The central concern of tragedy has always been to explore the nature of evil in the world; both its existence and the nature of particular types of evil and their effect. If we are to find the meaning of Shakespeare's tragedies, we must examine how men looked at the problem of evil in the sixteenth ...

The Role of the Mask in King Lear What is a mask? The dictionary defines a mask as "anything that disguises or conceals." Characters in King Lear use masks throughout the play. The masks are used for two main functions: to conceal one's true plans and actions and to provi...

Virginia Woolf's Vision Almost sixty-five years have lapsed since Virginia Woolf spoke at Newnham and Girton colleges on the subject of women and fiction. Her remarkable words are preserved for future generations of women in A Room of One's Own. This essay is the " first manifesto of the modern f...

The play, "The Comedy of Errors," turns out to be precisely what the title claims. It is a play about magic and illusion in a faraway country. "The Comedy of Errors" shows how a series of confused identities eventually leads to chaos in a community, and just how deceiving appearances can be. The...

This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. - - T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men" "I wanted to be scared again . . . I wanted to feel unsureagain. That's the only way I learn, the only way I feel challenged." --Connie Chung "In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn...

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner is the story of a man who outraged the land that then turned and destroyed the man's family (Serafin 356). Growing up as a poor mountain white, Thomas Sutpen yearns for more than what he has ever had. He marries a young woman and fathers a son, bu...