William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 23 April 1616)[a] was an English poet and
playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent
dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His
surviving works consist of 38 plays 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His
plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of
any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne
Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592
he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the
Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around
1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has
been considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the
works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were
mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the
sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and
Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote
tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were
published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former
theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all
but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to
its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's
genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw
called "bardolatry". In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new
movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently
performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
Early life
William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman
originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born
in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564. His unknown birthday is traditionally observed on
23 April, St George's Day. This date, which can be traced back to an eighteenth-century scholar's mistake,
has proved appealing because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the
eldest surviving son.
Plays
Scholars have often noted four periods in Shakespeare's writing career. Until the mid-1590s,
he wrote mainly comedies influenced by Roman and Italian models and history plays in the popular
chronicle tradition. His second period began in about 1595 with the tragedy Romeo and Juliet and
ended with the tragedy of Julius Caesar in 1599. During this time, he wrote what are considered his
greatest comedies and histories. From about 1600 to about 1608, his "tragic period", Shakespeare
wrote mostly tragedies, and from about 1608 to 1613, mainly tragicomedies, also called romances.

The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI,
written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to
date, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The
Taming of the Shrew and Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeares earliest period.
His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have
been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. Their composition was
influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher
Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca The Comedy of Errors
was also based on classical models; but no source for the The Taming of the Shrew has been found,
though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like
Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape the Shrew's story of the
taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and
precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest
comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The Merchant of Venice, contains a
portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock which reflected Elizabethan views but may
appear prejudiced to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the
charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete
Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in
verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1
and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between
comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. ]
This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of
sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesarbased on Sir Thomas North's
1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Liveswhich introduced a new kind of drama. According to
Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics, character,
inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to
infuse each other".
Shakespeare's so-called "tragic period" lasted from about 1600 to 1608, though he also wrote the
so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well
during this time and had written tragedies before. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest
tragedies represent the peak of his art. The hero of the first, Hamlet, has probably been more discussed
than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be; that is
the question." Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies
that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of
Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the
hero and those he loves. In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he
murders the innocent wife who loves him. In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving
up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the murder of his daughter and the torture and blinding
of the Earl of Gloucester. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers neither its good
characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of

Shakespeare's tragedies uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder
the rightful king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play,
Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and
Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most
successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.
In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more
major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince
of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s,
but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have
seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may
merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays,
Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.
Shakespeare's sonnets, or simply The Sonnets, is a collection of poems in sonnet form written
by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as love, beauty, politics, and mortality. They were
probably written over a period of several years. All 154 poems appeared in a 1609 collection, entitled
SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, comprising 152 previously unpublished sonnets and two (numbers 138
and 144) that had previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.
The Sonnets were published under conditions that have become unclear to history. Although the
works were written by Shakespeare, it is not known if the publisher, Thomas Thorpe used an authorized
manuscript from him, or an unauthorized copy. Also, there is a mysterious dedication at the beginning of
the text wherein a certain "Mr. W.H." is described as "the onlie begetter" of the poems by the publisher
Thomas Thorpe, but it is not known who this man was. The dedication refers to the poet as "EverLiving", a phrase which has helped fuel the Shakespearean authorship debate due to its use as an epithet
for the deceased (Shakespeare himself used the phrase in this way in Henry VI, part 1 (IV, iii, 51-2)
describing the dead Henry V as [t]hat ever-living man of memory). Authorship proponents believe this
phrase indicates that the real author of the sonnets was dead by 1609, whereas Shakespeare of Stratford
lived until 1616.[2] Adding further to the authorship debate, Shakespeare's name is hyphenated on the title
page and on the top of every other page in the book.
The first 17 sonnets are written to a young man, urging him to marry and have children thereby
passing down his beauty to the next generation. These are called the procreation sonnets. Most of them,
however, 18-126, are addressed to a young man expressing the poet's love for him. Sonnets 127-152 are
written to the poet's mistress expressing his love for her. The final two sonnets, 153-154, are allegorical.
The final thirty or so sonnets are written about a number of issues, such as the young man's infidelity
with the poet's mistress, self-resolution to control his own lust, beleaguered criticism of the world, etc.
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is an early tragedy by William Shakespeare about two teenage "star-cross'd
lovers" whose "untimely deaths" ultimately unite their feuding households. The play has been highly
praised by literary critics for its language and dramatic effect. It was among Shakespeare's most popular
plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Its
influence is still seen today, with the two main characters being widely represented as archetypal young
lovers.

Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to Ancient Greece. Its
plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and
retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Brooke and Painter were Shakespeare's
chief sources of inspiration for Romeo and Juliet. He borrowed heavily from both, but developed minor
characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris, in order to expand the plot. Believed written between 1591
1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. This text was of poor quality, and later
editions corrected it, bringing it more in line with Shakespeare's original text.
Shakespeare's use of dramatic structure, especially his expansion of minor characters,use of
subplots to embellish the story, has been praised as an early sign of his dramatic skill. The play ascribes
different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops.
Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the sonnet form over time. Characters frequently compare love
and death and allude to the role of fate.
Since its publication, Romeo and Juliet has been adapted numerous times in stage, film, musical
and operatic forms. During the Restoration, it was revived and heavily revised by William Davenant.
Garrick's 18th century version, which continued to be performed into the Victorian era, also changed
several scenes, removing material then considered indecent. Performances in the 19th century, including
Charlotte Cushman's, restored the original text, and focused on greater realism. Gielgud's 1935 version
kept very close to Shakespeare's text, and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama.
The play begins with a street brawl between two families: the Montagues and the Capulets. The
Prince of Verona, Escalus, intervenes with his men and declares that the heads of the two families will be
held personally accountable for any further breach of the peace. Later, Count Paris, a young nobleman,
talks to Lord Capulet about marrying his thirteen-year-old daughter Juliet. Capulet is wary of this offer,
citing the girl's young age, but still invites him to try to attract Juliet's attention during a ball that the
family is to hold that night. Juliet's mother tries to persuade her daughter to accept Paris' courtship during
this ball, leading Juliet to say that although she will make an effort to love him, she will not express love
if it is not there. In this scene Juliet's nurse is introduced as a talkative and humorous character, who
raised Juliet from infancy.
In the meantime, a young man named Benvolio talks with his cousin Romeo, Lord Montague's
son, over Romeo's recent depression. Benvolio discovers that it stems from unrequited love for a girl
named Rosaline, one of Lord Capulet's nieces who has sworn herself to chastity. Upon the insistence of
Benvolio and another friend, Mercutio, Romeo decides to attend the masquerade ball at the Capulet
house in hopes of meeting Rosaline. Alongside his masked friends Romeo attends the ball as planned, but
falls in love with Juliet (forgetting about Rosaline) and she with him. Despite the danger brought on by
their feuding families, Romeo sneaks into the Capulet courtyard and overhears Juliet on her balcony
vowing her love to him in spite of her family's hatred of the Montagues. Romeo soon makes himself
known to her, and the two declare their love for each other and agree to be married. With the help of the
Franciscan Friar Lawrence, who hopes to reconcile the two families through their children's union, they
are married secretly the next day.
All seems well until Tybalt, Juliet's hot-blooded cousin, challenges Romeo to a duel for appearing
at the Capulets' ball in disguise. Though no one is aware of the marriage yet, Romeo refuses to fight
Tybalt since they are now part of the same family. Mercutio is incensed by Tybalt's insolence, and accepts

the duel on Romeo's behalf. In the ensuing scuffle, Mercutio is fatally wounded when Romeo tries to
separate them. Romeo, angered by his friend's death, pursues and slays Tybalt, then flees.
Despite his promise to call for the head of the wrongdoers, the Prince merely exiles Romeo from
Verona, reasoning that Tybalt first killed Mercutio, and that Romeo merely carried out a just punishment
of death to Tybalt, although without legal authority. Juliet grieves at the news, and Lord Capulet,
misinterpreting her grief, agrees to engage her to marry Paris with the wedding to be held in just three
days. He threatens to disown her if she refuses. The nurse, once Juliet's confidante, now tells her she
should discard the exiled Romeo and comply. Juliet desperately visits Friar Lawrence for help. He offers
her a drug, which will put her into a death-like coma for forty-two hours. She is to take it and, when
discovered apparently dead, she will be laid in the family crypt. While she is sleeping the Friar will send
a messenger to inform Romeo, so that he can rejoin her when she awakens.
The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo. Romeo then learns of Juliet's "death" from his
servant Balthasar. Grief-stricken, he buys poison from an apothecary, returns to Verona in secret, and
visits the Capulet crypt. He encounters Paris who has come to mourn Juliet privately. Paris confronts
Romeo believing him to be a vandal, and in the ensuing battle Romeo kills Paris. He then says his final
words to the comatose Juliet and drinks the poison to commit suicide. Juliet then awakens. Friar
Lawrence arrives and, realizing the cause of the tragedy, begs Juliet to leave. She refuses, and at the side
of Romeo's dead body, she stabs herself with her lover's dagger.
The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find all three dead. In explanation Friar
Lawrence recounts the story of the two lovers. Montague reveals that his wife has died of grief after
hearing of her son's exile. The families are reconciled by their children's deaths and agree to end their
violent feud. The play ends with the Prince's brief elegy for the lovers: "For never was a story of more
woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's nurse refers to an
earthquake which she says occurred eleven years ago An earthquake did occur in England in 1580,
possibly dating that particular line to 1591, although other earthquakes - both in England and in Verona have been proposed in support of different dates. But the play's stylistic similarities with A Midsummer
Night's Dream and other plays conventionally dated around 1594-5, place the writing between 1591 and
1595. One conjecture is that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in 1591, which he completed in 1595.
Analysis and criticism
Though critics have picked apart many weak points in Romeo and Juliet since the play's first
writing, it is still regarded by most as one of Shakespeare's better plays. Among the most prevalent
debates in the critical of the play regards Shakespeare's intent. Was the play intended to be a story of two
young lovers' struggle against fate and fortune, or was it a commentary on the foolishness of unbridled
passion and the ultimate tragedy to which it will inevitably lead? Perhaps it was intended to show how
two young lovers become instruments in the hands of fate or providence in uniting two warring families.
Scholars have yet to agree on what the play is really about after centuries of analysis, though recently
several have argued that it is a combination of all three.
The earliest known critic of the play was Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a play of itself
the worst that I ever heard in my life." [ The nineteenth century centered on debates regarding the moral
message of the play.. Later in the twentieth century, criticism divided in the several ways described below
in the Interpretations section.

