case with all of Shakespeare’s themes,
ambition is treated to a greater or lesser degree in
almost all his plays, and interact, and merge with, the
other themes. Macbeth is not only about ambition, it’s
about power, corruption, greed, violence, kingship,
society, revenge, and a host of other things too
numerous to list.
Appearance & Reality In Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s plays display countless themes, some of
which develop through the body of plays as a whole.
The idea, though, that people, events and things in our
world are often not what they seem, is at the heart of
all the plays. Indeed, some of the plays, for example A
Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, are largely
about the confusion between what is real and what is
not. This theme of appearance and reality is one that
runs through many of Shakespeare’s plays.
What is appearance and reality? Well, as Shakespeare
himself put it: ‘All that glitters is not gold.’ At its most
simple level, the way some characters appear to the
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other characters on the one hand and the way they
appear to the audience on the other is often different.
Macbeth takes Duncan into his home as a friend while
planning to murder him, and acknowledges that ‘false
face must hide what the false heart does know.’
Shakespeare’s plays are full of references to men who
hide their evil natures behind smiles. When Hamlet
thinks about his father’s murderer he comments ‘One
may smile, and smile, and be a villain.’
Such
observations about men’s smiles fill the plays: ‘There’s
daggers in men’s smiles’; ‘Why, I can smile, and murder
whiles I smile’; ‘Some that smile have in their hearts, I
fear, millions of mischief.’
The characters in Shakespeare’s plays often wear masks.
The stage convention was that if a character was
wearing a mask no-one would recognise him or her, so
characters could appear to a friend as a stranger, or as
anonymous, or hide his or her identity for any other
purpose.
Shakespeare found disguise, another of the Elizabethan
theatre’s conventions, most useful for his representation
of appearance and reality. Disguise was a staple of the
Elizabethan stage.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is all about confusing
appearance and reality. Shakespeare uses various
devices to create confusion as to what is real and what
is illusion. There are two worlds in the play, the fairy
world and the human world. They operate
harmoniously but separately. But in this play the fairy
world intervenes in the human world and throws up all
kinds of illusions as the action develops. The fairly king’s
servant, Puck, plays tricks on the lovers and that makes
things seem to be what they are not and bewilders
them: Puck becomes confused himself and puts the love
potion in the wrong young man’s eyes, further
complicating matters. The four lovers are not only lost in
the forest but have lost their grip on reality.
consequences. So dramatic that many plays by
Shakespeare, and also his Elizabethan and Jacobean
contemporaries, have an act of betrayal as the main
dramatic device – an act around which the play turns,
and which drives the action of the drama. All through
the plays there are minor acts of betrayal as well. It is
often said of Shakespeare that he knows the human
heart, and that no human motives can be hidden from
him. It is interesting that so many of his characters
commit acts of betrayal: it’s something that
demonstrates how deeply embedded the impulse to
betrayal is in the nature of human beings
In this remarkable play the effects of betrayal are laid
bare. We see a man of the noblest character fall to the
level of an animal.
Macbeth betrays his king, and also his country. As in
Julius Caesar, the action in Macbeth works up to a great
act of betrayal whose consequences are worked
through to an act of retribution.
Shakespeare’s plays are filled with characters
committing acts of betrayal, including the comedies. In
the history plays, where politics and the ambition that
goes with those involved in it, betrayal is commonplace.
The history plays are about kings and the powerful
people around them – most often people with their
own ambitions prepared to support someone in a major
act of betrayal, including regicide, in order to further
their own careers. Many of the plays are a working
through of attempts to dethrone monarchs, a lead up to
an attempt and then a working through of the
consequences. The history of Britain is full of betrayals
at that level and Shakespeare reveled in reproducing
that history in the theatres, to the delight of theatregoers.
As surely as human beings love and hate and aspire,
they also betray each other. The depth of pain and
suffering caused by betrayal makes for powerful drama.
Betrayal In Shakespeare
Conflict In Shakespeare
Betrayal is something that comes from deep inside
human nature – a phenomenon that underlies all the
unpleasant things that human beings do to each other.
