CLASS V E
… your humble patience pray gently
to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
TITANIA
HELENA
HERMIA
ROMEO & JULIET
JULIET
NURSE
LADY CAPULET
JULIUS CAESAR
CALPURNIA
HAMLET
GERTRUDE
OPHELIA
OTHELLO
DESDEMONA
EMILIA
KING LEAR
CORDELIA
REGAN
MACBETH
LADY MACBETH
THE TEMPEST
MIRANDA
Bob Marley: “no woman no cry”
GONERIL
CALPURNIA
Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them.
CALPURNIA
She is Caesar ‘s wife. This character has not got a great part in the play :she acts
only a dialogue with Caesar at the beginning of the play and another one just
before the killing of Caesar.
The night after the offer to Caesar of the crown she dreams a bad dream. So in
the morning she tries to convince Caesar not to go to the Capitol. But Caesar
doesn’t follow her advice and is killed.
She is presented as a silly woman that believes in dreams, but at the end the
dream proves true.
JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo!wherefore art you Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name!
Or, if thou wilt not be but sworn my love, and
I’ll no longer be a Capulet
LADY CAPULET
Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee
NURSE
Faith, here it is./ Romeo is banish’d; and all the world to nothing
That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you;/ Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,/ I think it best you married with the County.
O, he’s a lovely gentleman!/ Romeo’s dishcoult to him. An eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye/ As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,/ For it excels your first; or if it did not,
Your first is dead - or ‘twere as good he were/ As living here, and you no use of him
JULIET
Juliet can be considered the first real woman in English literature. In fact
she takes the role of the man, because is determinate, sure of herself and
takes decisions. She is a very revolutionary character, the first girl
similar to a modern girl. She falls in love with Romeo, the son of Lord
Montague, while, she is lord Capulet’s daughter :their families are
enemies. Also Romeo is in love with Juliet, and makes her a promise of
marriage, so Juliet is sure of his love. To make the promise also in front
of God, they decide to get married, and finally they make the ceremony in
the chapel, in secret. Juliet so goes against her father decisions, with great
courage. One of the most surprising passages in the play is in the third
act : just before the wedding night between the two lovers...Juliet is
waiting for Romeo in her room. She feels “like an impatient child that has
new robes and may not wear them.” She invites the night to come,
because during the night Romeo will come and speaks about” love
performing night, to learn how to lose a winning match played for a pair
of stainless maidenhood, her unmanned blood bating” without problems
of decency
or convention. Juliet is unconventional, impulsive,
spontaneous and passionate, her love for Romeo is real, sincere, true. Her
language is concrete, sincere, not influenced by the courtly love
conventions.
At the end of the play the two lovers die together, so Juliet, even if she
will forever remain a heroine for young girls, is finally a victim.
Dire Straits "Romeo and Juliet"
LADY CAPULET
She is Juliet’s mother. Juliet ‘s mother in difference of Juliet
is the symbol of the typical woman of the 17th century. She
doesn’t follow her feelings, but her husband’s will. He is a
sort of pater familias, which has rights on his children and
his wife, which are submitted. In fact Lady Capulet tries to
persuade Juliet to marry Paris, to respect her husband’s
decisions. The relationship between Juliet and her mother
isn’t good: in fact Juliet can’t speak about her love story
with Romeo, she is sure that her mother will not help her
and would not understand her love. So Lady Capulet can be
considered a victim of men’s power. She is the exact opposite
of Juliet, the new, modern woman
THE NURSE
The nurse is the comic character of the play together with
Mercuzio. Her function is to give wise advice to Juliet who loves
Romeo but her father has given the consent to marry Paris. At
first the nurse helps Juliet to speak with Romeo but when the boy
is banished from Verona the nurse suggested Juliet to marry
Paris because he could become a good husband. So we can see
that he considers money more important than true love. But at
the end she understands that for Juliet Romeo is more important
than Paris and she decides to help the girl to arrive at her aim.
The nurse is an important character also because she is the only
one, together with Friar Laurence, to know everything so she
becomes an important point of union in the play.
GERTRUDE
What have I done that thou dar’st wagty
tongue in -noise so rude again si me
OPHELIA
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
GERTRUDE
Hamlet’s mother, only a month after her husband’s death, decides to marry
Hamlet’s uncle. So Gertrude is the cause of the moral torment in Hamlet’s soul,
and, at the same time, restrains Claudius from killing her son. But she isn’t an
exceptional character: Gertrude doesn’t act great monologues, but from what she
says we can understand that she is a good mother, careful and tender; she isn’t an
accomplice in her husband’s murder, and she insists in seeing only the good side of
life. In fact, for example she doesn’t believe in her husband’s ghost. She is very
unhappy for Hamlet’s behaviour and wants to discover the cause of Hamlet’s
madness, with the naive hope of finding again happiness. One of the most
important passages in the play is when Hamlet and Gertrude meet in her room:
Gertrude, during their meeting face to face, answers with the pride of an innocent
soul. So she shows us lack of self-criticism. But then she begins to feel a sense of
remorse: for this reason when she speaks with the king she doesn’t reveal that
Hamlet isn’t really mad. Only her own death, at the end of the play, can persuade
her of Claudius’s fault. Her language is tender, gentle and when she speaks about
Ophelia’s death also poetic.
EMILIA
But I do think it is their husband’ faults
if wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
and pour our treasures into foreign laps;
DESDEMONA
Your wife, my lord; your true
And loyal wife.
OPHELIA
Ophelia is Polonius’s daughter and Laertes sister. She has a negative vision
of mankind and she is narrow-minded, but she loves Hamlet. She has a weak
character and she is influenced by her family, in particular by her father and
her brother. In fact Laertes describes Hamlet’s love as deceptive and
Polonius doesn’t want that she falls in love with Hamlet and he thinks
Hamlet’s madness is caused by his love for his daughter Ophelia. But Hamlet
is disgusted by her mother’s behaviour and he is so disappointed by the
feminine gender that he refutes Ophelia. This passage is very important and
very famous: in this scene Hamlet asks Ophelia, after a discussion about
honesty and beauty, where her father is. When she answers she doesn’t
know, we can understand Hamlet’s reaction.
At the end Ophelia becomes mad. The first signs of madness emerge in act 4,
scene 5; Claudius says to Horatio: "Follow her close; give her good watch, I
pray you.” She exits and then her brother Laertes enters. She has in this
early part of the scene the rosemary, pansies, columbines and daisies she will
give to Laertes, the king, and the Queen.
