Shakespeare’s Theatrical Device: The Benefits of Mistaken Identity Can someone pretend to be another person and come back being the same person as before? In many of William Shakespeare’s plays, the change of identity has been a success for many primary characters. Most notably, in comical plays, female characters have had the intention of changing not only their identity but their gender for a temporary period. The ploy of mistaken identity is a useful plot device that Shakespeare uses because
Can someone pretend to be another person and come back being the same person as before? In many of William Shakespeare’s plays, the change of identity has been a success for many primary characters. Most notably, in comical plays, female characters have had the intention of changing not only their identity but their gender for a temporary period. The ploy of mistaken identity is a useful plot device that Shakespeare has used because it is a good way to get the audience humoured and have them thinking
Portia's Power in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice exemplifies a principle that is as unfortunately true in our time as it was in his - he who has money also has love, sex, and above all, power. In this case, the use of 'he' is deliberate; 'she,' in the Elizabethan era, rarely had either financial independence or much control over the course of her life. Portia, the deceitful heroine of the play, is a major exception. To put it bluntly, Portia is enormously
In William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, there is a motif of women being equated with gold, money, and jewelry. Portia resides in a trapped patriarchal society where her life revolves around the men who play her like a puppet. Ironically, men from both the living and the dead control her. From the beginning, Portia is bounded by the lottery set forth in her dead father’s will which gives potential suitors a chance to choose between three caskets: gold, silver, and lead. This act by her father
England at this time, cross-dressing was looked at as a dramaturgical motif, a theatrical practice, and a social phenomenon. “In Shakespeare’s day, a cross-dressed heroine, like any female character also involved a gender switch in the world of the playhouse, for women’s roles were normally assigned to young male apprentices called play-boys” (Shapiro, 1). In each of Shakespeare’s five plays involving a cross-dressing heroine, he tried something different. He cleverly varied each motif in which each play