As such, it is inevitable that it should feature in many of
Shakespeare’s plays. Moreover, the very nature of
betrayal is dramatic, both in the act, and in its
Conflict in drama is not so much a theme as a fact. The
word ‘drama’ is a Greek word, meaning ‘action,’ and it is
the action of a play that constitutes the drama. Conflict
is at the centre of all dramas: without conflict there can
be no drama. The interesting thing about conflict in
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Shakespeare’s plays is, not that it is his major theme,
but how he uses it to create an integrated dramatic text.
Conflict takes innumerable forms in Shakespeare’s plays:
it would be impossible to list them all. Several plays tell
the story of rivals in love or war; others of quarrels in
families – brother against brother, parent against child –
or between families. There are international conflicts
(wars against foreign people) and domestic conflicts
(civil wars). But conflict in Shakespeare’s plays goes
deeper than that: there is conflict between the
generations; conflict between different philosophies and
ideologies; class conflict; racial conflict; and at the heart
of it all, conflict between light and darkness, good and
evil.
Conflict in Shakespeare is not only an external thing but
often a process within one individual. Macbeth and
Hamlet are good examples of that. An internal drama
takes place in the minds of both: there are choices to be
made and the conflict is between and among those
choices. The question is always, what to do. As the
action of the play progresses the inner conflict becomes
more intense. At the same time the various conflicts in
the action continue: for example, the thanes moving
against Macbeth in rebellion, and the plotting against
Hamlet’s life.
If ‘conflict’ is what drama is then Shakespeare is the
consummate dramatist. Drama has come to mean ‘a
play,’ or a play’s action. So a play’s one most necessary
ingredient is conflict and it is that that keeps the
audience engaged. Shakespeare provides that on
multiple levels in every play.
Corruption In Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s depiction of human nature through all his
plays reveals the corruption that infects human beings.
Corruption appears in many forms in Shakespeare. At its
most obvious level, corruption is linked to power and
we see countless examples of corruption in the most
powerful characters in the plays. Shakespeare often
explores the ways in which kings and other powerful
figures abuse their position, as well as the ways in which
ambitious men plot to gain power, usually the throne,
by illegitimate means.
As the mediaeval age gave way to the Renaissance the
idea persisted that order depends on a close-knit
hierarchical society with a legitimate leader at the top,
sometimes even ordained by God. Also, the strong
humanistic idea persisted that the role of a ruler was to
make the welfare of the state and its citizens his priority.
To subvert that and make his own self-interest his main
priority is to corrupt that ideal.
Corruption reveals itself differently in Hamlet. The play
is saturated with images of corruption. The rottenness
in the state of Denmark is reflected everywhere in
images of ill health, weeds overwhelming healthy
plants, everything decaying and rotting, and poison
killing wholesome things. Right at the beginning of the
play a minor character, Francisco, says ‘I am sick at
heart,’ setting the tone for the whole text.
We are constantly reminded of the pervading
atmosphere of decay. Throughout the play we can trace
a path of corruption, that leads to death, through
images of disease in the characters of Polonius, Claudius
and Hamlet.
Polonius is an obviously corrupt character. His
corruption has occurred long before the play begins. He
has a courteous, long-winded, comical manner but with
a nastiness at his core. He is dominating: we see that in
the way he instructs Laertes: ‘These few precepts in thy
memory/ Look thou character.’ He is not only
domineering in his abuse of Ophelia, he is also
controlling and dismissive of her as a daughter and a
woman. We then see him being meddling and
subversive, setting spies on his own son, and finally,
fatally corrupt as he schemes and plots for Hamlet’s
death. His own death is retribution for that.
The centre of corruption in the kingdom and in the play
is Claudius. When Marcellus states, ‘Something is rotten
in the state of Denmark’ he is talking about Denmark’s
relationship with Norway but on the symbolic level he is
summing up Claudius’ corrupting effect on the kingdom
which is intensified by his unpunished crime. Claudius’
corrupt actions carry him to the throne and pollute the
people around him causing chaos, sorrow and death.
The image of rotting along with its stench permeating
far and wide symbolizes the infectious quality of sin.
Hamlet tries to separate his noble qualities, which we
have seen throughout the play, from the circumstance
and treachery against which he has struggled, and in
which he has been entangled. He has also become
corrupted. He is unable to act – any action he takes will
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be morally dubious. Not taking revenge will reduce him
and make him unfit for rule by his own standards, and
taking revenge will do the same. He is trapped in a
corrupt circle from which there is no escape. By the end
of the play he has murdered five people and caused the
suicide of one. But he has routed the corruption around
him. From a morally dubious situation, he is able to
wrest an honourable death, and the chance of stability
for the future of his country.