Shakespeare shows his dramatic skill freely in Romeo and Juliet, providing intense moments of
shift between comedy and tragedy. Before Mercutio's death in Act three, the play is largely a comedy.
After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes very serious and takes on more of a tragic tone.
Still, the fact that Romeo is banished, rather than executed, offers a hope that things will work out. When
Friar Lawrence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo the audience still has a reason to believe
that all will end well. They are in a "breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the
tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be saved. [25] This
only makes it all the more tragic when everything falls apart in the end.[26]
Shakespeare also uses subplots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main characters, and
provide an axis around which the main plot turns. For example, when the play begins, Romeo is in love
with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's infatuation with her stands in obvious
contrast to his later love for Juliet. This provides a comparison through which the audience can see the
seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love and marriage. Paris' love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between
Juliet's feelings for him and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well
as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo. Beyond this,
the sub-plot of the Montague-Capulet feud overarches the whole play, providing an atmosphere of hate
that is the main contributor to the play's tragic end.[26]
Language
Shakespeare uses a large variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a 14-line
prologue in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by a Chorus. Most of Romeo and Juliet is,
however, written in blank verse, and much of it in strict iambic pentameter, with less rhythmic variation
than in most of Shakespeare's later plays. In choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the
character who uses it. Friar Lawrence, for example, uses sermon and sententiae forms, and the Nurse uses
a unique blank verse form that closely matches colloquial speech. Each of these forms is also moulded
and matched to the emotion of the scene the character occupies. For example, when Romeo talks about
Rosaline earlier in the play, he uses the Petrarchan sonnet form. Petrarchan sonnets were often used by
men at the time to exaggerate the beauty of women who were impossible for them to attain, as in
Romeo's situation with Rosaline.
Themes and motifs
Scholars have found it extremely difficult to assign one specific, over-arching theme to the play.
Proposals for a main theme include a discovery by the characters that human beings are neither wholly
good nor wholly evil, but instead are more or less alike, [36] awaking out of a dream and into reality, the
danger of hasty action, or the power of tragic fate. None of these have widespread support. However,
even if an overall theme cannot be found it is clear that the play is full of several small, thematic elements
which intertwine in complex ways. Several of those which are most often debated by scholars are
discussed below.Love
Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of young love. [36]
In fact, the characters in it have become emblems of all who die young for their lovers. Since it is such an
obvious subject of the play, several scholars have explored the language and historical context behind the
romance of the play.
On their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication recommended by many
etiquette authors in Shakespeare's day: metaphor. By using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able

to test Juliet's feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended by Baldassare
Castiglione (whose works had been translated into English by this time). He pointed out that if a man
used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could pretend she did not understand the man, and the man
could take the hint and back away without losing his honour. Juliet, however, makes it clear that she is
interested in Romeo by playing along with his metaphor. Later, in the balcony scene, Shakespeare has
Romeo overhear Juliet's declaration of love for him. In Brooke's version of the story, her declaration is
done in her bedroom, alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare breaks from
the normal sequence of courtship. Usually, a woman was required to play hard to get, to be sure that her
suitor was sincere. Breaking this rule, however, serves to speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip
a lengthy part of wooing, and move on to plain talk about their relationshipdeveloping into an
agreement to be married after knowing each other for only one night. In the final suicide scene, there is a
contradiction in the message in the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to
hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the "Religion of Love" are joined with their
loves in paradise. Romeo and Juliet's love seems to be expressing the "Religion of Love" view rather than
the Catholic view. Another point is that although their love is passionate, it is only consummated in
marriage, which prevents them from losing the audience's sympathy.
The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the story, both Romeo and Juliet,
along with the other characters, fantasize about it as a dark being, often equating it with a lover. Capulet,
for example, when he first discovers Juliet's (faked) death, describes it as having deflowered his daughter
Juliet later even compares Romeo to death in an erotic way. One of the strongest examples of this in the
play is in Juliet's suicide, when she says, grabbing Romeo's dagger, "O happy dagger! / ...This is thy
sheath / there rust, and let me die." The dagger here can be a sort of phallus of Romeo, with Juliet being
its sheath in death, a strong sexual symbol.
Fate and chance
Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus exists on whether the characters
are truly fated to die together no matter what, or whether the events take place by a series of unlucky
chances. Arguments in favour of fate often refer to the description of the lovers as "star-cross'd". This
phrase seems to hint that the stars have predetermined the lovers' future. Another scholar of the fate
persuasion, Draper, points out the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in humours and the main
characters of the play (for example, Tybalt as a choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of the
Elizabethan science of humourism reduces the amount of plot attributed to chance by modern audiences.
Still, other scholars see the play as a mere series of unlucky chancesmany to such a degree that they do
not see it as a tragedy at all, but an emotional melodrama. Nevo believes the high degree to which chance
is stressed in the narrative makes Romeo and Juliet a "lesser tragedy" of happenstance, not of character.
For example, Romeo's challenging Tybalt is not impulsive, it is, after Mercutio's death, the expected
action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as being aware of the dangers of flouting social norms,
identity and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because of a tragic flaw, but because of
circumstance.
Light and dark
Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark imagery throughout the
play. The light theme was initially taken to be "symbolic of the natural beauty of young love", an idea
beginning in Caroline Spurgeon's work Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us, although the
perceived meaning has since its publication branched in several directions. For example, both Romeo and

Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun,
brighter than a torch, a jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds. Even when
she lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her "beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of
light." Juliet describes Romeo as "day in night" and "Whiter than snow upon a raven's back." This
contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbolscontrasting love and hate, youth and age in a
metaphoric way. Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example, Romeo
and Juliet's love is a light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity
together is done in night and darkness, while all of the feuding is done in broad daylight. This paradox of
imagery adds atmosphere to the moral dilemma facing the two lovers: loyalty to family or loyalty to love.
At the end of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the sun hiding its face for sorrow, light and dark
have returned to their proper places, the outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family
feud out of sorrow for the lovers. All characters now recognize their folly in light of recent events, and
things return to the natural order, thanks to the love of Romeo and Juliet. The "light" theme in the play is
also heavily connected to the theme of time, since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express
the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars.
Time
Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play. Both Romeo and Juliet struggle
to maintain an imaginary world void of time in the face of the harsh realities that surround them. For
instance, when Romeo attempts to swear his love to Juliet by the moon, Juliet tells him not to, as it is
known to be inconstant over time, and she does not desire this of him. From the very beginning, the
lovers are designated as "star-cross'd" referring to an astrologic belief which is heavily connected to time.
Stars were thought to control the fates of men, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in
the sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a foreboding he feels in the
stars' movements early in the play, and when he learns of Juliet's death, he defies the stars' course for him.
A "haste theme" can be considered as fundamental to the play.[54] For example, the action of
Romeo and Juliet spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke's poem's spanning nine months.
Scholars such as Tanselle believe that time was "especially important to Shakespeare" in this play, as he
used references to "short-time" for the young lovers as opposed to references to "long-time" for the "older
generation" to highlight "a headlong rush towards doom". Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love
to last forever. In the end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a noteworthy death which
makes them immortal through art.[
Time is heavily connected to the theme of light and dark as well. The play is said in the Prologue
to be about two hours long, creating a problem for any playwright wishing to express longer amounts of
time. In Shakespeare's day, plays were often performed at noon in broad daylight. This forced the
playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references
to the night and day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion. He also has characters
frequently refer to days of the week and specific hours to help the audience understand that time has
passed in the story. All in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play, adding to this
illusion of its passage.
Context and interpretation
Psychoanalytic
Psychoanalytic critics focus largely on Romeo's relationships with Rosaline and Juliet, as well as
the looming image of inevitable death. Romeo and Juliet is not considered to be extremely

psychologically complex, and sympathetic psychoanalytic readings of the play make the tragic male
experience equivalent with sicknesses. The first line of criticism argues that Romeo is in love with
Rosaline and Juliet because she is the all-present, all-powerful mother which fills a void. According to
this theory, this void was caused by the negligence of his mother. Another theory argues that the feud
between the families provides a source of phallic expression for the male Capulets and Montagues. This
sets up a system where patriarchal order is in power. When the sons are married, rather than focusing on
the wife, they are still owed an obligation to their father through the feud. This conflict between
obligation to the father (the family name) and the wife (the feminine), determines the course of the play.
Some critics argue this hatred is the sole cause of Romeo and Juliet's passion for each other. The fear of
death and the knowledge of the danger of their relationship is in this view channelled into a romantic
passion.
Feminist literary critics have pointed out Juliet's dependence on male characters, such as Friar
Laurence and Romeo.
Feminist
Feminist critics argue that the blame for the family feud lies in Verona's patriarchal society. In this
view, the strict, masculine code of violence imposed on Romeo is the main force driving the tragedy to its
end. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, for example, Romeo shifts into this violent mode, regretting that Juliet
has made him so "effeminate". In this view, the younger males "become men" by engaging in violence on
behalf of their fathers, or in the case of the servants, their masters. The feud is also linked to male virility,
as the joke about the maid's heads shows. Juliet also submits to a female code of docility by allowing
others, such as the Friar, to solve her problems for her. Other critics, such as Dympna Callaghan, look at
the play's feminism from a more historicist angle. They take into account the fact that the play is written
during a time when the patriarchal order was being challenged by several forces, most notably the rise of
Puritanism. When Juliet dodges her father's attempt to force her to marry a man she has no feeling for,
she is successfully challenging the patriarchal order in a way that would not have been possible at an
earlier time.
Gender studies
Gender studies critics largely question the sexuality of two characters, Mercutio and Romeo.
From the perspective of this form of criticism, the difference between the two characters' friendship and
sexual love is discussed heavily in the play. Mercutio's friendship with Romeo, for example, leads to
several friendly conversations, including ones on the subject of Romeo's phallus. This would seem to
suggest traces of homoeroticism. Romeo, as well, admits traces of the same in the manner of his love for
Rosaline and Juliet. Rosaline, for example, is distant and unavailable, bringing no hope of offspring. As
Benvolio argues, she is best replaced by someone who will reciprocate. Shakespeare's procreation
sonnets describe another young man who, like Romeo, is having trouble creating offspring and who is
homosexual. Gender critics believe that Shakespeare may have used Rosaline as a way to express
homosexual problems of procreation in an acceptable way. In this view, when Juliet says "...that which
we call a rose [or Rosaline] / By any other name would smell as sweet", she may be raising the question
of whether there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of a woman.[
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It
portrays the conspiracy against the Roman dictator of the same name, his assassination and its aftermath.