While Ophelia is hanging a garland of flowers in a branch of a tree in a
stream, she falls in water and she is drowned.
EMILIA
Emilia is one of the main women in “Othello”. She is Iago’s
wife and Desdemona’s attendant so she tries to convince
Othello that his wife is faithful and honest, when he is
suspicious and believes in Iago’s plot and so he insults her.
After Othello has killed Desdemona and she has understood
Iago’s plot, she decides to tell everybody the truth. So Iago, the
real loser, must drop the mask of the honest man and he is
obliged to face reality. In some of Emilia’s words feminist ideas
emerge clearly, in fact she says to Desdemona that if women
are unfaithful to their husband, it is their fault because they
are too jealous, unfaithful or they beat them. Emilia thinks in a
different way from Desdemona; Emilia is more quick-witted
than Desdemona who instead is an ingenuous woman, and a
victim of men. Emilia’s language is concrete and direct: she
says everything she thinks.
Zucchero Fornaciari "Donne"
MIRANDA
In general Shakespearian women are victims, many of them die or
men manipulate them. But Miranda isn’t a victim, she represents
womanly perfection and she has a happy destiny, in fact at the end of
the play she can marry her beloved Ferdinand. Miranda is beautiful
and innocent. She loves Prospero, her father, she respect him, but
their relationship is strange, in fact Prospero loves Ariel, the spirit of
the island, more than her. Miranda loves Ferdinand and she doesn’t
respect Prospero’s will; at first, in fact, her father dislikes Ferdinand
and so he tries to avoid their union, but Miranda is also a
determinated girl so she decides to continue her relationship with
Ferdinand and she wants to convince Prospero that Ferdinand is a
good boy
DESDEMONA
Desdemona is very innocent and at the same time she is
passionate like Juliet. Her love for the Moor is true and deep
while for Othello she is only an object of desire and jealousy.
Desdemona’s death seems a punishment for the secret marriage
as it was for Juliet. Desdemona feels a more sincere and
confident love to such an extent that she lets herself be guided
by her husband blindly, while Othello’s love is only selfish and
possessive. Desdemona is sensual and romantic she is presented
from two points of views: through Othello’s prize of her beauty
and innocence and through Iago’s vulgar comments. When she
reaches the top of love and happiness, she starts to decline
towards death. Desdemona is assertive, calm and becomes
uneasy only when Othello is away. She speaks in poetry, and
her language is concrete.
MIRANDA
I might call him
A thing divine; for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble
LADY MACBETH
Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of thing. Go , get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go, carry them, and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood
LADY MACBETH
Lady Macbeth turned her husband into a murderer in
fact she, with her determination, sweeps away doubts
from Macbeth’s mind. Lady Macbeth is more
determinated and decides to kill Duncan, while
Macbeth wants to have the power and to became king
without committing crimes. In Macbeth it seems that
the woman takes the role of the man. Lady Macbeth
and her husband are punished for their ambition and
their thirst of power, Lady Macbeth starts
sleepwalking
while Macbeth can’t sleep. She is
ambitious, proud and superstitious; she behaves like a
man but then she commits suicide. After the murder of
the king she has a nervous and psychological
breakdown. She is the real witch, more cruel than the
three witches and bossier than her husband.
The three main female characters are Regan, Goneril and Cordelia, the three daughters of King
Lear. These women have a great importance in the play, they take decisions and they hold the same
role of man. This is an uncommon thing for the society of the time where women were considered
inferior to men.
Regan and Goneril are the two ungrateful and greedy daughters: they pretend respect, love and
reverence to their father only because they want to inherit his kingdom. Their feelings are false,
dishonest, bad and opportunist. In fact they illtreat their father, they haven’t respect for his old age.
Their aims are power, wealth and to obtain these things they use all means without any moral doubt.
The condition of Lear is similar to the condition of a lot of old fellows that still now are considered
by their sons and daughters a burden to move from a place to another. Regan and Goneril didn’t get
married for love but their marriage is simply a contract and they have no problems to betray their
husbands for a man who has more power: they are immoral. Their idea of love is very different
from the idea of love of Juliet: she is passionate, has values and true feelings.
The third daughter of King Lear, Cordelia, is the opposite of her sisters, she is the prototype of the
good daughter. She is sweet-tempered and modest; she doesn’t show publicly love to his father but
she honours and respects him. She helps her father in the moment of difficulty; she is helpful, honest
and loyal. She has a modern idea of love and she is wise.
HELENA
HERMIA
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.
TITANIA
Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.
Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!
So methinks:
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,
Mine own, and not mine own.
GONERIL
By day and night he wrongs me; every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets us all at odds: I'll not endure it:
His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,
I will not speak with him; say I am sick:
If you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer.
CORDELIA
Alack, 'tis he: why, he was met even now
As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud;
Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn. A century send forth;
Search every acre in the high-grown field,
And bring him to our eye.
REGAN
Out, treacherous villain!
Thou call'st on him that hates thee: it was he
That made the overture of thy treasons to us;
Who is too good to pity thee.
TITANIA
HERMIA
She falls in love with Lysander. Their
love is true love but her father has
given Demetrius the consent to marry
her. This love is similar to Romeo
and Juliet love but at the end their
love finishes well. Hermia follows
her passions, she is impulsive
She is the queen of the fairies. She
was married to Oberon. She falls
in love with a man with an ass
head and this is a comic part of
this comedy. She represented the
woman in the world of the fairies
but she is described like a
common woman with her passions
and her mistakes
HELENA
Helena is a friend of Hermia who
loves Demetrius so she follows
him when he follows Hermia in
the wood. Also Helena is
impulsive she follows her
emotion and her heart. At the end
she married Demetrius
SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO
A SUMMER’S DAY?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease halth all too short a date;
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
As the title itself says “ a Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a sort of “dream” and love is seen as the result
of enchantment. In fact there’s no deep passion of affection but love is only physical love, it depends on
sight: Puck puts a poison on the lovers’ eyelids to change their feeling, so magic is also important in this
play. Infatuation is the only kind of love represented in “ Midsummer night’s dream”, and this love is
irresponsible, capricious. In fact Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius fall in love and become
indifferent to each other in a night because of Puck’s magic. Love is based on eyes and it can be noticed
with Titania: The queen of the fairies falls in love with Bottom thanks to the love filter, because Bottom’s
head is transformed into an ass’s head but Titania doesn’t matter. This is a strange situation, because
Titania could have all the men she wants but by magic she chooses the worst one, a man transformed in a
ridiculous animal.