Corruption leads to the death of all three – Polonius,
Claudius and Hamlet – and Hamlet has to die: there is
no way around it. He has drawn all the corruption on to
himself and, with his death, destroyed it.
Corruption is a major Shakespearean theme and the
above discussion is no more than a brief introduction
with surface-scratching examples.
Death In Shakespeare
The three great themes of life – love, death and war –
are also the three great themes of literature and, once
again, Shakespeare leads the field: his plays are full of
death and the exploration of death. Almost every way of
dying imaginable occurs in the plays and, as usual with
Shakespeare, it is (almost!) never gratuitous but always
an integral part of the plot and ideas of the play. The
deaths may be tragic, many are gruesome and violent,
and others are just creative but they all move the play
along towards the resolution of the play’s conflict.
The many plagues which decimated England and Europe
in Shakespeare’s time helped shape a culture in which
death was an ever-present force in daily life: images of
corpses and skeletons abound in the art of the 14th and
15th centuries. In an era with high mortality rates, mass
deaths due to disease, and little knowledge of medicine
and hygiene, death was a mystery. Whole towns could
be wiped out for no reason that anyone could
understand and so death was considered the
punishment of God.
The prevalence of incidences of death and the imagery
of death in Renaissance art was a vital part of society’s
attempt to comprehend a very real danger, to work
through it, to explore it. And, of course, the playwrights
made it exciting by exploring ways of dying as well, and
in doing so, pandering to the audience’s taste for
violence by presenting dying in gruesome ways.
Elizabethan drama and Jacobean drama was especially
gruesome, notorious for on-stage deaths. All of
Shakespeare’s contemporaries, including Christopher
Marlowe and Ben Jonson, wrote violent scenes that can
still turn our stomachs. As the 16th century gave way to
the 17th the younger dramatists were competing with
each other to produce increasingly gory death scenes.
Suicide is always surrounded by dramatic circumstances
and so, perfect for the theatre. There are more than
twenty suicides in Shakespeare’s plays (thirteen explicit,
and many more implied offstage), committed in the
different circumstances that one may find in life, and
each one contributes to the meaning of the play in
which it occurs. At least seven are depicted as being
admirable in their context. Four suicides are assisted,
and at least three others are imitative. In most cases
Shakespeare presents suicide sympathetically and,
rather than reproach a character, the audience is left
with a mixture of pity and admiration for the victim.
The causes of death in Shakespeare’s plays are
numerous. Almost half the characters who die are
stabbed; the next largest group are beheaded, and the
next poisoned. Several characters die of shame and
quite a few are hanged. Some die of grief and one of
insomnia. One is torn apart by a mob, one eaten by a
bear, one baked in a pie, one is bitten by a snake and
one even dies of indigestion.
It may be useful to take one play to illustrate this theme:
Shakespeare’s work at its best. In Hamlet Shakespeare
explores several main ideas – family, corruption,
revenge, and many others – but there is a sense in
which the play is about death. Shakespeare explores
death in every aspect of the text, and from every angle.
The theme permeates the text and is portrayed in
images that occur in almost every line, and in every
scene. This play, Shakespeare’s most famous, deals so
fully with this universal theme that it could never
become dated. Death will always be human kind’s
greatest and most fascinating mystery and for that
reason Hamlet, four hundred years after it was penned,
will remain fresh to each generation.
Death is present from the appearance of the ghost at
the beginning of the play to the bloodbath in its closing
minutes. The deaths of all the significant characters are
only demonstrations of death though: there is a deeper
level of death’s meaning – the investigation Shakespeare
makes into death through the mind of Hamlet, and it’s
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the progress of that investigation that the audience
follows by its close identification with the hero.
Hamlet contemplates the physicality of death and its
far-reaching complications. In Act 1 he is tortured by
grief and misery from the death of his father and the
over hasty, incestuous marriage of his mother to
Claudius. He contemplates suicide as a solution but
restrains himself because of his fear of eternal suffering
in the afterlife. In his famous ‘To be or not To be’
soliloquy. He calls the afterlife “the undiscover’d
country from whose bourn / No traveller returns” and it
is this unchangeable fact – this question that has
plagued mankind since its beginning, that holds people
captive in a world that is treacherous, miserable, and
rotten.
