preview

William Shakespeare 's ' All The World 's A Stage '

Good Essays
Open Document

Megan Mackey Professor Raja Atallah English 1102 17 April 2017 Research Paper William Shakespeare once said, "All the World’s a Stage" —and now his quote can be applied to his literature within his tragedies (William Shakespeare 1). The generation of people today have a much different definition of tragedies than people did during the Shakespearean times. Shakespeare’s tragedies involve a protagonist whose character is developed so that it is clear that he is a heroic figure in the setting of the play, but he has a flaw which leads to his downfall and accompanying tragic consequences. When we hear the word tragedy today, we immediately think of a large mass of innocent deaths taken by the hand of one or more people. These people are …show more content…

The play is about two families living in Verona in the 1400s who have held a grudge against each other for many years and their children fall in love. The theme of young love still is an issue today, and when it is discussed there is commonly reference to Romeo and Juliet. In fact the popular magazine Entertainment lists at least twelve modern movies clearly based on the theme of Romeo and Juliet (Sollosi 1). One of these movies is actually animated, with the name “Gnomeo and Juliet” (Sollosi 6). The timelessness of the theme of this tragedy of Shakespeare is confirmed by the fact that in modern times we present the theme of young love hindered by systemic hatred to our children in cartoon form. In this movie the feuding gnome clans are represented by the colors red and blue, which seems to imply a reference to gangs. As society has progressed, the richness of Shakespeare’s writings has been revealed by the fact that more and more themes are found to lie in the plot. For example, Romeo and Juliet has also been used as a reference point for discussions of the age of consent (James 241). James points out that in today’s society Romeo might have been branded a sex offender, and it is a big statement about the importance and timelessness of Shakespeare 's plays that Romeo and Juliet is essentially used to justify a call for reform of modern laws (241). In the psychology literature the theme of the play Romeo and Juliet

Get Access