Queen “Somebody to love”
“ Love’s reason’s without reason”: this is one of the most representative
sentences by Shakespeare, because he mainly writes about love. In fact in
his plays love can be considered the main feeling of human life because it
influences our existence.
For example in Romeo and Juliet the lovers cannot escape from their
tragic destiny and their destiny makes the story more moving and in
contrast with their simple innocence and youth. Love between the two
protagonists is excessive: “Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by
thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry”, They act following
only passion. They believed in eternal love and for it they are ready to
commit suicide.
In Othello there are two kinds of love represented by Othello and Desdemona. For the Moor love
is a practical, physical matter; in fact he considered his wife like a thing in his hands. He also
considered his love as a social conquest but Desdemona’s love is true and passionate and she has
fallen in love with Othello for compassion and for admiration. For example when Othello wants
to kill Desdemona she doesn’t resist to her husband’s will and she dies without asking for
revenge.
Iago’s love can be compared to Othello’s one; in fact Iago uses his wife for his business: he asked
her to steal Desdemona’s handkerchief.
However, in our opinion, the play that best represents the theme of love is Othello because
everything is moved by it. Othello’s and Desdemona’s love triumph over their cultural and racial
differences and this was a strange thing for that time. The feeling between them is different
because Other’s love is possession, selfishness, and a simple desire to control his partner.
Desdemona feels a more sincere and confident love to such an extent that she lets herself be
guided by her husband blindly. For Othello his love for his wife is the most important thing, so
important that when he begins to think that Desdemona is unfaithful he becomes mad and, in
order to establish harmony, he kills her. Othello’s feelings are impulsive and passionate, while
Desdemona loves him because his tales, his strength and his «diversity» fascinate her.
Queen "Love of my life"
Madness
“Fools had never less grace in a year, for wise
men are grown foppish and know not how
their wits to wear, their manners are so
apish.”
Love in “ Macbeth” is presented in a strange way, because
Lady Macbeth is stronger than his husband and he obeys her
because of his love. It’s a feeling based on ambition: at the
beginning Lady Macbeth is ambitious but at the end also
Macbeth wants to become more and more powerful. In fact
when his wife dies, Macbeth is not sorry ( he says “ she should
have died hereafter” ) but when the story starts, Macbeth kills
the king to give his wife a proof of love ( she tells him that if
he doesn’t commit the murder it means that he doesn’t love
her) so this feeling is also used as a means of blackmail.
Introduction
In ancient times, a lot of authors as Sofocle in “Aiace”, Euripide in “Eracle” and “Baccanti” and Seneca in
“Hercules Furens” dealt with the way and effects of madness. This is a theme that unites the modern production
to the antique one, because madness not only has always existed, but it has always scared the sane. Obviously
the interpretation has changed: the antique thought that madness was inflicted by gods, while with the passing
of time scientists has given more and more medical reasons.
Sometimes it was described as a cheat planned by the mad himself.
In the XVII century scientists began to give a rational explanation to madness because of the affirmation of the
scientific and experimental method that brought about the birth of hospitals as centres of studies and research
about mad people and their madness. It’s only at the beginning of this century that Shakespeare writes his plays
about madness: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare wrote these plays in a period where
madness began to be considered an illness and where mad were considered as “different”, that is as people one
should be afraid of. This attention about the problem of madness indicates an important change in the attitude of
the author about humane nature. Madness was considered a weakness that might be true or false. In fact in some
cases madness is only false and it plays a strong attraction on all the art of this period. But in the cases of true
madness, it can’t be considered as a punishment of an individual unrestrained pride or as a momentary
darkening of reason caused by external events, but as a mental illness that started in the dark deep of common
irrationality of every people. Mad people are usually weak people to whom their world and their certainities are
destroyed finding themselves alone to face difficult situations. In these cases we can talk about these people of a
first death, in fact, becoming mad, it seems that these people live in a transitory world between life and death
that is, they are totally detached from reality, everyone for their own reasons. The reaction of wise people is
different: some mad people are seen as a danger and for this cause people are afraid of them whereas for other
mad people we feel mercy for their situation. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, the theme of madness is intimately
bound to the theme of power and the connected motives of ambition, rebellion, greed and responsibility. But all
mad characters, also the fool in King Lear, are joined by a feature: in their madness they reveal a deeper
disturbing truth.
Queen “Bohemian rapsody”
Hamlet
At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is desperate, he is very angry, he feels himself betrayed by his mother because
she was with her husband in a perfect union of strength and virtue. This was, for Hamlet, an imperishable fusion, a
model for everybody. Now his mother has broken this “dream” which the son was clutched to and because of this he
felt sure of himself. (act I scene II  “why she would hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed
on)
But the anger is not against his mother, because the love and the admiration for her cannot disappear as for the need to
keep a part of the previous world alive. The anger is against his uncle who broke the magic. First he is seen like a
murderer, a evil person without any shadow of virtue and dignity. All the hate against him makes the young prince
plan a diabolical project, absolutely mathematical and logical to assure the hell not only on earth but eternal to the
murderer of his happiness. (act I scene IV “why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee”)
From here the decision to pretend madness. (act I scene V “here, as before, never, so help you merci, how strange
or odd some’er I bear myself)
In madness Hamlet is tormented by doubts of how to act and when, whether to revenge soon or to wait for the
moment when the victim is not ready to die.
Not also this seems a delay for fear but also a diabolic will, the expression of a deep hate. Hamlet expresses very well
the fears and doubts of a suffering man more than a mad, a man who fells betrayed by everybody, and also by the
person which, after his mother, he most trusts; Ophelia. Hamlet perhaps wanted to share his woe with her but when
understand that she doesn’t support him, he feels totally alone. In his monologues, to all appearance chaotic, he puts
the criticism and the disappointment towards women. (act I scene II  “fragility your name is woman”)
(act III scene II  Ophelia: “’tis brief, my lord.” Hamlet: “as woman’s love.”)
The Ark “it takes a fool to remain sane”
The distrust towards humanity, men that are all swindlers and sinners. In the dialogue with the other characters
Hamlet underlines the fault of his speakers: he says to Polonius that he is a dishonest and stupid man, he calls his
“friends” snakes. When he speaks to his mother, Hamlet stresses her mistake, tells her about his anger, his woe, he
confides in her. He finds only a bit of comfort when he speaks and plays with the actors.