The theme deepens as the action progresses. Hamlet
develops an obsession with death. On finding the skull
of his father’s jester, Yorick, he contemplates the
ultimate physical transition from life to death – even the
most alive and vibrant human beings are eventually
reduced to a hollow skull. He also ponders on the notion
that death is the great leveller and equalizer of human
beings. He goes on to describe death as the generator of
nature in that human beings are recycled and provide
the fertiliser and nutrition that keeps nature working.
Hamlet finally comes to accept death, and indicates that
“the readiness is all.” From now on his reflections on
death are neither a matter of fear nor of longing. He
now fully accepts that without death there cannot be
life.
could attend mass in private houses, conducted by
priests who were disguised as someone else. Pedlars,
travelling around with their bag of goods for sale, were
sometimes priests in disguise. Buried in their bags
would be all the items they needed to deliver mass.
Catholic villagers were delighted when a pedlar turned
out to be a priest, and would then gather at someone’s
house for mass.
A convention of Elizabethan theatre was the use of men
to play the female roles as women were prohibited from
appearing on the stage. That was itself a deception but
in addition, in many of Shakespeare’s plays a man or a
boy would play a woman who would then disguise
herself as a man, so we would have the double
deception of a man playing a woman playing a man.
Wearing masks was another strong convention. The
audience knew that if someone had a mask over his or
her eyes, although they would know who the character
was, the other characters would not recognise him/her.
That led to many, mainly comic, situations which would
have an effect on the development of the plot.
Deception in Shakespeare’s plays has many different
faces. It could be accidental, as in The Comedy of Errors
or it could take the form of well-planned tactics in the
hands of evil characters, as in Othello and Julius Caesar.
In taking two plays, for example, Hamlet and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream – one a tragedy and one a
comedy – one can easily list many instances of
deception in both forms – an unhappy or happy ending,
seriousness
and
mockery,
lightness
and
momentousness.
A quick survey of some of the plays indicates the
widespread use of deception in Shakespeare’s works:
Deception In Shakespeare
Deception is essential to Shakespeare’s dramatic works
in that it governs the relationships between the
characters and drives the plots. It is the many acts of
deception, both unintended and intended, through the
comedies, histories and tragedies, that provide the
dramatic devices that inform the action.
The world in which Shakespeare lived was a dangerous
one. If you held political or religious views that differed
from the authorised ones your life would be in danger.
The Elizabethans were used to that and so deception
was a way of life. If you were a Catholic you would have
to conceal it. You would have to pretend to support the
Protestant religion and attend church regularly. But you
In Hamlet, the prince’s father is murdered in a secret
plot by his uncle to seize the throne; Hamlet pretends to
be unbalanced to avert his uncle’s suspicions while he
gathers evidence of his crime; Hamlet employs a group
of actors to stage a play depicting Claudius killing his
father to confirm Claudius’ guilt. All of those deceptions
drive the plot and have the consequences of the deaths
of most of the play’s characters.
In Macbeth we mainly have Macbeth deceiving himself.
He convinces himself that he can control fate when he is
told by the witches that he will become king; he deludes
himself that no man could harm him; he deludes
himself into believing that the witches are on his side
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and not agents of his destruction . The results of the self
deception are that everyone in McDuff’s family is killed
and that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth die.
The above examples should serve to demonstrate the
central role of deception in Shakespeare’s and other
Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights’ dramas.
Good & Evil In Shakespeare
During the time that Shakespeare and his contemporary
playwrights were writing their plays beliefs about good
and evil were changing. In the mediaeval mind good
came from God and evil came from the Devil. It was
more or less as simple as that. Human beings had no say
in the matter and good and evil were things that were
imposed on them. When someone behaved well s/he
was being influenced by God and when someone
behaved badly they were under the power of the Devil,
sometimes even possessed by his demons.
