William Jonson 's ' Small Latine And Lesse Greeke Essay

The Republic, as he says, can be destroyed by little volumes (pamphlets) of this sort.

The ability of passion to bring destruction upon the lives of the unsuspecting is illustrated in Shakespeare’s Othello with the use of both manipulation and deceit. The curse of fierce passion fell namely on Othello as he transitioned from a respected general to an unstable murderer. His downfall is demonstrated through his increasing self-doubt, lack of ability to articulate, and violence. In the start of the play, he is an accomplished general and happy newlywed, and has yet to be significantly held back due to his being a Moor and outsider in Venetian society. As passion overtakes him, however, Othello truly ingrains the idea that he is less than, and those around him begin to blame his actions on the nature of his ethnicity. He has completely lost his identity to his desires and is unable to think rationally. Shakespeare juxtaposes this version of Othello with his initial composed self in Venice to demonstrate the damage of ignorance to logic and heighten the sense of tragedy. The effects of an overwhelming passion involving love, jealousy, and revenge are shown through Othello’s degradation and loss of stability.

William Shakespeare is the world’s pre-eminent dramatist whose plays range from tragedies to tragic comedies, etc. His general style of writing is often comparable to several of his contemporaries, like Romeo and Juliet is based on Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem, “The tragical history of Romeo and Juliet”. But Shakespeare’s works express a different range of human experience where his characters command the sympathy of audiences and also are complex as well as human in nature. Shakespeare makes the protagonist’s character development central to the plot.

Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, is a play that transcends time due to its timeless and universal themes. The themes presented in this play are just as relevant to modern audiences as they would have been to contemporary Elizabethan audiences. The play has been able to maintain its textual integrity, withstanding the fact that it is now performed out of its original context to remain a successful play for modern audiences. The issues of heroism, abuse of power and the deceptiveness of appearances are all key within the play, conveyed through the use of dramatic and literary techniques, are issues which still resonate with contemporary audiences. Shakespeare has tested the parameters of the conventional tragedy that was extremely popular during his lifetime and in doing so has created text, which is still relevant today.

        It may appear that anything could be twisted into a typological pattern. Such interpretations appear to suffer from the structuralist faults of skating too lightly over actual texts, ignoring details that cannot be forced into a preconceived mold, and robbing narratives of their concrete shapes through abstraction. I would stress that there is more to Shakespeare than typology, but I would also insist that typology is often an important part of his drama. To make this claim plausible, however, requires more detailed attention to the text of his plays. In what follows, I will call attention to the textual and dramatic details that justify a typological reading of

1. During the Mycenaean civilization, who was the great poet and what were his two important literary works that influenced the Greeks and formed part of Western literature? Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey

The play demonstrates recognition of Othello in Act V, his character changes from gullible and insecure to aware. The ideas of Aristotelian tragic components are discussed in depth in his Poetics. Aristotelian components include; the importance of events, the catharsis, the dramatic form, the reversal and recognition, and the tragic hero giving substantial proof that the play is an Aristotelian tragedy, and that Othello is a tragic hero according to Aristotle.

The view of athletes in ancient Rome were driven by legends. The mythology and feats surrounding the past Hero’s was one of both praise and necessity. Some of the stories seem similar and some are so closely written that only the names have changed. In Joseph Fontenrose’s dissection of “Descriptio Graeciae Pausanias”, a book of recorded geographical sites, he wrote a chapter in the California classical studies series. In his chapter titled “The Hero as athlete” he strives to bring some reality to the legends and separate the nonsensical and obscure.

    The meaningful term “love” can be applied to differing relationships in Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello. In this essay let us examine under a microscope the “love” that we find throughout the play.

   The Shakespearean tragedy Othello contains a number of themes; their relative importance and priority is debated by literary critics. In this essay let us examine the various themes and determine which are dominant and which subordinate.

Literary devices are frequently used throughout acts four and five of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Some of the most prominent devices used on TMOF are dramatic irony, allusion and symbolism. These devices help further develop theme ingrained in the story such as marriage, deceive, wealth, and religion. The use of literary devices helps ensure the story transitions smoothly and is pleasant to the reader, it might also help in the comprehension of the story´s characters.

work. These themes and many more will be explored throughout this paper in an attempt

Shakespeare’s work is among the hardest to read because of its supposed complexity and sophistication. The language used in the Early Modern Era is different than that of the Post Modern Era. Audiences that saw the performances were aural learners and were able to pinpoint certain tones and facial expressions that readers may not detect through words. Watching the plays performed provided better feedback than readings do (Palfrey 10-11). Metaphors, implicit or explicit, are figures of speech that help compare two unlike things and are not designed for literal intake. Yet, with Shakespeare’s work, metaphors should be taken literally. According to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, however, this technique of comparison allows metaphors to simultaneously highlight and hide certain attributes and/or qualities about the thing(s) being compared to (12-13). The highlighting and hiding of metaphors gives readers more insight into what Shakespeare may have meant at the time or even more so in what context did the people of the Elizabethan Age use language (Palfrey 11). Two important components of metaphors that do the highlighting and hiding are the vehicle and the tenor; each can be implicit or explicit as well. The metaphor in question emphasizes both the importance and unimportance of Lavinia’s character.

Othello is presented as a story devised by Desdemona in Morrison’s play. He claims ‘[w]hat excited you was my strange story… fantastic adventures, stories of freaks and miracles’ (Morrison and Traoré 51) and that she ‘fancied the idea’ (50) where he is reduced to a tale she has devised. He becomes a concept which belongs to Desdemona and like a story, his character, becomes a tool for her entertainment. Othello loses ownership in the presentation of his culture as the perception of his culture becomes her (Western) view. Desdemona’s entertaining fantasy of Othello concerns the exotic. It is presented negatively, as his entertainment value relates to the bizarre being ‘strange [and full of] freaks and miracles’ (51); it echoes the idea of a freak show exploiting abnormalities. The image of ‘the exotic foreigner’ (50) is further developed too by Desdemona’s own view of Othello with his ‘sword at his side (50)’. While conversing with Othello she avoids using personal pronouns and engaging the physical man before her to her own

William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is, in Rene Weis’ words a “parable about empire and duty conflicting with folly and lust”, and we see this through the two main characters of Antony and Cleopatra who both struggle with the pressure that comes with ruling an empire and the conflict of the overwhelming desire that follows their love for one another. We will explore this by looking at how the other characters in the play speak of Antony and