At the end, Hamlet dies for his faults: the inability to power and because he entrusts too much to rationality,
but so he couldn’t resolve his doubt. But, before dying , Hamlet leaves a testament to the world: he leaves the
truth, that he strongly wants to live in Horazio: there was too falsity, too ambiguity in society. He leaves his
state to Fortinbras because Hamlet knows that he would be a better king than him. At the end Hamlet says
“the rest is silence”; with these words he wants to express again the uncertainty of life: we can known only
our own acts, nothing more.
OPHELIA
Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter, is a simple, obedient and ingenuous girl.
She loves Hamlet very much, but when her father orders her to see the prince no more, she doesn’t find the strength to
rebel against him. When Hamlet pretends to be mad, she doesn’t understand his will and his woe, but she believes that
he is really mad because she refused his love.
But when her father, the person she is got on better to, dies, Ophelia, oppressed by her woe, becomes mad. She is
more vexed up because the murderer is Hamlet.
In her madness Ophelia goes on to name her father and speaks about him to everybody, she tells about his death, his
funeral, his life. She says all with ingenuity, with tenderness but also with bitterness: she says that nobody mourned
him properly. She sings love songs and, when she meets her brother Laertes, whom she loves very much, she doesn’t
recognise him but she speaks to him, giving some flowers, imaginary, and explains him their meaning. In particular
she speaks about rosemary that is for memory, to keep the remembrance of who is no more with us.
So she doesn’t want to forget the dead, in her madness it seems that she accepted the fact.
At
the end Ophelia dies drowning in a small river while doing garlands. She dies singing old songs without fear as if she
had already died with her father, with him her reason had died and in her madness she is not afraid to die, on the
contrary, she wished that.
King Lear
Madness in King Lear is the central theme of the play: at the beginning of the narration, the fool tells about madness
jokingly and annoyingly to make the king wise, without result. At the end of the play the king doesn’t bear all the
suffered injustices and becomes crazy. In this moment the fool, who is the mirror character of Lear, disappears and the
king takes the place of the fool. We can say that all the play is based on the alternation of these two characters. King
Lear gets mad after he had been expelled by his two daughters, who had sworn they loved him, and he found out that
the only one who really loved him was Cordelia, who had been disowned by himself.
In his madness the King starts to tell and to discover the truth, perceiving the real condition of society that in this way
discovers corruption and hypocrisy.
In his speech he puts in evidence these aspects, above all in the dialogue with Gloucester, when the old king shows
how wealth can hide sins.
Othello
In Othello the theme of madness coincides with the theme of jealousy that drives the hero crazy. Jealousy is
the thread of the play because it is the cause that destroys first Iago, then Othello and also Desdemona, who
is the object of desire. Jealousy is, in the drama, a monster, created by the mind, created from by nothing
and about nothing: so it is far stronger.
Othello is a tragedy of jealousy, but also of confusion, of unsuccessful communication that will corrupt the
meaning of what the actors are saying.
The tragedy of jealousy is caused by the fact that the characters speak with a different code, they meet in
disguise, for fraud. Appearance is subordinated to reality, falsehood is subject to truth. As in other
Shakespearean famous tragedies, the conflict that subtends this play is the tragic conflict between
appearance and reality. The inversion of the roles that involves the characters is possible because in the
drama truth and falsity, appearance and reality are impossible to extricate: it is impossible to distinguish
given and received information and so they are confused.
Because of Iago’s words, Othello doesn’t see a separation between doubt and certainty, so Iago reinforces
his “revenge” with allusions. The proceeding with denials and interruptions of time and place induces
Othello to fill Iago’s gaps with his imagination, his opinions, and his language.
At this point Othello falls in catalepsy: the extreme demonstration of his verbal breakdown, the inability to
speak, the loss of language, not any speaking in prose but with rambling phrases: by this time he has lost
the qualities that a man has got.
Queen “I’m going slightly mad”
Macbeth
The theme of madness is also present in Macbeth and it has a basic role. Lady Macbeth becomes mad after the murder
of the king because of the remorse. It is she the most determinate and she almost forces the husband to commit the
crime. So at the beginning of the play it is Lady Macbeth who represents the strongest character, then after the murder
of the king, the remorse prevails over her feelings and she becomes mad. She starts to repeat the gesture she had
committed after the killing when she got her hands dirty with blood.
She repeats the gesture as to try to wash away the fault, to forget the acts thanks to that strength that herself had
invoked. Afterwards she starts sleepwalking and confesses the crime.
Shakespeare
Revenge
OTHELLO
MACBETH
KING LEAR
HAMLET
THE TEMPEST
The plot of a revenge tragedy does not need very complex interpretations: a murder has been committed , someone has
been murdered, the relatives or the ghost of the murdered one feel the duty to set it right by taking justice into their
own hands and killing the murderer.
The tragedy will end with the annihilation of the murderer and preferably of the revenger as well.
In the Elizabethan age, revenge was quite a difficult case. Formally, both State and Church warned against private
revenge, which was seen as a major disturbance of law and a return to feudal lawlessness.The world of vendetta was
also seen as a typical manifestation of Italian Machiavellian thought.
However there was a distinction between instant retaliation, on the spur of a moment, which might be pardoned, and
premeditated murder, which was instead condemned as the foulest manifestation of human wickedness.
* OPHELIA
Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter, is a simple, obedient and ingenuous girl.
She loves Hamlet very much, but when her father orders her to meet the prince no more, she doesn’t find the strength
to rebel against him. When Hamlet pretends to be mad, she doesn’t understand his will and his woe, but she believes
that he is really mad because she refused his love. So Ophelia tells this to her father and to king Claudius to help them
to discover the true reason of Hamlet’s madness.
But when her father, the person she is got on better to, dies, Ophelia, teared by the woe, becomes mad. She is more
vexed up because the murderer of Polonius is Hamlet.
In her madness Ophelia goes on to name her father and speaks about him to everybody, she tells about his death, his
funeral, his life. She says all with ingenuity, with tenderness but also with bitterness she says that nobody cried him
honestly. She sings love songs, when meets her brother Laertes, that she loves very much, she doesn’t recognise him
but she speaks to him, gives him some flowers, imaginary, and explains him their meaning. In particular she speaks
about rosemary that is for memory, to keep the remembrance of who is no more with us.
So she doesn’t want to forget the dead, in her madness at seems that she accepted the fact.
At the end Ophelia dies drowning in a small river while doing garlands. She dies singing old songs without fear as if
she had already died with her father, with him her reason had died and with her ingenuity she is not afraid to die, on the
contrary, she wished that.
