Guilt, like a disease of the mind, has the power to consume one's sanity, govern one's emotions and demolish one's life. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare and in the novel Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, guilt dominates the lives of...

Hamlet: A Picture of Renaissance Humanism

The renaissance was an era of great change in philosophical thought and morality. Before the 15th century, monastic scholasticism had dominated European thinking. Monasticism’s emphasis on a black and...

The theme of love is omnipresent in literature; no matter what nook or cranny you search in a library, it is there. However, this theme conveys more than just kisses, heartbreak, and rampant sexual tension. It describes a culture through their...

How many different interpretations can be derived from one source? Due to the ubiquitous distinctions that exist within each person, the result we perceive from an event changes with each individual perception. Out of the various editions of...

In ‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare develops his various characters through the balance of two specific dimensions. He uses these two perspectives to give his audience the opportunity to view his play through two distinct scopes. Shakespeare chooses to do...

It has been inferred by researchers for decades that Shakespeare used the plots and characters of his theatrical works to comment on the current political climate of England’s monarchy at the time. During the late 16th and early 17th century,...

Antithesis is a rhetorical device in which two contrasting words or concepts are juxtaposed within a parallel grammatical structure (literarydevices.com). In this case, the repeated use of this literary convention and the balanced structure it...

Throughout both Shakespeare's Hamlet and Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, the disparity between how things seem and how they really are is a constant underlying motif; the depth in which both plays examine the concept of appearance and reality...

A revenge tragedy is a genre of play, popularized in the seventeenth century, in which the protagonist pursues revenge for real or perceived abuses. Thee tragedies typically employ a number of the same conventions, such as escalating causes for...

We face moral dilemmas every day of our lives—whether it’s giving money to a homeless man or taking a peek at a peer’s chemistry test. Fortunately, the stakes aren’t high. The tragic figures of Hamlet, The Once and Future King, and Oedipus...

“Hamlet will be Hamlet, a fabled tragedy of the human spirit that still resonates, even today (Slings and Arrows, 1.2).”

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is one of the very few plays that have survived throughout the ages and is still referenced in...

Two years before Fathers and Sons was published, Turgenev gave a speech titled “Hamlet and Don Quixote,” in which he cross-analyzed Hamlet and Don Quixote as two antitheses of basic human tendencies. For Turgenev, Don Quixote represented the...

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet ends in a dramatic cataclysm as four crucial characters drop dead in a murderous scandal of “deaths put on by cunning and forced cause” (5.2.369-371). It is in this skirmish that Hamlet achieves his long-sought revenge...

One of Shakespeare’s legendary plays, Hamlet, conveys a significant conflict between a parental figure and their respective child. One theme that is embedded with this particular conflict is perception versus reality. This theme comes into play in...

During the Elizabethan era, religion and social status were important characteristics of English culture. England’s rich culture and beliefs during the Elizabethan era were often displayed in many of William Shakespeare’s plays. From folklores to...

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an illusion refers to “the fact or condition of being deceived or deluded by appearances, or an instance of this; a mental state involving the attribution of reality to what is unreal” (“Illusion, n.”)....

Historically, women have been characterized by their apparent weakness, their subservience and their dependence on men. Exploring literature from the past, writing often reflects the degradation of females that has marred society for centuries....

In his play Hamlet, there is no question that William Shakespeare crafts complex and distinct characters. However, because the story is a play, the reader is left to guess the reasoning for many of the character’s actions and the truth of what is...

Compare the relations between older and younger men in the following extracts; pay close attention to the use of dramatic language and the opportunities offered by the text for different emphases in production: 1 Henry IV, 2.4.109-62 (Bevington...

Within Hamlet and 1 Henry the Fourth are examples of Shakespeare including the trade of acting within the text as a central theme. Hamlet certainly shows us his skill as an actor throughout the play, but there is a more blatant preference to...

The relationship between a father and his son is an important theme in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One, as it relates to the two main characters of the play, Prince Hal and Hotspur. These two characters, considered as youths and future rulers to...

In his histories from Richard II through Henry V to Richard III, Shakespeare depicts the English monarchy as a game between family and friends of vying for a gold ring -- the crown. Shakespeare gives his reader a central metaphor through which to...

"I want to be invisible...I paint my face and travel at night." Ralph Reed, as quoted in The Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star, 11/9/91

Attaining "invisibility," or privacy from the glaring eye of the public, remains a distinct desire of modern...

The world of Shakespeare has many beloved heros and loathed villains, but never so beloved a villain as Sir John Falstaff. Through his comic appearance and endless witticisms, this incorrigible rouge has won the affection of audiences for...