From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine the representations of women in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing. The plan of the research will be to set forth the pattern of ideas in each play as it relates to the representation of women and then to discuss the means by which the characterizations emerge in the plays.
Although the details differ from play to play, what these three plays share is a line of action that demonstrates the coping strategies of women who are obliged to find--and who proceed to enact--a specific and appropriate social role. The pattern of ideas in The Taming of the Shrew as a whole can be said to define the pattern of female characterization in the play as well. The action of the play builds around the methods.."
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine the representation of the tragic hero or heroine in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the Shakespearean conception of heroism can be most efficiently understood, and then to discuss how tragic heroism is represented in each of the plays.
In his discussion of dramatic structure, H.D.F. Kitto distinguishes between Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, noting that "Greek tragedy presents sudden and complete disaster, or one disaster linked to another in linear fashion, while Shakespearean tragedy presents the complexive, menacing spread of ruin" (Kitto 337). Kitto applies this analysis to such Shakespearean plays as Hamlet and Macbeth, but it seems applicable as well to Romeo and Julie.."
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine the life and work of Vsevolod Meyerhold. The plan of the research will be to set forth a general outline of Meyerhold's position as a master of twentieth-century Russian theatre, and then to discuss the milestones of his creative path, with a view toward clarifying why one acknowledged as a refined aesthete and sophisticated artist should have accepted and indeed glorified the Bolshevik Revolution.
The role of V.E. Meyerhold in helping to refine modern stage theory and praxis is widely acknowledged. Indeed, from the earliest phases of his career, Meyerhold appears to have been a self-conscious innovator whose theory of the stage encompassed dramatic forms and dramaturgy responsive to and metaphorically representative of dimensions of reality that could compress the ..."
Abstract Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? brings together two couples in a college town, one couple older and more experienced, the other younger and new to the academic world, for a night of psychodrama approaching outright psychological torture.
From the Paper "Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? brings together two couples in a college town, one couple older and more experienced, the other younger and new to the academic world, for a night of psychodrama approaching outright psychological torture. The older couple has clearly performed this ritual many times before, and over the course of the night, while they pass through a series of stages leading form one interpersonal position to another, they cannot be said to be changed by the experience. After all, as noted, they have tortured one another like this before and will do so again. On this night, Martha may give away more secrets or take the drama in a different direction, but still the couple has done this before. The younger couple, on the other hand, experience something new which challenges their view of the accepted order and tests their view ..."
Abstract Examines the dramatic impact of parent-child relationships on the development of ideas, action and the characters' fates in Shakespeare's plays
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine the dramatic impact of the parent-child relationships in Hamlet and King Lear. The plan of the research will be to set forth the importance of these relationships to the pattern of ideas in each play and then to discuss the means by and extent to which parent-child interaction drives the action of and the fate of all the characters in each play.
The complex parent-child situation at home initiates and drives the action of Hamlet, and Hamlet is the hub of parent-child relationships with his mother, his new stepfather/uncle, and the ghost of his father. Hamlet's emotional ties have been turned upside down. He compares Uncle Claudius unfavorably to the elder Hamlet, "no more like my father / Than I to Hercules" (I.ii). He does not understand how Gertrude could forget memories of ..."
Abstract The relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia is not a true love story. Instead, it seems to be the sort of relationship that everyone has long assumed and that has never developed to the degree others believe it has or perhaps wish it had.
From the Paper "The relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia is not a true love story. Instead, it seems to be the sort of relationship that everyone has long assumed and that has never developed to the degree others believe it has or perhaps wish it had. Gertrude expresses such a sentiment as she places flowers on Ophelia's grave: "Sweets to the sweet! Farewell./ I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;/ I thought thy bride bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,/ And not have strew'd thy grave" (V.1.244-247). When Hamlet is feigning madness and wishes to tweak Laertes, he claims to have loved Ophelia, though his actions previously have not shown much love for her: "I lov'd Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/ Could not (with all their quantity of love)/ Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?" (V.1.280-282)."
Abstract The musical was long a Hollywood staple, a genre that was used year after year. After the 1960s, however, the film musical all but disappeared, though it continued in a modified form as a Broadway staple, just as it had been throughout this century.
From the Paper "The musical was long a Hollywood staple, a genre that was used year after year. After the 1960s, however, the film musical all but disappeared, though it continued in a modified form as a Broadway staple, just as it had been throughout this century. Imitation drives the motion picture industry as it seeks material for films, but it also drives Broadway to a great extent. Broadway and Hollywood have taken turns in recent years in originating material which would then be taken over by the other so that stage plays like Grease and Evita are adapted to film, while recent films such as The Lion King and older films such as Sunset Boulevard have been adapted to the stage. Hollywood and Broadway have in many instances in recent years combined forces to develop material for the screen that would also be valuable on stage, or for the stage that would be worthwhile as a film. The ..."
From the Paper "Chikamatsu Monzaemon, in Four Major Plays, examines the impact of the class system on male-female relations among average citizens of Japan (focusing on the merchant class) in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Chikamatsu was among the first major Japanese writers to use as his subject the lives of the common people, as well as a contemporary setting in which to examine those lives and their hardships. In the two "love suicides" poems in the current volume, the playwright examines the tragic outcome of love hindered by class requirements. While the period was marked by artistic and cultural flowering, the lives of the merchant class remained constricted by class expectations imposed by a strict militaristic and bureaucratic society. The impact of this class structure and its related standards for behavior on the lives and relationships of the ..."