It is one of several Roman plays that he wrote, based on true events from Roman history, which also
include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.
Although the title of the play is Julius Caesar, Caesar is not the central character in its action; he
appears in only three scenes, and is killed at the beginning of the third act. The protagonist of the play is
Marcus Brutus, and the central psychological drama is his struggle between the conflicting demands of
honour, patriotism, and friendship.
The play reflected the general anxiety of England over succession of leadership. At the time of its
creation and first performance, Queen Elizabeth, a strong ruler, was elderly and had refused to name a
successor, leading to worries that a civil war similar to that of Rome might break out after her death.
Julius Caesar was first published in the First Folio in 1623, but a performance was mentioned by
Thomas Platter in his diary in September 1599. The play is not mentioned in the list of Shakespeare's
plays published by Francis Meres in 1598. Based on these two points, as well as a number of
contemporary allusions, and the belief that the play is similar to Hamlet in vocabulary, and to Henry V
and As You Like It in metre, scholars have suggested 1599 as a probable date.
The text of Julius Caesar in the First Folio is the only authoritative text for the play. The Folio
text is notable for its quality and consistency; scholars judge it to have been set into type from a theatrical
prompt-book.[3] The source used by Shakespeare was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of
Brutus and Life of Caesar.
The play contains many anachronistic elements from the Elizabethan period. The characters
mention objects such as hats and doublets (large, heavy jackets) - neither of which existed in ancient
Rome. Caesar is mentioned to be wearing an Elizabethan doublet instead of a Roman toga. At one point a
clock is heard to strike and Brutus notes it with "Count the clock".
Deviations from Plutarch
Shakespeare makes Caesar's triumph take place on the day of Lupercalia instead of six
months earlier
For greater dramatic effect he has made the Capitol the venue of Caesar's death and not
Curia Pomperiana (Theatre of Pompey).

Caesar's murder, the funeral, Antony's oration, the reading of the will and Octavius' arrival
all take place on the same day in the play. However, historically, the assassination took place on
March 15 (The ides of March), the will was published three days later on March 18, the funeral took
place on March 20 and Octavius arrived only in May.

Shakespeare makes the Triumvirs meet in Rome instead of near Bolonia, so as to avoid a
third locale.

He has combined the two Battles of Phillipi although there was a twenty day interval
between them.

Shakespeare gives Caesar's last words as "Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!" ("And you,
Brutus? Then fall, Caesar."). Plutarch says he said nothing, pulling his toga over his head when he
saw Brutus among the conspirators.[5]. However, Suetonius reports his last words, spoken in Greek, as
" " (transliterated as "Kai su, teknon?"; "You too, child?" in English)..

Shakespeare deviated from these historical facts in order to curtail time and compress the facts so
that the play could be staged more easily. The tragic force is condensed into a few scenes for heightened
effect.
Characters
Julius Caesar
Octavius Caesar, Marcus Antonius, M. Aemilius Lepidus: Triumvirs after the death of
Julius Caesar

Cicero, Publius, Popilius Lena: Senators

Marcus Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Trebonius, Ligarius, Decius Brutus, Metellus

Flavius and Marullus: Tribunes

Artemidorus: a Sophist of Cnidos

A Soothsayer (Also called Fortuneteller)

Cinna: a poet, who is not related to the conspiracy

Lucilius, Titinius, Messala, Cato the Younger, Volumnius: Friends to Brutus and Cassius

Varro, Clitus, Claudius, Strato, Lucius, Dardanius: Servants to Brutus

Pindarus: Servant to Cassius

Calpurnia: wife of Caesar

Portia: wife of Brutus

Synopsis
Marcus Brutus is Caesar's close friend; his ancestors were famed for driving the tyrannical King
Tarquin from Rome (described in Shakespeare's earlier The Rape of Lucrece). Brutus allows himself to be
cajoled into joining a group of conspiring senators because of a growing suspicionimplanted by Caius
Cassiusthat Caesar intends to turn republican Rome into a monarchy under his own rule. Traditional
readings of the play maintain that Cassius and the other conspirators are motivated largely by envy and
ambition, whereas Brutus is motivated by the demands of honour and patriotism; other commentators,
such as Isaac Asimov, suggest that the text shows Brutus is no less moved by envy and flattery One of the
central strengths of the play is that it resists categorizing its characters as either simple heroes or villains.
The early scenes deal mainly with Brutus' arguments with Cassius and his struggle with his own
conscience. The growing tide of public support soon turns Brutus against Caesar (This public support was
actually faked. Cassius wrote letters to Brutus in different handwritings over the next month in order to
get Brutus to join the conspiracy). A soothsayer warns Caesar to "beware the Ides of March," which he
ignores, culminating in his assassination at the Capitol by the conspirators that day.

