The Shavian Theatre of Ideas (Modern Drama)

I will show understanding of the plot, character and themes and Shakesperes use of language and dramatic devices within the play.

11. Point out some moments in the play when the playwright conveys much to the audience without dialogue

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.

Beyond the vague, minimalist packages with which Beckett presented weighty questions to us as audiences of the ages, he is also the source of much debate of recent theatrical times. The line is both particularly fine and blurry between where a production has creative license to put on a show the way the director interprets it and where the playwright had specific intentions that are integral to the plot and themes of the play. As somewhat of a control freak when it came to how strictly a production had to follow his exact parameters within the stage directions, Beckett also provided the theatre world with opportunity for legal and philosophical debate on this matter specific to drama as an art form. He had much to offer to the literary world on a whole, evident in his peak achievement of the 1969 Nobel Prize for

William Shakespeare was a playwright and author in the 16th and 17th centuries, with at least 37 plays and 154 sonnets to his name. His many works span in genre and form, from the tragedy of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to the poem of a father’s unconditional love and eventual acceptance of a loved one’s death. Through a vast variety of linguistic and structural techniques, he is able to promote, develop and explain his personal ideology of love. Evidence of this is seen through the character of ‘Romeo’ in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the narrative voice in a selection of sonnets.

The discussion about American actors and their inferiority complex also highlight the centrality of power in the film. There is a debate about how Shakespeare causes some of the best actors to become self-conscious as they have been told ‘they cannot do Shakespeare’. There is a struggle for American actors as they ‘feel inferior to the British’ and these hurdles that must be overcome by the American actors highlight the significance of power in the play, and in the production of the play.

The differences in styles of language truly brings alive the plays' various characters, from the lowliest drawer to the noblest knight. The playwright's audience would have been composed of a similarly diverse spectrum of society, from the groundlings at the foot of the stage, to the members of the court in attendance, and these disparate members of the audience might very well have come away from the plays with different interpretations of

One of William Shakespeare’s many attributes as a playwright of the late 16th century was his character development. Shakespeare’s seamless use of indirect characterization sets his works apart from the other playwrights and authors of his time. In Othello, the Shakespearian tragedy about the newlywed Othello and Desdemona, Shakespeare uses character foils to emphasize the strengths and weaknesses of the characters. By making inwardly similar characters seem like polar opposites, Shakespeare truly shows how dynamic each of the characters is.

"Nowadays the plays' meaning is usually blurred by the fact that the actor plays to the audiences hearts. The figures portrayed are foisted on the audience and are falsified in the process. Contrary to present custom they ought to be presented quite coldly, classically and objectively. For they are not matter for empathy; they are there to be understood and politely added

“Theatre makes us think about power and the way our society works and it does this with a clear purpose, to make a change.”

When Shakespeare sets the characters in both plays in front of a place he has them as the audience of what they have experienced.

Around the turn of the century, he argues that Americans lost their love of and patience with oratory. At the same time, those who read Shakespeare’s plays began to insist that the Bard’s talent as a poet went unappreciated when his plays were performed alongside farces, juggling acts, and other popular forms of entertainment. Theatres began to perform Shakespeare’s plays less frequently, and isolated from the other acts that formerly accompanied them. Parodies and alterations of Shakespeare became less popular and even seen as blasphemy. Shakespeare’s works moved from the body of common cultural knowledge to the realm of high art worthy of study by the elite and educated, not crude enjoyment by the masses. This shift in conception of Shakespeare’s place in American culture did not happen suddenly and was not fully accepted, as evinced by the conflict between Mcready and Forrest and the subsequent riots as the masses defended the rights of the audience and the popular theatrical styles while the elite insisted that “discreet” audiences should be privileged to view the plays enacted with more decorum. Those who wished to divorce Shakespeare from popular culture appear to have won in the 20th century, as Shakespeare is now viewed as an artist to be admired and studied but whose works aren’t accessible to the population as a whole, and are certainly not to be compared with popular entertainment, despite their origins as such.

This film will provide you with an enhanced understanding of the play. Although, it is misleading at times, this version of the play will keep you fully entertained for the full 111 minutes and provide you with extra knowledge of the play. Casting The majority of the cast was well selected,

Few writers have managed to enter the world-wide public consciousness as well as Shakespeare; everyone knows his name and can terribly misquote his plays. Yet, for all his popularity, many of his critics have called him unlearned, saying his plays are entertaining but shallow. These same critics often point at the many inconsistencies of his writing, claiming that Shakespeare was not trying to convey anything but witticisms and beautiful sounds. Of course, even his harshest detractors acknowledge his plays and sonnets have influenced the world's literature on a scale that is intimidating; every writer of his era stood in his shadow, and modern literature stands on his

“In roughly built playhouses and cobblestone inn yards, an extraordinary development took place in England in the 1500s.” (Yancey, 8). At that time, an opportunity combined to produce literature achievement never before witnessed in the history of drama and theater. The renaissance, helped spark this movement by inspiring scientific and artistic creativity throughout the land. Models began writing dramas that portrayed life in both realistic and imaginative ways. This created work later captured the attention of the world that changed the English drama. The many aspects of Elizabethan theater helped to shape the acting and theater world forever.