With the Renaissance, and the humanism that was
influencing the cultural and artistic outlook of Europe, a
more psychological concept of good and evil began to
come into being. Human beings were now responsible
for their actions and the good or evil within them
originated in people rather than in outside agents. That
transformed the drama of the Renaissance and instead
of the stock, stereotypical figures of mediaeval drama,
we now began to see characters who were ‘good’ or
‘evil’, or even a mixture of the two. The audience could
see them as real people like themselves and were able
to become involved in their feelings and emotions,
rather than just regard them as one would gaze at
stuffed animals in a glass case. That was, of course, one
of the main reasons for the popularity of the
Renaissance theatre.
And so, Shakespeare and his contemporaries could
create really evil characters like Iago who, in spite of a
level of evil that most audiences still gasp at, they could
recognise as being real people like them. Conversely, a
character like Desdemona, sweet and innocent, putting
herself last in her service to others, admirable and
enviable as she is to us, who could never be like her, is
nevertheless recognisable as a real person like us.
As humanism took root in Europe, conditioned by such
things as the growth of individual wealth and criticism
of religious institutions, the distinction between good
and evil began to disappear, allowing true psychological
characters who were capable of both good and bad
actions to emerge in drama, just as figures in art and
sculpture were becoming more naturalistic. And so we
have the physically realistic figure of Michelangelo’s
David and the psychologically realistic figure of Edmund
in King Lear. And we have a hero like Macbeth who can
be turned from good to evil.
There was still an objective evil lingering in the real
world of human beings, mainly in the form of witches.
Witches, influencing human beings and seducing them
into committing evil deeds, feature in Renaissance
drama. Audiences were fascinated by them so they
made good material for drama. The combination of the
Devil’s agents at work and psychological characters
struggling against their influence could form the conflict
in the drama, and so we had a play like Macbeth.
Macbeth is a good example of the treatment of good
and evil in both Elizabethan drama and Jacobean drama.
As a theme it is a stark contrasting picture of the two
forces, perhaps even over-simple. But it’s that contrast
that provides the drama, with all the language and
action surrounding them.
Macbeth begins as a ‘good’ man, a very good man –
loyal, responsible and honourable. During the course of
the action he becomes evil, influenced by the witches
who are agents of the power of evil. He is led on by
their suggestion that he is destined to become king. The
transition is accompanied by language that depicts that
transition. At first he is ‘great,’ ‘good,’ Macbeth, the hero
of Scotland. The king, Duncan, calls him ‘valiant cousin,’
and ‘worthy gentleman.’ In the course of the action
Macbeth kills his opponents, slaughtering the whole of
Macduff’s family, one of the children actually being
murdered onstage. He is now ‘black Macbeth,’ ‘bloody
butcher,’ ‘hell kite.’
The saintly Duncan is associated with good. When
Macbeth is considering killing him he acknowledges
that: ‘this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek…
that his virtues will plead like angels trumpet-tongued
against the deep damnation of his taking off.’ We see
there the direct contrast in the angels of heaven and the
damnation of hell.
As Duncan and Banquo approach Macbeth’s castle for
the king’s visit, the language creates a heavenly
atmosphere around them: ‘heaven’s breath smells
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wooingly here.’ But inside the castle it is different. The
evil plotting of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth has turned it
into an almost literal hell. ‘The raven himself is hoarse
that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my
battlements,’ Lady Macbeth says. ‘Come thick night and
pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell.’ Everything now,
in the castle, is dark and hellish. There is even a comic
scene, after the killing of Duncan, where the gate
keeper, aroused from his sleep by Macduff knocking on
the door, fantasises about being the gatekeeper of hell.
Every word, every action, now, expresses that theme.
Duncan’s son, Malcolm, together with Macduff, exiled in
England, now gathers a force to return to Scotland and
overthrow Macbeth. Sponsored by the English king,
who is depicted as the agent of good, they return to
Scotland and the classic battle of good versus evil takes
place. They overthrow Macbeth and the throne is
restored to its rightful king. Good has triumphed over
evil.
Most of the plays have this tension between good and
evil but none as clearly and graphically and prominently
as Macbeth.
Order & Disorder in Shakespeare
Almost all of Shakespeare’s plays begin with a state of
order or stability, which gives way to disorder or
confusion.
That disruption could take place in individuals. Macbeth
is told that he is going to be king and as a result of that
becomes consumed by ambition; Othello believes his
wife to be unfaithful and is overwhelmed by jealousy;
Hamlet learns that his father has been murdered by his
father’s brother and becomes obsessed with revenge.