Caesar's assassination is perhaps the most famous part of the play, about halfway through. After
ignoring the soothsayer as well as his wife's own premonitions, Caesar comes to the Senate. The
conspirators create a superficial motive for the assassination by means of a petition brought by Metellus
Cimber, pleading on behalf of his banished brother. As Caesar, predictably, rejects the petition, Casca
grazes Caesar in the back of his neck, and the others follow in stabbing him; Brutus is last. At this point,
Caesar utters the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", i.e. "You too, Brutus?"). Shakespeare
has him add, "Then fall, Caesar," suggesting that Caesar did not want to survive such treachery. The
conspirators make clear that they did this act for Rome, not for their own purposes and do not attempt to
flee the scene but act victorious.
After Caesar's death, however, Mark Antony, with a subtle and eloquent speech over Caesar's
corpsethe much-quoted Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears...deftly turns public
opinion against the assassins by manipulating the emotions of the common people, in contrast to the
rational tone of Brutus's speech. Antony rouses the mob to drive the conspirators from Rome. Amid the
violence, the innocent poet, Cinna, is confused with the conspirator Cinna and is murdered by the mob.
The beginning of Act Four is marked by the quarrel scene, where Brutus attacks Cassius for
soiling the noble act of regicide by accepting bribes ("Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? / What
villain touch'd his body, that did stab, / And not for justice?", IV.iii,19-21). The two are reconciled; they
prepare for war with Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son, Octavian (Shakespeare's spelling:
Octavius). That night, Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus with a warning of defeat ("thou shalt see me at
Philippi", IV.iii,283). During the battle, Cassius commits suicide after seeing the death of his best
friend,Titinius. After Titinius, who wasn't really killed, sees Cassius' corpse, he commits suicide.
However, Brutus wins the battle. Brutus, with a heavy heart, battles again the next day. He loses and
commits suicide. The play ends with a tribute to Brutus by Antony, who has remained "the noblest
Roman of them all" (V.v,68) because he was the only conspirator who acted for the good of Rome. Then
it is hinted that the friction between Mark Antony and Octavius which will characterise another of
Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra.
Protagonist debate
Critics of Shakespeares play Julius Caesar differ greatly on their views of Caesar and Brutus.
Many have debated whether Caesar or Brutus is the protagonist of the play. Intertwined in this debate is a
smattering of philosophical and psychological ideologies on republicanism and monarchism. One author,
Robert C. Reynolds, devotes attention to the names or epithets given to both Brutus and Caesar in his
essay Ironic Epithet in Julius Caesar. This author points out that Casca praises Brutus at face value, but
then inadvertently compares him to a disreputable joke of a man by calling him an alchemist, Oh, he sits
high in all the peoples hearts,/And that which would appear offense in us/ His countenance, like richest
alchemy,/ Will change to virtue and to worthiness (I.iii.158-60). Reynolds also talks about Caesar and
his Colossus epithet, which he points out has its obvious connotations of power and manliness, but also
lesser known connotations of an outward glorious front and inward chaos. In that essay, the conclusion as
to who is the hero or protagonist is ambiguous because of the conceit-like poetic quality of the epithets
for Caesar and Brutus.
Myron Taylor, in his essay Shakespeares Julius Caesar and the Irony of History, compares the
logic and philosophies of Caesar and Brutus. Caesar is deemed an intuitive philosopher who is always
right when he goes with his gut, for instance when he says he fears Cassius as a threat to him before he is
killed, his intuition is correct. Brutus is portrayed as a man similar to Caesar, but whose passions lead him

