The universal themes of ambition, power, and greed make William Shakespeare’s Macbeth remarkably applicable to countless other times, places, and people. It is with this mindset that directors Akira Kurosawa and Billy Morrisette approached their...

The opposition between the natural and the unnatural is particularly prominent in gothic literature and the transgression of the boundaries between the two is often seen to be condemned. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth(1606), Mary Shelley’s novel ...

In 1603, James I became both king and patron of the King’s Men, William Shakespeare’s company formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. James I was obsessed primarily with two things: witchcraft and murder. He feared that people, usually...

Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, Macbeth, eloquently displays the wildness of human imagination and the consequences of rapid action. The play's plot is written by the ominous whispers of Macbeth's conscience, which lead to avaricious and selfish...

Power and social status is commonly determined by one’s drive and ambition. Successful people are set apart by their willingness to make sacrifices to accomplish their goals. Emotions are often cast aside in order to more easily make difficult...

Shakespeare’s two plays King Lear and Macbeth take place in two contrasting settings that, from the first scenes, influence the characters’ paths and shape the course of the plays’ events. The action of both plays alternate between the settings of...

The Macbeth (1971) film production by Roman Polanski blends this classic Shakespearean tragedy to the film noir cinema genre creating a rich, dynamic combination. Classic film noir encapsulates "pessimism, bleakness, despair and paranoia which are...

The nature of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a controversial subject. Mildred Tonge suggests in her essay Black Magic and Miracles in Macbeth that the witches represent women that serve a dark power, most likely Satan, or even that...

Macbeth has been performed by many different groups and companies throughout the years because it is perhaps one of the most potent political statements in Western drama, and perhaps one of Shakespeare’s best scripts. Though the PBS and RSC...

Issues regarding social class often tend to stem from innate human desires for power and influence. Throughout history, power has been shown to be a very dangerous tool for those who are not fit to hold it, and this topic is extremely prevalent in...

The tragedy Macbeth written by William Shakespeare is thought to have been first performed in 1606. Needless to say, the information about the date of it being written is not known, yet the date of publication is - 1623 in the First Folio. That,...

While modern sensibilities claim a wide array of roles and identities for women, current feminine archetypes are still heavily influenced by those of the past. Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, portrays a dichotomous archetype of what an ideal woman...

Despite the notion of a utopian society, absolute perfection ceases to exist simultaneously with the human race. Mistakes have inevitably plagued humans since the commencement of civilization, but it is the accountability for these failures, not...

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is filled to the brim with images of various sorts from nature to darkness to blood. It is near impossible to read a page from the script without coming across imagery of some kind or another. Because his writing...

Drama is the performance of a narrative by actors on stage, and differs from prose fiction in that it is interpreted and presented by others rather than the individual viewer. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, is a drama that illustrates a...

Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth portrays the protagonist Macbeth, as a good man undone and led astray by his ‘vaulting ambition’ as well as external pressures, from his wife and the witches. In the context of this play, ‘good’ is defined as a man...

Shakespeare’s Macbeth, written in 1623, and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, written in 1953, are both historical plays based on a character’s extreme behaviors that have stemmed from evil desires and ulterior motives. Miller and Shakespeare set...

Hao 11F William Shakespeare’s play ‘Macbeth’ and Kevin Macdonald’s film ‘The Last King of Scotland’ both highlight the destructive nature of ambition when it is not guided by its moral constraints. Both the play and film demonstrate that making...

It is often debated as to whether the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth represent instruments of fate or whether they are simply manipulating and toying with Macbeth and influencing him to act in certain ways. However, Orson Welles, in his...

Throughout much of Macbeth, its titular protagonist is concerned with his future. He kills Duncan so that he can become king, he kills Banquo to protect his throne, and he goes to the witches to help him learn how to protect his life. Most of...

The purpose of this essay is to discuss Shakespeare’s intention in using medical detail within his plays. The use of medical allusion is a frequent occurrence in Shakespeare’s works, touching upon a wide variety of topics in the sphere of physic;...

As far back as Plato’s theory of imitation it has been asserted that “the poet always copies an earlier act of creation from reality or from other literary representations” (Carter 49). When Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream around 1595...

Here we shall attempt at analyzing the judgements made by different characters of authority under different circumstances, limited to Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Antony and Cleopatra, and their consequences. People of authority in both...

The language of the body in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure furthers one of the main tensions of the plot, namely, the manifold nature of having a body. First, that one’s state as a person is determined by one’s physicality, and vice versa. One’...