Other human causes of disruption are love, hatred, the
lust for political power or any other strongly felt
emotion. The disruption drives the dramatic action.
Disruption could also occur in society – for example civil
war or rebellion. Sometimes disruption in an individual
will lead to social disruption, and vice versa.
Disruption in individuals is often echoed by disruption in
nature. For example, Lear’s madness is reflected in the
storms and tempests that take place throughout;
Macbeth’s unnatural killing of his king is reflected in
unnatural happenings such as the horses in the stables
going mad and biting the grooms, earthquakes, unusual
downpours etc.
Order is restored in the end. The suffering individual is
usually dead by the end of the play, but even in the
plays that aren’t classical tragedies the disrupted
individual comes to new understandings and a new
outlook on humanity, even though that may be minutes
before his or her death.
Although order may be restored it is seldom all perfect
and harmonious. There are loose ends, such as the
treatment of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. On the
surface, it looks like the Christian community has
triumphed in the face of an attack from an enemy and
restored order to their community. As Shylock slinks
away in defeat after he is humiliated in his court case
against Antonio though, we are appalled by the
nastiness of the Christian characters as they mock him,
and we also see the seeds of an even worse disruption
of Venetian society as its anti-Semitic character is
affirmed. Most of the plays have such hanging threads
in their show of order at the end. In real life order never
lasts and new conditions lead to new threats.
Shakespeare’s plays reflect that reality.
Some of the plays deal specifically with the theme of
order and disorder, making it almost ‘what the play is
about’ (although one can never say about a
Shakespeare’s play that it’s ‘about’ one particular thing).
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of those. The social
order of Athens demands that a father’s will should be
enforced. That is also particularly true for the order of
the family. Egeus’ family is threatened because his
daughter refuses to marry the husband of his choice
and insists on her own choice. When she runs away
from the ordered, hierarchical society of Athens,
followed by her lover and their friends, to the chaos of
the woods, order is disrupted: in the woods the
relationships are fragmented. There is also a row going
on between the rulers of the forest, the Fairy King and
Queen, and even the seasons are disrupted. It is only
when Oberon and Titania are reconciled and the natural
order of the fairy world is restored that the lovers’
relationships can become ordered once more and their
return to human society can in turn restore its order.
Egeus’ daughter gets her way regarding her choice of
husband, however, and the drama ends with this threat
to the social order.
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Some of the plays begin with a significant measure of
disorder, only to see the restoration of order, which
then proves to be a mere illusion of order. Macbeth is
one such play. It begins with battle raging between the
Scots and the Norwegians, aided by Scottish traitors –
extreme disorder and chaos everywhere, accompanied
by thunder and lightning. Two great military captains,
Macbeth and Banquo defeat the Norwegians and
restore civil order. A scene in which the king punishes
the traitors and rewards the loyal is all about the
restoration of social order. Everything now seems
ordered and harmonious, but the rest of the play is a
demonstration of how disruption within an individual –
Macbeth’s over-reaching ambition – can bring about
disorder again, after which order has to be restored
once again. This play can also be seen as being ‘about’
order and disorder, although we know that it is
impossible to say what any Shakespeare play is ‘about.’
One can only explore some of its ideas, but the idea of
order and disorder is central in Macbeth.
The centrality of the theme is reinforced by the
language throughout. Macbeth’s comment, ‘so foul and
fair a day I have not seen’ echoes the witches’ chant and
links him with the chaos of their dark world. As
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth talk they frequently invoke
the darkness that allows evil and disorder to flourish –
‘come thick night and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of
hell’; ‘stars hide your fires’ and so on.
The contrast between order and disorder is
demonstrated in various places throughout the play. The
banquet scene is probably the finest illustration of this
theme in all of Shakespeare. Macbeth has just become
king after murdering Duncan, and is holding a state
banquet with noblemen of all degrees, each knowing his
place in the seating order. The irony of his welcoming
statement, ‘You know your own degrees, sit down’ is
striking since he has just disrupted the order by killing
his king. This is the scene in which Banquo’s ghost
appears.