to the wrong reasoning, which he realizes in the end when he says in V.v.50-51, Caesar, now be still:/ I
killd not thee with half so good a will .
Joseph W. Houppert acknowledges that some critics have tried to cast Caesar as the protagonist,
but that ultimately Brutus is the driving force in the play and is therefore the tragic hero. Brutus attempts
to put the republic over his personal relationship with Caesar and kills him. Brutus makes the political
mistakes that bring down the republic that his ancestors created. He acts on his passions, does not gather
enough evidence to make reasonable decisions and is manipulated by Cassius and the other conspirators.
The general conclusion among critics is that Brutus is in fact the protagonist of the play Julius
Caesar, although some have tried to prove otherwise.
Gender studies approaches
Gender critics argue that the bonds between the men in Julius Ceasar appears to exceed mere
friendship, or homosociality, and cross the line into homosexuality. Some critics, such as Barbara Parker
even argue that homosexual love among Roman men is an implicit theme in the play. According to this
argument, Brutus and the conspirators kill Caesar for the same reasons that Brutus and Cassius argue at
the end of the play: admiration has turned to desire for sexual domination. [11] This is based on the idea
that, in Shakespeare's day, in an England ruled by Protestantism, Catholic Rome was often viewed as the
"Whore of Babylon". Many church leaders in Rome were rumored to have practiced sodomy, and the
area was frequently alluded to in England as being full of homosexuals. Thus, where Brutus says: "But,
woe the while! our fathers' minds are dead / And we a govern'd by our mothers' spirits", Gender critics
see Brutus expressing a homosexual femininity. Caesar, also said to be feminine, wishes only for the
company of men, and the women around him are sidelined. Men engage in more loving conversations
with the men in their lives than with their own wives. Parker thus portrays the relationship between
Brutus and the rest of the conspirators as more like a group marriage than simply a friendship.
Using phallic and yonic symbol theory, gender critics suggest that the funeral scene is both the
climax of the action of the play as well as the sexual climax. Behind the rhetoric of Mark Antony, Parker
sees a sexual rhetoric of seduction. Antony uses his funeral oration to seduce the crowd from Brutus back
to Caesar. The wounds in Caesar's naked body, for Parker, represent vaginal orifices. Antony also
mentions Caesar's will several times. It signifies both his actual will as well as his sexual will (chastity)
that kept him from coming at the conspirators' request. In this view, the funeral represents all the stages
of sex, ending with the burning of Rome representing orgasm. Antony thus re-energizes the Romans and
Brutus and Cassius have to leave the city.
Hamlet
Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and
1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who
has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then taken the throne and married Hamlet's mother. The play
vividly charts the course of real and feigned madnessfrom overwhelming grief to seething rageand
explores themes of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.
Despite much literary detective work, the exact year of writing remains in dispute. Three different
early versions of the play have survived: these are known as the First Quarto (Q1), the Second Quarto
(Q2) and the First Folio (F1). Each has lines, and even scenes, that are missing from the others.
Shakespeare probably based Hamlet on the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo

Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum and subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar Franois de
Belleforest, and a supposedly lost Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet.
Given the play's dramatic structure and depth of characterisation, Hamlet can be analyzed,
interpreted and argued about from many perspectives. For example, commentators have puzzled for
centuries about Hamlet's hesitation in killing his uncle. Some see it as a plot device to prolong the action,
and others see it as the result of pressure exerted by the complex philosophical and ethical issues that
surround cold-blooded murder, calculated revenge and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic
critics have examined Hamlet's unconscious desires, and feminist critics have re-evaluated and
rehabilitated the often maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in
the English language. It provides a storyline capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by
others".[1] During his lifetime the play was one of his most popular works, [2] and it still ranks high among
his most-performed, topping, for example, the Royal Shakespeare Company's list since 1879.[3] It has
inspired writers from Goethe and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's
most filmed story after Cinderella".[4] The title role was almost certainly created for Richard Burbage, the
leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time;[5] in the four hundred years since, it has been played by the
greatest actors, and sometimes actresses, of each successive age.
Synopsis
The protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently deceased King
Hamlet and the nephew of King Claudius, his father's brother and successor. After the death of King
Hamlet, Claudius hastily marries King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. In the background is
Denmark's long-standing feud with neighbouring Norway, and an invasion led by the Norwegian prince,
Fortinbras, is expected.
The play opens on a cold night at Elsinore, the Danish royal castle. The sentinels try to persuade
Hamlet's friend Horatio that they have seen King Hamlet's ghost, when it appears again. After hearing
from Horatio of the Ghost's appearance, Hamlet resolves to see the Ghost himself. That night, the Ghost
appears to Hamlet. He tells Hamlet that he is the spirit of his father, and discloses that Claudius murdered
King Hamlet by pouring poison in his ears. The Ghost demands that Hamlet avenge him; Hamlet agrees
and decides to fake madness to avert suspicion. He is, however, uncertain of the Ghost's reliability.
Busy with affairs of state, Claudius and Gertrude try to avert an invasion by Prince Fortinbras of
Norway. Perturbed by Hamlet's continuing deep mourning for his father and his increasingly erratic
behaviour, they send two student friends of hisRosencrantz and Guildensternto discover the cause of
Hamlet's changed behaviour. Hamlet greets his friends warmly, but quickly discerns that they have turned
against him.
Polonius is Claudius' trusted chief counsellor; his son, Laertes, is returning to France, and his
daughter, Ophelia, is courted by Hamlet. Neither Polonius nor Laertes thinks Hamlet is serious about
Ophelia, and they both warn her off. Shortly afterwards, Ophelia is alarmed by Hamlet's strange
behaviour and reports to her father that Hamlet rushed into her room but stared at her and said nothing.
Polonius assumes that the "ecstasy of love" is responsible for Hamlet's madness, and he informs Claudius
and Gertrude. Later, in the so-called Nunnery Scene, Hamlet rants at Ophelia, and insists she go "to a
nunnery."

