Critical Lens: "Loyalty is the test of a true friendship" A true friendship is filled with though times, during these times loyalty is expressed and you learn who your true friends are. Life is all about ups and downs, the highs are high but the lows are even lower. Friends are the...

Only the ignorant would deny that the title of a novel or play has no relevance to the play itself. Unfortunately, those ignorant minds have caused the true tragic hero of Shakespeare's Tragedy of Julius Caesar, an area of dispute. Brutus seems to be a candidate because he appears more than Caesar ...

Throughout the entire play, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare repeatedly shows a theme of friendship. Living in Rome during 44 B.C., Brutus, an honorable man who starts out friends with both Cassius and Caesar, ends up joining along with Cassius to betray Caesar with assassination. After the...

Who Wrote "Shakespeare's" Plays? For many years there has been a dispute as to the true authorship of the plays attributed to "William Shakespeare." The orthodox view, of course, is that they were written by a man named William Shakspere (sic) who was born in 1564 in the small town of Stratford-on-...

In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One honour is seen throughout the entire play. It is seen in Prince Henry, nicknamed Hal. In his soliloquy he tells the readers that he will change his ignoble ways to be more like a true Prince. Honour can also be seen in Hotspur; he is willing to do anything for it...

The film uses various techniques to present a particular view of the war against France. What is that interpretation and how does the film convey it? Although the Branagh version of Shakespeare's Henry V remains very close to the text, with only a few lines left out of the film, the movie por...

A central problem of Shakespeare's Hamlet is the question of the main character's sanity. Is Hamlet driven insane by the message of a ghost that his Uncle Claudius has killed his father in order to usurp the throne and marry Hamlet's mother? Hamlet is understandably upset by the ghost's accusation...

Hamlet Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare is a tale of madness and tragedy. The question is simply this, who is mad? Has Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, gone mad over the deceitful death of his father? Has his own anguish caused him to lose sight of his one true love and everything els...

When people think of, or discuss, the play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, love probably first comes to their mind and surfaces in their discussion. Love, however, can represent different things to different people. Love, like fire, can be either purifying or destructive. In this play, ...

Hamlet a hardy man, courageous, and worthy of eternal commendation, who arming himself with a crafty, dissembling, and strange show of being distract out of his mind, under that pretense deceived the wise, and crafty, thereby not only preserving his life from the reasons and wicked practices of the ...

Loving ourselves is sometimes seen as an impossible barrier to loving others, others see it as a necessary step towards being able to love others, as in the popular saying, "You have to love yourself before you can love others." Clearly both excessive self-love and self-scorn can kill romance. . Hum...

"What a piece of work is man...and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" (Hamlet, 2.2: 327-332). In this scene from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Hamlet is speaking to his old university friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, explaining the sadness that has e...

In the play Henry IV, Part One, by William Shakespeare, Hal, the prince, is a lot less jovial and innocent than he portrays himself to be. Although he seems to live a life without worry and a lifestyle without any real thought about his life, the truth is that he has many plans and thinks much about...

The Tudor Myth The thought of 'the Tudor Myth? may have been dismissed by some in Richard II. However, it was the people of the country and the subordinates of King Henry the Fourth that were to reap what was sown after the death of Richard II. It is proclaimed that the King of England is appo...

Macbeth as a Tragic Hero There are a couple of personality traits that make up a tragic hero. The most important of these is a tragic flaw. The hero also has to be an upstanding person who fails in his endeavors. Readers will also sympathize with the character and feel bad for his situation. Wi...

Much Ado About Nothing is one of William Shakespeare's many comedy plays. Much Ado About Nothing differs from most of the other comedies in that it has "naturalized" the romantic materials. There are not any fairy kingdoms, as in Midsummer to help the story flow better. Even the language does no...

A Method in Hamlet Madness In Hamlet, Shakespeare brings together a theme of madness with two characters, one truly mad, and one only acting mad to serve a motive. We can see this point through two characters namely Hamlet and Ophelia. The madness of Hamlet is frequently disputed. Ophelia's break...

Shakespeare's King Lear is a story of treachery and deceit. The villainy of the play knows no bounds. Family lines are ignored in an overwhelming quest for power. This villainy is seen in the characters of Goneril and Regan, two of King Lear's daughters. They have a need for all power and money and ...

A Tragic Hero.... According to Aristotle, he defines a "tragic hero" in a very simple but true, to most stories, manner. To start of, Aristotle states that a tragic hero is, "a man characterized by good, as well as evil." This statement holds true in most Shakespeare traged...

"For mankind, it is not survival of the fittest, it is survival of the cruellest." Has this been your interpretation after reading King Lear? The characters Gonerill, Regan and Edmund could be categorised as the cruelest in Shakespeare's play, King Lear. Gonerill, Regan and Edmund&...

"Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, That I may see my shadow as I pass..." - Bloody Richard Richard loves shadows. He mentions them constantly. They are a reminder of who he is. Every time he sees his shadow, he reflects upon his nature. His philosoph...

Shakespeare's adaptation of Richard III is a case study in the depravity of man. An unwanted brother to all, and an unwanted confidante to some, Richard embodies all the characteristics that society traditionally shuns: a marked proclivity for manipulation, an underdeveloped and perhaps nonexis...

Some people may not believe that fate is something that truthfully exists in the world. Others, however, believe that every event is predestined and laid out before them like a roadmap to life; in other words, fate. William Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet portrays fate as an exceptionally cruci...

Iago and Macbeth Comparison and Contrast Tragic heroes are identified in many of Shakespeare's plays. In The Tragedy of Macbeth and The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, a character is developed as the tragic hero. In Shakespearean literature, the tragic hero must possess a tragic f...

*****WARNING SIMPLE ESSAY***** In order for a story to be considered a tragedy, it has to fit a certain description. The Greek playwright Aristotle was the first to define a tragedy. He said it was a story in which the protagonist (tragic hero) goes from fortunate to unfortunate circumstance...