Macbeth’s guilt makes him lose control and the banquet
ends in chaos as everyone runs for the door. Lady
Macbeth’s urging, ‘stand not on the order of your going
but go at once’ confirms the breakdown of order, and it
is from this point that the disruption of Scottish society
is worked through, to culminate in its restoration with
the defeat and death of Macbeth and the restoration of
the rightful king, Malcolm, to the throne.
Every one of Shakespeare’s plays can be examined from
the perspective of the conflict between order and
disorder, whatever its other, and sometimes more
dominant, themes are.
Revenge In Shakespeare
Revenge in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is more of
a genre than a theme, as it generally applies to plays
that are specifically about revenge. That may be
somewhat simplistic, however, as the plays of that era
are never about just one thing. That’s particularly so of
Shakespeare’s plays and, indeed, Hamlet, the greatest
revenge play of all time, is about more things than can
be described, even after four hundred years of its
existence. Nevertheless, it is a play that depicts the
revenge that a young man plans for the murder of his
father.
In the second half of the sixteenth century, coinciding
with the great age of English drama, the works of the
Roman playwrights were being translated into English.
Seneca was of great interest to English dramatists,
particularly the Jacobean writers because his plays were
filled with such horrifying events as cannibalism, incest,
rape, and violent death, things that Jacobean audiences
really loved. Most of Seneca’s plays concerned the
heroic figures of classical legend, and in their stories
there was a great deal of revenge. In Hippolytus, for
example, Theseus takes revenge on his son for the
supposed rape of Phaedra; in Agamemnon the ghost of
Thyestes urges Aegisthus towards revenge.
Shakespeare’s revenge play, Titus Andronicus is quite
possibly the most grotesque play of the period, with its
unpalatable violence. Audiences could not identify with
the methods of the protagonist, but in Hamlet we have
a thoughtful, decent, highly intelligent young man who
would not normally do anyone any harm and, indeed, is
unable to perform the violence that his call to revenge
demands. Conventionally, in revenge plays, the avenger
is something of a hero but, in seeking revenge, is
himself a killer. In some of the plays the avenger is not in
any way a hero but utterly villainous. It is an interesting
situation because although the avenger has the right to
realise justice by taking revenge it is simply not
Christian. The Christian way would always be
forgiveness. But forgiveness is not an option in revenge
plays. Shakespeare, of course, as he always does,
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resolves this problem by having all the wrongdoers,
including Claudius, the murderer of Hamlet’s father,
caught in the traps they have set for the young prince.
Hamlet does not have to do a thing to any of them, and
never intentionally kills anyone. His father’s death is
avenged by the end of the play but there has been no
violence from Hamlet.Interestingly, the difference
between Seneca’s revenge tragedies and Shakespeare’s,
is that in the Seneca’s all the bloodshed occurred
offstage and was usually reported by a messenger. In
Jacobean tragedies however, violent action had to
happen onstage because that’s why the audiences came
to see the play: all the deaths at the end of Hamlet were
very much a part of the play’s attraction to a 17th
century audience. In the final scene everyone dies,
including Hamlet and the stage is littered with corpses.
And right at the end, a character that has had almost no
role in the action comes onstage and his soldiers carry
all the bodies off.
If one were to attempt a definition of the revenge
tragedy one could say that it is the story of a disturbed
protagonist and his elaborate plan of revenge for the
murder of someone close – a mother, father, brother,
sister, loved one. The plays follow a formula which
includes the vengeful ghost of the murder victim
appearing to the protagonist; the protagonist taking
justice into his own hands after other methods fail him;
the hero’s gradual descent into madness; a play within a
play that reveals the murderer’s guilt; a subtle game of
cat and mouse between the avenger and the murderer;
and a climactic ending in which all of the main
characters die.
Even Hamlet, often called Shakespeare’s best play,
follows this somewhat simplistic formula. However,
Hamlet is not just entertainment as many of the
revenge plays of the time were, but a deep
psychological character study with profound moral
reflections. And, of course, with the language to go with
those things – the poetry that we associate with all
Shakespeare’s plays.
Transformation In Shakespeare
All Shakespeare’s plays have transformation at their
heart and we see that in his texts in several ways.