Examines the meaning and significance of Act III, Scene 2, in which Hamlet speaks to and deceives Horatio, his would-be killers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and others.
1,350 words (approx. 5.4 pages), 1 source, 1999, $ 47.95
Abstract "The central character in Hamlet is charged with a duty to avenge his father, but in the broader sense, he is to avenge the natural order and so restore it. That natural order has been rent asunder by the murder of the king, and Hamlet is the instrument of divine justice who is told to destroy Claudius and Gertrude and so to set things right.
From the Paper "The central character in Hamlet is charged with a duty to avenge his father, but in the broader sense, he is to avenge the natural order and so restore it. That natural order has been rent asunder by the murder of the king, and Hamlet is the instrument of divine justice who is told to destroy Claudius and Gertrude and so to set things right. Yet, Hamlet does not act immediately, and instead he devises his ploy of a play-within-a-play and also toys with various characters as he prepares his revenge. One such instance of this occurs when he is speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act III Scene 2, two men who are ostensibly his friends and yet who have been ordered by Claudius to kill Hamlet. He knows this, and they do not now that he is aware of the fact. The banter in this scene therefore has a double meaning throughout, and Hamlet takes delight in confusing ..."
From the Paper " Edward Albee's Three Tall Women is a remarkable play about an unlikable woman near the end of her long life. By means of its clever structure it dissects her life and character very thoroughly. This woman, identified only as A by the author, is completely unsympathetic but eventually, as understanding grows, she becomes, if not likable, at least comprehensible as a full human being rather than the caricature she at first appears to be. In the first act three characters, simply called A, B, and C hold a long conversation in a richly appointed bedroom. A is 92 years old, terribly fragile, and drifts from lucidity to brief moments of confusion, or indifference, as to her whereabouts. B is a 52-year-old woman who is A's care giver and C is 26, a young lawyer who has been sent by her firm to tend to details of A's estate. In the second act the three very different personalities..."
From the Paper "Psychological realism delves into the mental states of characters and seeks the underlying causes for their actions, causes rooted in their psychology. The style of the play need not be realistic in the usual sense, and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is such a play. The set and the way the action moves from place to place is not realistic but expressionistic, but the psychological picture created for each character and the way characters interact is real and rooted in mental states, and the connection between the two generations is the key issue.
The character of Biff is a reflection of his father and carries on in his own life the same sorts of failures seen in his father. It is Willy's wife who states that attention must be paid to the life of Willy Loman. She understands him and his problems, and she forgives his shortcomings. She is, after all,..."
Abstract "In his play The Last Yankee, Arthur Miller presents two marriages under strain because of differing needs and perceptions by the husbands and wives who once thought they shared everything and who now believe they share less and less all the time.
From the Paper "In his play The Last Yankee, Arthur Miller presents two marriages under strain because of differing needs and perceptions by the husbands and wives who once thought they shared everything and who now believe they share less and less all the time. New feelings have emerged to replace the feelings of love that began these marriages, and these new feelings include anger, resentment, anxiety, self-doubt, and disgust. The couples might survive if each member could learn to forgive his or her spouse, but instead, each person is too taken up with a need for self-justification and self-preservation at the expense of his or her spouse.
The story is set in a state-run mental hospital, and three women are being treated there for clinical depression. Patricia is married to Leroy Hamilton, a carpenter, and she believes he is..."
Abstract An overtly non-realistic portrayal of society is offered in a play by Luigi Pirandello, yet this is also a play with a political analysis at its heart. Appearance versus reality is a theme that infuses Pirandello's play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The technique used by the playwright is extremely theatrical and has a long history--the play-within-a-play was used often by Shakespeare and can be found in the works of other major dramatists.
From the Paper "An overtly non-realistic portrayal of society is offered in a play by Luigi Pirandello, yet this is also a play with a political analysis at its heart. Appearance versus reality is a theme that infuses Pirandello's play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The technique used by the playwright is extremely theatrical and has a long history--the play-within-a-play was used often by Shakespeare and can be found in the works of other major dramatists. The playwright often uses such a device to comment on the process of playwriting itself, showing within a performance of a play the act of creating and presenting some vision of reality in dramatic form. Pirandello's work makes this self-reflective structure the basic substance of the play and uses it to raise questions as to how we can tell when reality ends and illusion begins, or the other way round. The selfhood..."
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to examine the play Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca. The plan of the research will be to set forth the thematic pattern of ideas and meanings contained in the work and then to discuss the means by which these ideas are elaborated, with a view toward evaluating why the full effect of the presentation is one of high tragedy and the existence of a major work of world literature.
The themes of Blood Wedding emerge out of a structure of human consciousness that carries the burden of remembered conflict, remembered injury, remembered grief. Grief and loss, indeed, so dominate the Mother's consciousness that there is a tension in her anticipation of her son's wedding. So simple a gesture as giving him his vineyard knife calls to her mind the murders of her husband, long ago, and her other son, more..."
Abstract An analysis of the different interpretations as to why Antigone chose to kill herself instead of awaiting her natural demise in her ?bridal chamber.? These are discussed as Sophocles didn't spell out Antigone's last thoughts and actions. Interpretations for her suicide from various authors and sources are examined and the author's personal explanation is discussed.
From the Paper "However, on consideration of all the various views, it does seem that Antigone's suicide was necessary for fulfilling the theme of the play, which is one of hubris or arrogance ultimately being humbled by the will of the Gods, the latter being emphasized also by humanity not being able to change the destiny willed on it by the divine."
According to Mary Lefkowitz, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College, Antigone kills herself because of her impulsive and headstrong nature:"
