Feminist literary criticism has become an integral part of the way in which we study literature in the 21st century. By analyzing the way in which the female condition is represented in works of literature, we can establish how women were...

One way that Shakespeare uses structure to present the character of Juliet in Act 3 Scene 2 is by dedicating most of the lines in the scene to Juliet. In pervious scenes with just Juliet and the Nurse, Juliet has had less lines and has listened...

As entertaining and lasting as William Shakespeare’s iconic Romeo and Juliet is, the adaptations that the original has inspired contain a more potent representation of modern issues, as is to be expected considering the near four-century-long gap...

Tension between characters is a key feature of many plays. “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare contains many scenes in which there is tension, but 3.1 – the turning point of the play – is tensest of all. The scene is pivotal in the story of...

In Romeo and Juliet, Lord Capulet is presented as a prominent, complex and arguably controversial character whose actions can be interpreted in a variety of different ways. It is debatable whether Lord Capulet really is a good farther to Juliet...

“The parallel-text ‘good’/’bad’ investigations which characterise textual approaches to Shakespeare cause as many problems as they solve” (MAGUIRE 1996: 14).Investigating the authority of the first quartos of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and ...

Throughout William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, various instances of Prospero’s dialogue go unheard by other characters in the play; these lines are delivered through selectively audible asides, which can only be heard by the audience. Once the...

Foils are common in Shakespeare—a pair of characters, usually very different but sharing certain commonalities, each highlighting the other’s qualities by contrast. Ariel and Caliban, despite both being servants of Prospero, act as foils to each...

In both the Tempest and the Dialogues of Plato, the protagonists, Prospero and Socrates, make references to dreams and death, often correlating them to each other. These similarities are evident in two specific quotes, one from each work, which I...

Shakespeare’s work, “The Tempest”, under the framework of the 21st century, may seem like a normal –even boring– play about a powerful man who takes advantage of a native person in order to conquer his island. No contemporary person would think it...

The Tempest, is about a marooned sorcerer, Prospero who was exiled from both his land and his ruling position in Naples. As a result of this, Prospero is seething with rage. He uses his magical powers to crash the king-who happens to be his...

In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louise Pratt proposes the idea of “contact zones” as areas of interaction between cultures in the New World. Pratt defines “contact zones” as areas where cultures “meet, clash and grapple […] often in contexts...

Sounds and noises play an important role in any book. All kinds of noises and sounds used by the author are significant in adding “flavor” to the story. Without such noises, readers would perceive the book as “flat” and it may become hard to...

Given that William Shakespeare was writing in a period when ‘blackness [was] one of the many qualities, physical or otherwise, that isolate[d] and acutely degrade[d] those who possess[ed] it’, and ‘the male dominance over women and children in the...

“It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships,” said Albert Memmi in his influential book entitled The Colonizer and the Colonized. This statement...

In almost every respect, Gonzalo's ideas on how best to govern an island relate directly in some form to Prospero's existing reign. Gonzalo, an honest, sage, aging councilor first openly asserts his vision of a perfect society while meandering...

A post-colonial interpretation of The Tempest is an interpretation which has gained popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century. This particular reading of the play implies that Shakespeare was consciously making a point about...

Images of the fierce and powerful sea are prevalent throughout Shakespeare's The Tempest. The play opens on a terrible storm at sea and all of the ensuing action takes place on an island that, by definition, is surrounded by ocean on all sides....

Caliban is certainly one of the most complex and contradictory characters in Shakespeare's "The Tempest", at different points embodying the poetic, the absurd, the pathetic, and the savagely evil. For this reason, he is also one of the most...

In William Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, the playwright intertwines love and magic, creating one of play's the major themes. Prospero, the protagonist, uses magic to plan the events of this comedy. The first act of magic is the tempest...

In Shakespeare's romance, The Tempest, Miranda instructs Caliban, "I endowed thy purposes / With words that made them known" (I.ii.357-8), affirming the power of language to transform the insubstantial into a forceful and purposeful entity. As...

The abandoned damsel, the lonely daughter, the beautiful virgin... In The Tempest, Shakespeare depicts all of these ideal constructions of womanhood in his character Miranda. However, looking closely at the text reveals that Shakespeare had a...

The epilogue of Shakespeare's The Tempest, while separate from the body of work preceding it due to the nature of an epilogue, it is an integral part of the work. It provides resolution to an otherwise unresolved piece, and the piece actually...

Unholy Mothers: Mothers as Negative Characters in Richard III, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest

by, Barret Buchholz

April 15, 2005

The mothers presented in Shakespeare's plays encompass a broad range of social positions, personalities,...