preview

Allusion In Away By Michael Gow

Decent Essays

Michael Gow’s Away is a stage play about three socioeconomically varied families and their different holiday experiences. Throughout the play, Gow alludes to many of Shakespeare’s texts to deepen the audiences’ understanding of the performance. Distinct connections are shown between Gow’s Away and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest and King Lear. These references feature through direct use of lines, characters, theatrical conventions and themes. This essay will explore each of these methods of allusion and explain how this use of intertextuality heightens audience comprehension. The first of the techniques Gow used throughout Away was the use of direct quotes from the Shakespearian plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. The quote “If we shadows have offended/ Think but this and all is mended/ You have but slumbered here” spoken in Away by Tom (Away: Act 1, Scene 1/ A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act 5, Scene 1), suggests …show more content…

Many kinds of love are displayed within Away, including parental love, matrimonial love and teenage infatuation. All of these kinds of love are also displayed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Examples of each kind include: Gwen and Meg/Titania and Indian Boy displaying parental love, Coral and Roy/Hermia and Demitrius displaying matrimonial love, and an infatuation is displayed between Meg and Tom/Bottom and Titania. The use of many kinds of love allows stronger connections between kinds of characters to be made, gaining depth of understanding through the relationship between Gow’s and Shakespeare’s works. Destruction is the other outstanding common theme displaying clear intertextuality. The use of a storm in Away allows the audience to make the connection to Shakespeare’s King Lear, in which the characters face environmental adversity as well as the adversities of others. This enhances the audiences’ awareness of social tensions throughout

Get Access