HAMLET
HAMLET’S REVENGE
Hamlet is a play that very closely follows the
dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan
theatre. All revenge tragedies originally
stemmed from the Greeks, who wrote and
performed the first plays. After the Greeks
came Seneca, who was very influential to all
Elizabethan playwrights. The Roman Seneca
basically set all of the ideas and the norms for
all revenge plays in the Re naissance.
During the time of Elizabethan theatre, plays
about tragedy and revenge were very common
and a regular convention seemed to be formed
on what aspects should be put into a typical
revenge tragedies. In all revenge tragedies:
1. A CRIME IS COMMITTED and for
various reason law and justice cannot punish
the crime so the individual who is the main
character, revenges it in spite of everything.
The main character than usually had a period
of doubt, where tries to decide whether or not
to go through with the revenge, which usually
involves though and complex planning.
2. THE APPEARANCE OF A GHOST, to get the avenger to go
against his doubts. The avenger usually also had a very close
relationship with the audience through soliloquies and aside. The
original crime that will eventually be revenged is killing.
U2 “With or without you”
3. The crime has been committed AGAINST A
FAMILY MEMBER OF THE REVENGER.
4. The avenger places himself OUTSIDE THE
NORMAL MORAL ORDER of things, and often
becomes more isolated as the play progresses, an
isolation which brings to its most extreme
consequence, MADNESS. The revenge must be taken
out by the avenger or his trusted accomplices.
5. The avenger and his accomplices MAY ALSO DIE
at the moment of success or even during the course of
revenge.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare follows the regular
convention for a large part of the play. At the
beginning, Shakespeare sets up the scene, presenting
a ghost in a dark night.
This sets up for the major theme of the play which is of
course the revenge. The ghost appears to talk to Hamlet.
The play immediately presents a gruesome, violent death.
The ghost tells Hamlet that he has been given the role of
the person who will take revenge upon Claudius. Act 1
scene 5 “So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt
hear…..Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder!”
Hamlet must now thinks of how to take revenge on
Claudius, although he doesn’t know what to do about it.
He thinks for a long period of time, supposing to do the act
immediately, but instead he drags it on until the end of the
play.
Although what was important was that all tragic heroes of the play at that time delayed their actual revenge until the end of
the play, in most revenge plays,the revenger was often anonymous and well disguised. But Hamlet started a battle of wits
with Claudius by feigning madness and calling it “antic disposition”; although the whole thing was a plan to get closer to
Claudius to be able to revenge his father’s death more easily. The tactic was an advantage because it drew all attention on
himself. Madness isolated him for the rest of the court because the people didn’t pay attention to what he thought or did
because of his madness. Hamlet’s delay in killing Claudius takes on two distinct steps. First he had to prove that the ghost
was actually telling the truth, and he did this by staging the play “The murder of Gonzago” at court. The second step sees
Hamlet who could have killed Claudius while he was praying. If Hamlet had done it then Claudius would have gone to
heaven because he was praying while Hamlet’s father was in purgatory because he didn’t even get the opportunity to confess.
So Hamlet decided not to murder Claudius at this point of the play. Hamlet stands out from many other revenge plays
because it enacts and analyses the conventions of its genre. It can be easily understood that Hamlet very closely follows the
regular convention for all Elizabethan tragedies. First Hamlet is faced with the fact that he has to revenge the murder of his
father and since there isn’t justice, he must apply justice with his own hands. His father’s ghost appears to guide Hamlet to
Claudius and to inform Hamlet of the crime that Claudius has committed. Then Hamlet constantly delays his revenge and
always finds a way to put it off until he finally does it in Act 5 scene 2. Hamlet at the same time continues to keep a close
relationship with the audience with his seven main soliloquies. The only point that is changed is that the accomplice wasn’t
killed because at the end of play, Horatio was the only one to survive, and weren’t it for Hamlet, Horatio would have
committed suicide. If Horatio had killed himself, then the tragedy would have followed the regular convention for
Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Hamlet is definitely a great example of a typical revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan revenge
theatre. It followed every convention it required, it can be classified as a revenge play quite perfectly. Hamlet is one of the
greatest revenge stories ever written.
KING LEAR
EDMUND’S REVENGE
This is one of the most important character of Shakespearean plays. He is the illegitimate son of Gloucester,
considered inferior to Gloucester’s legitimate son Edgar.
The play is King Lear, a tragedy with fictitious characters, treating the ingenuity of an old but not wise, king,
who doesn’t succeed in distinguishing the falsity from the truth.
The play can be divided in two parallel tales: the former about King Lear and his daughters, the latter about
Gloucesters and his sons; in both we have a villain who plots against the protagonists.
Edmund is a villain, who plots not only against his brother and father to obtain the power and the legitimacy,
but he also rebels against a society that excludes and humiliates him.
One of the most important monologue of Edmund in this play is his invocation to Nature; he asks what
difference exists between a bastard son and a legitimate one.
Act 2, scene1
“Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimension are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? With baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well then
Legitimate Edgard, I must have your land:
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to th’legitimate. Fine word, ‘legitimate’!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th’legitimate-:I grow, I prosper;
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”
Edmund’s revenge is brutal, cruel but not unjustified: in fact it happens to improve his social condition and to
react against a society hostile to him. For this character the enemy is his brother Edgar who, with a lot of lies
and falsehoods, loses his father’s trust and becomes a poor man; the father instead becomes a traitor, is
tortured and dies for the wounds.
At the beginning Edmund obtains power, wealth but at the end he dies in a worse condition if compared with
his previous one.Through this character the author’s will is expressed; in fact Shakespearepresents a critical
analysis of the XV century, marked by social divisions and inequalities.
THE TEMPEST
CALIBAN’S REVENGE TO SOCIETY
In “The Tempest” Shakespeare presents the character of Caliban; this name may be considered an anagram
of the word “cannibal”. He was Sycorax’s son, a witch that kept Ariel prisoner for such a long time; he
represents the native population of the island in opposition to the civilized world of Prospero and Miranda.
This character, halfway between man and beast, rebels against his condition of slavery caused by Prospero.
When Stephano and Trinculo arrive on the island after the shipwreck, Caliban meets for the first time
unknown people: so they start to plot against Prospero to kill him and regain his lost island. After that
Caliban’s attempt fails, he recognizes Prospero as his master. Prospero embodies the white colonizer that
conquers people and places.
Colonizers used to fascinate Indians using a lot of “presents” that were considered magic things: some of
these, like guns and alcoholics, became harmful because they caused the destruction of these peoples.
Colonizers were very interested to cut down native population to better conquer the new lands. Caliban
understands that he can’t rebel, so he starts to learn the language of the colonizer trying to begin a new
kind of relationship. Act 1 scene
“CALIBAN I must eat my dinner.
