Although it is true that Lady Macbeth is a big part of the play and adds a lot of interest, her character is revealed through her unkind attitude with Macbeth, careless feelings towards the lives of others, and her guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth is very pushy when it comes to the murder of Duncan and Macbeth’s hesitations towards it. She gives this comment to Macbeth, “Oh, never shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men may ready strange matters. To beguile the time, look like the time, bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.
I could just imagine MacDuff coming in demanding to see Macbeth, fierce and angry. The tragic qualities of the play really do contribute to the larger message because it shows how in the end you will only lose if you do not play fair. In the story,
It Has Been Argued That Scene 10 is The Tragic Climax, to What Extent do You Agree With This Statement? Whilst Scene 10 of A Streetcar Named Desire is the physical climax of the play, it is clear from the language used in the book and the emotions of the characters in scene 11 coupled with Blanche's "faintly hysterical vivacity", that scene 10 is not the tragic climax. For, it is during scene 11 that the audience feels most "pity and fear" both for Blanche and the other protagonists of the play and therefore, according to Aristotle, is a perfect example of tragedy. Williams breaks the book down into several key parts which build up the audience's pity for Blanche and ultimately lead to a total catharsis of emotion from them in Scene 11. From the beginning of the play, there is a building of tension amplified by the use of stage direction and music.
Act 2 Scene 1 is used to be the point of which the issues start to become apparent, with the ensuing psychological and emotional effects on Katherina now she is being subjected to Petruchio entering her life. However, Shakespeare has designed Taming of the Shrew as a comedy, and these issues become an underlying feature, and not the play’s main focus. Act 2 Scene 1 is the first meeting between the two characters and their initial interaction is quite explosive. A social concern that is made clear through the exchange is the lack of respect Petruchio has for Katherina, which is influenced through the fact that the play was written in the time of a Patriarchal society, and women had to get married if they wanted to be respected – even if it meant losing all their finances and belongings to the possession of the husband. Petruchio bombards Katherina with compliments as soon as she walks in such as “bonny Kate”, “prettiest Kate in Christendom, Kate of Kate-Hall, my super-dainty Kate”, while being consistently referential to Katherina as being his through the use of the possessive pronoun ‘my’, even though at that point, they had barely just met.
Insanity in King Lear is most evident in the portrayal of Lear himself, his mind is haunted and unsettled by the cruel treatment he receives at the hands of his daughters. At the core of this play is a paradox, when Lear is seen as sane, his logic is foolish and ridiculous, however throughout the play as his descendant into madness progresses, he seems to have shards of awareness amongst the gibberish he speaks. At the beginning of the play, Lear would be considered as clinically sane, however his logic is complete madness. He declares his abdication and to determine what each daughter will receive, he devised a contest for them, to see who declared their love for him the greatest. “Which of you shall we say doth love us most.” The verb “say” reflects Lear’s lack of rationality as love cannot be measured with words.
Shakespeare further cultivates Macbeths quickly changing character through soliloquy and dramatic irony. His success in doing so is disclosed as the once ‘noble’ Macbeth goes against all odds to convey his idea of fulfilling the witches’ prophecies: to kill King Duncan. Macbeth also notifies us that to even anticipate slaughtering the sacred King is an act of treachery and betrayal nonetheless he delivers himself as quite motivated and determined to do so. The “horrid image”, “doth unfix” his hair and make his “seated heart knock”; his lust for ultimate power poisons his loyalty and decays at his integrity. As the play moves on, the audience observe the hasty crumbling of his devotion to God and the King.
This shows me that Macbeth is becoming a more vengeful person foreshadowing more bad deeds “We are yet but young in deed”. The survival of Fleance also adds significance to the play in a dramatic fashion. Fleance’s survival plays a trivial role on Macbeth’s future as king because of the prophecies of the witches. The fact that Fleance is still alive brings fear and sleepless nights to Macbeth. This makes us readers to believe that Fleance will revenge the death of his father in the future.
It is obvious from this first soliloquy that Shakespeare has moulded Richard to look almost monstrous and noticeably deformed. From the beginning of the play we are aware of Richard’s feelings about his body and how much contempt and disdain he has for being given such a repugnant body. “Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished” (1.1.19-20) Richard draws the audience in, and endeavours to attract our sympathy by addressing his deformity. By doing this he is clearly trying to manipulate the audience. He talks about how he has “no delight to pass away the time” (1.1.25).
In his tragic play, Medea, he highlighted his sympatheticness towards women. Although Medea was a violent and irrational character, Euripides manages to convince the audience to give her sympathy, showing the Euripides was heavily empathetic with the women of his era. Through his works, Euripides showed that women had the potential to be highly successful and beneficial to the world. Medea harshly criticizes the male-dominated society of Ancient Greece. Medea, the main character of the tragedy, was an extremely radical anti-heroine who continues to inspire both admiration and fear in the readers today.
Felix Cole English 10 H Monica Espinasse Barbed Words Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet evokes a world where a nation can be seen as a diseased body and language can be used as a lethal weapon. Madness, defined in the dictionary as, “engaging in actions that are senseless or foolish”, is an issue that multiple characters deal with throughout the play. Many would say that Hamlet’s actions are very irrational, but everything he says and does eventually helps him achieve his desires. Despite how things seem Hamlet is an intelligent character who ultimately is in his right mind. The death of one’s father and a ghostly visitation thereafter are events that would challenge the sanity of anyone.