The most visible manifestation of transformation in the
plays stems from Shakespeare’s pre-eminence in
creating inner lives for his characters that are complex
and evolving as they react to events. Before
Shakespeare, literature did not present us with
characters whose inner lives demand our deepest
attention. But we see in Shakespeare’s plays so many
characters who are in the process of reacting to events
and developing, as we watch them, in ways no other
characters in literature before Shakespeare did, because
Shakespeare’s assumptions about character were
different from those of earlier writers. Earlier characters
had personality structures, and while they did react to
events, we don’t see process and the development of
understanding in them that we see in Shakespeare’s
characters. That development of understanding in
Shakespeare’s characters is responsible for the
transformation we see in all of them. With Hamlet,
Othello, Macbeth, and Lear especially, we see this
interiority which has become so much a part of our way
of understanding human beings.
Shakespeare’s positioning as a Renaissance writer places
him in the context of rapid change. The world in which
he lived was fast transforming itself in science, art,
philosophy, religion, medicine and many other areas. It
was in the middle of the Copernican revolution, the
Machiavellian influence, geographic exploration, and
dynamic social change. Shakespeare’s characters begin
to display a Machiavellian duplicity, or are concerned
with, or promote, as we see in King Lear, both a concern
for the preservation, and the dismantling of, the
received Elizabethan world view. In many characters we
see the impulse to replace it with a modern, sciencebased sensibility. Living in the times he did means that
Shakespeare could not have done anything else than
have his characters respond. The context of fast and
widespread change in Europe enters the fabric of the
plays.
And so, transformation pervades all the plays.
Something common to all of them is stability giving way
to confusion. The ultimate ending in the plays is
restoration, however – a change back to the state
before the confusion, but with a transformation having
taken place – usually in the form of deeper
understandings on the part of the characters At all times
the context, as outlined above, informs the action and
the character development. Change may happen to
individuals on the most basic level. In Twelfth Night
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Malvolio is tricked by a false letter into changing from a
puritan steward to a ridiculous would-be lover; in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream Nick Bottom is magically
transformed into an ass. In every play characters change
in some way: it could be the change from life to death,
or the dawning of new insights. Figures of power come
tumbling down and villains are exposed.
None of Shakespeare’s plays is about one thing: every
play is criss-crossed with a multitude of themes, so if
one tried to explain a Shakespeare text in terms of one
idea it would be simplistic. However, in some plays
transformation is a central theme, operating at every
level of the text. The Tempest is one of those and, more,
it is in many ways the climax of the theme in
Shakespeare’ works. It might therefore be instructive to
look at transformation in that play.
The above explanation is simplistic, however, and
doesn’t take account of the complexity of the plays. As
in all Shakespeare, the central theme is interwoven with
such things as linked themes and ideas, language,
dramatic action, characterisation and so on. We see the
transforming influence of childhood innocence feeding
into the main theme, the softening influence of nature
and femininity on the hard, masculine, urban political
world. And in the end love and forgiveness emerge and
transform the characters. In Shakespeare’s plays we will
almost always find that transformation takes place in
that way.
The word that is usually used to talk about
transformation in The Tempest is ‘metamorphosis.’ It
means, simply, transformation by means of magic. In
The Tempest the magician, Prospero, uses magic to
bring about transformation in both the outer and inner
lives of his enemies. In the process he is himself
transformed and at the end of the play he demonstrates
his complete, permanent transformation by renouncing
his magic and its agents.
After twelve years of anger and bitterness at his
banishment and imprisonment on a small island with his
young daughter, Miranda, he now has the opportunity
to take revenge on those who have done him wrong. He
uses his magic to wreck the ship they are travelling on
and bring them to the island, taking them out of their
context of European politics, to an unknown and
unpredictable environment. The spells Prospero casts
on them transforms their emotional states. Prospero’s
initial intention was to confuse, punish and teach them
a lesson but finally, filled with pity, he is moved to
compassion for them. This is the turning point in the
story as well as in Prospero’s inner character. In letting
go of his resentment and forgiving the wrongdoer, he
lets go of his power over them and they waken to new
insights and understandings, transformed by the
forgiveness of their victim. This is the climax of the
transformation theme in The Tempest. Vengeance gives
way to forgiveness and mercy and transforms the lives
of everyone who is affected by the previous climate of
hatred. This is a deeply Christian idea and we see it
throughout Shakespeare’s dramatic works.
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