This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou strok’s me, and made much of me ; wouldst
give me
Water with berries in’t; and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I lov’d thee,
And show’d thee all the qualities o’th’isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Curs’d be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For am I all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me
The rest o’th’island.
PROSPERO Thou most lying slave,
Deservedly confin’d into this rock,
Whom stripes may move, n
Who hadst deserv’d more than a prison.
ot kindness! I have us’d thee,
CALIBAN You taught me language; and my profit on’t
PFilth as thou art, with human care; and lodg’d thee
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate
For learning me your language!
The honour of my child.
PROSPERO Hag-seed, hence!
CALIBAN O ho, O ho! Would’t had been done!
Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou’rt best,
Thou didst prevent me; O had peopled else
To answer other business. Shrug’st thou, malice?
This isle with Calibans.
If thou neglect’st, or dost unwillingly
PROSPERO Abhorred slaves,
What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps,
Which any print of goodness wilt not take,
Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar;
Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,
That beasts shall tremble at thy din.
Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour
CALIBAN No, ‘pray thee.
One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,
(aside) I must obey: his Art is of such pow’r,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
It would control my dam’s god, Setebos,
A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes
And make a vassal of him.
With words that made them known. But thy vile race,
PROSPERO So, slave; hence!
Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures
Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou
PROSPERO’s REVENGE TO HIS BROTHER
In the “The tempest” there is the very significant theme of the revenge of Prospero against his brother.
Prospero has been waiting for a long time on the desert island and keeping this feeling in his heart. His project
of revenge doesn’t change in the years and Prospero waits for the opportune moment for having justice. He
plans all his actions with intelligence and ability. He is also a magician and uses magic to create the occasion of
revenge, with Ariel’s help. He wants to revenge but he also admits that he has made a mistake. He recognizes his
mistake but his brother shouldn't have thrown him from Milan; Prospero considers his brother him a traitor that
has to pay for his action.
The revenge is almost a duty and not a right: Prospero does it also for Miranda that has lived on a desert island
instead of living as a princess in Milan. He wants to redeem his life and Miranda's life. He pays great attention
to his plans because for him it is important to have a good revenge. He makes his brother crazy but then he has
compassion of him. Prospero isn’t a bad person, but a sensible and good man; he needs intelligence and sense of
limits not to exaggerate and not to fall in the same mistake. At the end of the Prospero returns to be duke of
Milan, forgives his brother and brings him in Milan with himself. Shakespeare also teaches to respect human
dignity and that we have to respect everybody. Prospero, in fact, refused the magic powers that before he had
used for deceiving the other people and for treading on their dignity and abandoned his magic powers. For
Shakespeare a man that wants to have revenge isn’t a bad one, but he is a person who wants have justice for a
suffered wrong; in fact it is a normal thing to bring justice and redeem his right with everyone, also with a
brother. It was a way to obscure the Catholic idea of forgiveness since, in that historical period, it was renounced
by a lot of political parties. It is the demonstration that Shakespearian ideas were always modern and innovative.
MACBETH
MACDUFF’S REVENGE TO MACBETH
“Macbeth” was written by Shakespeare in 1606 and it is a
tragedy; next to Duncan’s regicide organized by Macbeth and
his wife, for ambition and thirst of power, to the killing of sleep,
another important theme is Macduff’s revenge towards
Macbeth.
The mechanism of revenge is triggered in fourth act: Macduff, a
Scottish nobleman, is looking forward to preparing war when
his existence is deeply upset by a piece of news about the killing
of his loved wife and children.
In consequence of this tragic event, it is possible to witness
Macduff’s psychological collapse: he holds himself responsible
for this innocent murder and he suffers and his strong qualm of
conscience begins to appear.
At the end of this act the revenge has already been organized
and victory comes up to Macduff; with this revenge Macduff
wants to obtain a personal revenge, he wants to punish
Macbeth’s atrocities, he wants to rebel against his limitless
cruelty: Macduff therefore seems to act the part of the avenger
and he shows whole his wickedness against Macbeth,
considered as a devil.
The revenge takes place in fifth act and it represents the top
of the dramatic power in this play: there is an attack to the
castle of Dunsinane, Macbeth’s residence, and after it, there
is the final duel, before verbal and then physical, between
Macbeth and Macduff. Here Macduff shows all his rage
talking to Macbeth offensive words.
Macduff completes his personal revenge when he kills with
sword the cruel tyrant and shows to the people his beheaded
head.
Therefore in this play revenge is an instrument to shout
one’s despair, one’s inner destruction, to rebel against
injustices, to balance the accounts and here especially to
claim something important, for example the family; so it is
the revenge of nature, of the whole mankind against
symbolic evil.
OTHELLO
IAGO’ S REVENGE TO
OTHELLO
In Shakespearian tragedy there is
always a villain that is the character
who opposes the hero.
Shakespeare in “Othello” presents
Iago, the worst of villains, who plots
his revenge against Othello: envy is
the main cause of this cruel deed.
In fact he makes a plot to have
Cassius, the Moor’s lieutenant,
dismissed; moreover Iago is jealous
too, because he believes his wife
Emilia and Othello had a sexual
relationship.
The revenge is planned and well
devised, aimed to destroy Othello’s
happiness. He has just married Desdemona secretly against her father’s will, a rich Venetian merchant, and she
follows the Moor in his expedition to Ciprus.
Iago, to succeed in his plan, tells Othello that Desdemona and Cassius have an affair and this provokes in his
mind a mad jealousy nourished by Desdemona’s interests to persuade Othello to readmit Cassius as lieutenant.
Othello is in this way suspicious about Desdemona’s behaviour and the doubt seizes him until to plot with Iago
the murder of Cassius and Desdemona. So Desdemona dies and when Othello understands he has been deceived
by the good and honest Iago he stabs himself: the revenge is so completed.
In this tragedy Iago’s revenge provokes three victims: Desdemona, Othello and Emilia.
Europe “The final countdown”
We have just said that Iago is the worst
of the villains: It is true.
He considers other people’s lives like
pawns in a game of chess, that he can
move anyway he wants.
This kind of revenge is wicked because
it is to the detriment of other people’s
happiness like in this play Othello and
Desdemona.
In this play it is considered the theme of
racism too: in fact the victim of society,
even if he’s the hero of the tragedy, is
black (Othello). This theme is tackled in
“The tempest” too, with Caliban.
Finally I think this revenge is egoist
because there are no positive
consequences after this tragedy, and Iago
himself doesn’t get advantages from his
deeds. For example Hamlet does his
revenge for a valid motive; Iago doesn’t.
MAGIC AND
SUPERNATURAL
If we look up in a vocabulary the definition of “magic” we find “art of domination of the occult forces of Nature and of
subduing them to one’s own power”.
With the advent of Christianity magic was regarded as a sinful activity connected with the devil.This interpretation of
magic caused during the Middle Ages the religious persecution of wizards and witches, that produced lots of trials for
magic, and the guilty were condemned to the stake.
In England as in France, in Spain, in Italy there were popular representations of mysteries, miracles, magic, and the classic
Renaissance induced the poets even in England to write dramas and comedies based on these themes. Shakespeare is the
greatest English playwright, born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, in days when superstition and magic were widespread
not only in the poor classes, but also among the nobility; an example is James I. The Shakespearian production is very
wide, the themes are various but at the same time they have a common characteristic: The theme of magic. So in
Shakespeare’s theatre philtres, potions, charms are the main ingredients through which some passages of three famous
plays are presented: so fairies and elves with the help of the juice of a magic flower have fun of men in “A midsummer
night’s dream”; witches accompany the events of “Macbeth”, influencing the story with their predictions. We still find
magic in “The tempest”, where Prospero with his “art” dominates an island populated by spirits and monsters, waiting for
his revenge.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
CONCLUSION
MACBETH
THE TEMPEST
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
“A midsummer night’s dream” is a comedy rich in magic places and characters, probably the most magical of all
shakespearian plays. The scene takes place in an enchanted wood suspended between reality and dream, the kingdom of
beautiful fairies and spiteful spirits who dance, joke and plot; potions, charms and enchantment are the key of the whole
story. This play reflects the splendour of the Elizabethan Age, in fact there is no darkness (even at night), no wicked witches,
no death (as in “Macbeth) but fairies and love.
Magic wraps up the characters and complicates their vicissitudes but then, as in all comedies, brings to the happy-ending.
.
Puck
He is maybe the most important magical character. Shakespeare doesn’t describe him physically, we only know
that he is an elf, a spiteful elf, and that he’s Oberon’s helpmate. He’s careless in fact he mistakes Lysander for
Demetrius so he upsets the lovers’ harmony; moreover for a joke he changes Bottom’s head in a donkey- head
and for Oberon’s revenge makes Titania fall in love with him. He has a lot of fun for the troubles he makes and
and for other people’s unhappiness
“Through the forest have I gone,
But Athenian found I none
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower’s force in stirring love.
Night and silence – who is here?
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master said,
Despiséd the Athenian maid:
And here the maiden, sleeping sound,
On the dank and dirty groung.
Pretty soul, she durst not lie
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.
Churl, upon the eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe:
He drops the juice on Lysander’s eyelids
When thou wak’st, let love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.
So awake when I am gone;
For I must now to Oberon.”
Titania, Oberon and fairies
They are wonderful immortal creatures and they disappear at sunrise. These beings, very different from the witches in
“Macbeth”, are spiteful but not wicked; they use men like toys but finally they put everything in order. They dominate
nature, for example they use the powder of a flower for their charms. They can also influence the weather, for example when
Oberon quarrels with Titania there is a storm.
TITANIA Come now, a roundel and a fairy song:
Then, for the third part of a minute, henceSome to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats, and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;
Then to your offices, and ley me rest.
She lies down
Fairies sing
I FAIRY You spotted snakes, with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms do no wrong,
Come not near our Fairy Queen.
CHORUS [dancing] Philomele, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby,
Lulla, lulla, lullaby, Lulla, lulla, lullaby,
Never harm,
Nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh.
So good night with lullaby.
I FAIRY Weaving spiders come not here:
Hence you long-legged spinners, hence:
Beetles black approach not near:
Worm nor snail do no offence [...]”
MACBETH
“Macbeth” is a tragedy in which magic is seen in a very negative way, since it reflects the dark period under the reign of
James I. The society of that time was in fact the scene of social and political contrasts. In this play magic brings death and
destruction, not by chance the words “blood, bloody, to bleed” are used very frequently in the texts. “Black magic” is stressed
by the witches’ presence, frequent figures in the popular literature of the ancient world. The physique and moral
characteristics of these women derive from the popular traditions, and so now we have an image of witches as old, ugly, poor
and characterized by physical defects.
It’s ascribed to them the knowledge of the occult properties of the herbs and of the metals, and in consequence the art of
preparing potions and unguents, poisons and philtres of extraordinary effectiveness.
The three witches of “Macbeth” reflect this description and they also can foresee the future. As a consequence of this
Macbeth will suffer an uncontrollable thirst for power.
In the following slide, we report the text in which the witches reveal Macbeth his destiny.
MACBETH So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
BANQUO How far is’t call’d to Forres? What are these
So wither’d and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,
And yet are on’t? Live you? Or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her chappy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
MACBETH Speak, if you can: what are you?
I WITCH All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!
II WITCH All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!
III WITCH All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!
BANQUO Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear
Things that sounds so fair? I’ the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction
Of noble having and royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
I WITCH Hail!
I WITCH Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.
II WITCH Not so happy, yet much happier.
III WITCH Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!
I WITCH Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!
THE TEMPEST
In this play magic has a leading role. In fact the same tempest of the title of the romance and the facts of the story are nothing
else than the results of spells and magic art. The members of the crew of the ship involved in the storm are shipwrecked on an
enchanted isle. Here Prospero and his daugther Miranda, the savage Caliban, Ariel and many other spirits and nymphs live.
Ariel
Ariel is the most important of the spirits living on the isle. Entrapped in a tree by the witch Sycorax, Caliban’s mother, it’s
made free by Prospero who makes of it his assistant. So Ariel makes Prospero’s will, organizes and looks after all that was
planned by him. Ariel hasn’t a determinate sex because it’s a spirit and as this it’s lively, light, it seems air, as its name
suggests. It can be considered as air, while the rough Caliban is earth. Ariel is very quick, it moves with lightness, but it can
become also terrible and frighten the Italian gentlemen. It’s visible only to Prospero’s eyes, but all the others can hear his
sounds, noises and breath. Ariel very often sings sweet songs to support a love story or sad songs to make fear the worse
about the shipwreck. So Ariel is a character of a thousand faces. When it speaks to Prospero, in its words there is a great love
and a great devotion for its protector. But Ariel would like to be free and not at Prospero’s service. So Prospero remembers to
it its imprisonment in the tree for Sycorax’s spell. There we can see the opposition between Prospero and Ariel’s white magic
and Sycorax’s black one. The civilized men, the survivors, know only Prospero and Ariel’s magic and they fear it. In fact
when they hear the noises and the strange sounds made by spirits are frightened by them but Caliban reassures them. So we
can see the superiority of the savage to the civilized. Anyway Prospero loves Ariel very much and he treats him more
tenderly than his daughter Miranda. Ariel, after having served Prospero for 15 years, finally obtains its freedom and
independence. The lively, light spirit full of movement and joy can fly about free with the other spirits and enjoy freedom.
Prospero
The legitimate duke of Milan, he loses his dukedom because he neglects the obligations and the duties of sovereign to devote
himself to magic arts and philosophical studies. His brother usurps his throne and sends him adrift with his daughter
Miranda. Docked on a desert isle inhabited by spirits, as a colonialist, he subdues the savage Caliban and he makes of the
spirit Ariel his assistant. Prospero dominates the entire isle with his magic. In fact he uses Ariel and the other spirits to carry
out his plans and he commands them with his magic arts. It is Prospero who makes the initial tempest which makes the entire
crew wreck. In fact on this ship his brother and other nobles are travelling. After the shipwreck the characters live strange
adventures created by Prospero to make them expiate their sins. After they repent of their mad acts, Prospero sees his work
finished and so he can renounce magic. As regards this, we report the monologue of Prospero which is his farewell to magic:
“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ‘em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.”
From this passage we can understand Shakespeare’s conception of magic and its aim in this play. Propspero doesn’t cultivate
magic for practical ends, but for his own sake. He makes all the spirits living on the isle at his service work for him. He wants
to reconquer his dukedom and he uses magic to do it. This is also a mean of reconciling the exiled duke with his brother and
the other gentlemen. When Prospero achieves his aim, he decides to leave the magic arts and to live a life like all the others.
But Prospero’s magic can be considered as a metaphor for science. In fact, with his knowledge, Prospero can give a practical
contribution to human happiness by defeating evil and injustice and to live more comfortably. But the most evident metaphor
is between Prospero’s magic and Shakespeare’s theatrical production. In fact just in the renounce to magical powers we can
see Shakespeare’s abandonment to his activity of playwright. This is Shakespeare’s farewell to the theatre more than
Prospero’s farewell. In fact, as Prospero says, “we are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a
sleep”. Here it’s evident the idea of life as something futile and transitory, impalpable and weak, without meaning. In
Macbeth there is the same concept; when he is said his wife is dead, he says: “Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking
shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full
of sounds and fury, signifying nothing”. In this idea it is evident that knowledge is just one way of occupying time, because
all the things end in death and in oblivion.
The conception of life and world like a theatre is typical of XVII-XVIII centuries and the main causes are: the Counter
Reformation, above all in Italy, who imposes the theatricality of life; the new scientific discoveries which shake human
certainties and the appearances and the conventions asked and imposed by society. So Shakespeare affirms that theatre is a
dream, a magic. As Prospero breaks his wand and buries his magic books, so Shakespeare puts down his quill pen and
renounces the magic of theatre. We can find a sort of melancholy and pessimism in the final speech of Prospero. On one side
it seems he (and so Shakespeare) is really sorry to leave his art and he’s almost forced by an external strength. But on the
other side his choice seems free and it comes after a great disappointment and discontent of life. Anyway it’s a serious and
painful farewell that Shakespeare hides skilfully in a romance and gives to a character full of thousands contradictions the
duty to tell everybody.
.
In the analysis we have seen that witchcraft and supernatural events are recurrent themes in Shakespeare’s theatre; we have
also seen that at that time magic was quite an obsession for everybody, even for the king, James I, so we could easily say that
the author was influenced by the beliefs and the events of his period. But if we look better we can see how magic changes
during Shakespeare’s activity: in “A midsummer night’s dream”, the earlier of the plays we analysed, there is beneficent
magic, it is a comedy pervaded with an idyllic atmosphere, with fairies and enchantments. It seems to end with the triumph of
love but this love is just the results of magic, it isn’t a real feeling; so we could say that in this play Shakespeare uses this
theme to tell us that true, absolute love doesn’t exist.
In the second play we analysed, “Macbeth”, there is maleficent magic, ghosts and witches who foretell the future of the
protagonists; it is Macbeth’s destiny but he wants anyway to have what he’s doomed to have quickly. This brings him to
death, and this death was foretold too by the witches but Macbeth, blinded by his desire of glory, doesn’t listen carefully to
the words of the “magic sisters” and thinking to be invincible comes up against his death. Maybe in this play Shakespeare
uses magic to describe the thirst for power of men, which brings only to sadness and destruction. Finally, in “The tempest”
we find both maleficent and beneficent magic, respectively in Sycorax and Prospero, who at the end will succeed in his
revenge against his brother and will abandon his art. In reality, since this is the last play wholly written by Shakespeare,it
represents his farewell to the theatre, metaphorically identified with magic.
As a consequence of this, does Shakespeare really believe in supernatural or does he just use them to say something else? We
don’t know the answer to this question, since we don’t know if the playwright uses this theme to write pleasant tales, or if he
firmly believes in magic as his contemporaries, or if he doesn’t either know if it’s real or unreal. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”
said the three witches in “Macbeth”: this is maybe the passage that best represents the equivocation in the author’s
production. Anyway, we will never know what Shakespeare really wanted to express: as any other writer he left us his works
and nothing else: it’s up to us to decide which is the best of the thousands interpretations we can give to them.
Queen “a kind of magic”
LICEO SCIENTIFICO G.B.GRASSI
Via B.Croce 1 Saronno VARESE –E-mail: gbgrassi@gbgrassi.it
http://www.gbgrassi.it
Arrighi Elena
Banfi Marco
Leoni Marta
Barbieri Patrizia
Luraghi Barbara
Bernazzani Alessandra
Mola Paolo
Bosisio Alice
Pelizzoni Silvia
Caronni Pamela
Pizzi Francesca
Castoldi Alberto
Pozzoli Francesca
Ceolin Chiara
Chiaretti Sara
Cimbro Sara
Colombo Marcella
De Domenico Claudia
Livio Stefania
Radrizzani Ettore
Re Andrea
Scalvini Anna
Tolando Elisa
Volontè Giovanni
Zaffaroni Diego
Gianna Salvatore
Zaffaroni Luca
Lattuada Marta
Grassi Angelica
c
SARONNO, 30 MAGGIO 2002
Queen “We are the champions”