Hamlet remains unconvinced that the Ghost has told him the truth, but the arrival of a troupe of
actors at Elsinore presents him with a solution. He will stage a play, re-enacting his father's murder, and
determine Claudius' guilt or innocence by studying his reaction. The court assembles to watch the play;
Hamlet provides a running commentary throughout. During the play, Claudius abruptly rises and leaves
the room, which Hamlet sees as proof of his uncle's guilt. Claudius, fearing for his life, banishes Hamlet
to England on a pretext, closely watched by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with a letter instructing that
the bearer be killed.
Gertrude summons Hamlet to her closet to demand an explanation. On his way, Hamlet passes
Claudius in prayer but hesitates to kill him, reasoning that death in prayer would send him to heaven. In
the bedchamber, a row erupts between Hamlet and Gertrude. Polonius, spying hidden behind an arras,
makes a noise; and Hamlet, believing it is Claudius, stabs wildly, killing Polonius. The Ghost appears,
urging Hamlet to treat Gertrude gently but reminding him to kill Claudius. Unable to see or hear the
Ghost herself, Gertrude takes Hamlet's conversation with it as further evidence of madness. Hamlet hides
Polonius' corpse.
Demented by grief at Polonius' death, Ophelia wanders Elsinore singing bawdy songs. Her
brother, Laertes, arrives back from France, enraged by his father's death and his sister's madness.
Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is solely responsible; then news arrives that Hamlet is still at
large. Claudius swiftly concocts a plot. He proposes a fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet in
which Laertes will fight with a poison-tipped sword, but tacitly plans to offer Hamlet poisoned wine if
that fails. Gertrude interrupts to report that Ophelia has drowned.
Two gravediggers discuss Ophelia's apparent suicide, while digging her grave. Hamlet arrives
with Horatio and banters with a gravedigger, who unearths the skull of a jester from Hamlet's childhood,
Yorick. Ophelia's funeral procession approaches, led by Laertes. He and Hamlet grapple, but the brawl is
broken up.
Back at Elsinore, Hamlet tells Horatio how he escaped and that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
have been sent to their deaths. A courtier, Osric, interrupts to invite Hamlet to fence with Laertes. With
Fortinbras' army closing on Elsinore, the match begins. Laertes pierces Hamlet with a poisoned blade but
is fatally wounded by it himself. Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine and dies. In his dying moments,
Laertes is reconciled with Hamlet and reveals Claudius' murderous plot. In his own last moments, Hamlet
manages to kill Claudius and names Fortinbras as his heir. When Fortinbras arrives, Horatio recounts the
tale and Fortinbras orders Hamlet's body borne off in honour.
Hamlet-like legends are so widely found (for example in Italy, Spain, Scandinavia,
Byzantium, and Arabia) that the core "hero-as-fool" theme is possibly Indo-European in origin.
Several ancient written sources for Hamlet can be identified. The first is the anonymous
Scandinavian Saga of Hrolf Kraki. In this, the murdered king has two sonsHroar and Helgiwho
spend most of the story in disguise, under false names, rather than feigning madness, in a sequence
of events that differs from Shakespeare's. The second is the Roman legend of Brutus, recorded in
two separate Latin works. Its hero, Lucius ("shining, light"), changes his name and persona to
Brutus ("dull, stupid"), playing the role of a fool to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and
eventually slaying his family's killer, King Tarquinius. A 17th-century Nordic scholar, Torfaeus,
compared the Icelandic hero Amlodi and the Spanish hero Prince Ambales (from the Ambales Saga)

to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Similarities include the prince's feigned madness, his accidental killing of
the king's counsellor in his mother's bedroom, and the eventual slaying of his uncle.
Many of the earlier legendary elements are interwoven in the 13th-century Vita Amlethi
("The Life of Amleth") by Saxo Grammaticus, part of Gesta Danorum. Written in Latin, it reflects
classical Roman concepts of virtue and heroism, and was widely available in Shakespeare's day.
Significant parallels include the prince feigning madness, his mother's hasty marriage to the usurper,
the prince killing a hidden spy, and the prince substituting the execution of two retainers for his own.
A reasonably faithful version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by Franois de
Belleforest, in his Histoires tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost
doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy.
Shakespeare's main source is believed to be an earlier playnow lostknown today as the
Ur-Hamlet. Possibly written by Thomas Kyd, the Ur-Hamlet was in performance by 1589 and is the
first version of the story known to incorporate a ghost. [16] Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's
Men, may have purchased that play and performed a version for some time, which Shakespeare
reworked. Since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has survived, however, it is impossible to compare its
language and style with the known works of any of its putative authors. Consequently, there is no
direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of Hamlet
by Shakespeare himself. This latter ideaplacing Hamlet far earlier than the generally accepted
date, with a much longer period of developmenthas attracted some support, though others dismiss
it as speculation.
The upshot is that scholars cannot assert with any confidence how much material
Shakespeare took from the Ur-Hamlet, how much from Belleforest or Saxo, and how much from
other contemporary sources (such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy). No clear evidence exists that
Shakespeare made any direct references to Saxo's version. However, elements of Belleforest's
version do appear in Shakespeare's play, though they are not in Saxo's story. Whether Shakespeare
took these from Belleforest directly or through the Ur-Hamlet remains unclear.
Most scholars reject the idea that Hamlet is in any way connected with Shakespeare's only
son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who died in 1596 at age eleven. Conventional wisdom holds that Hamlet
is too obviously connected to legend, and the name Hamnet was quite popular at the time. However,
Stephen Greenblatt has argued that the coincidence of the names and Shakespeare's grief for the loss
of his son may lie at the heart of the tragedy. He notes that the name of Hamnet Sadler, the Stratford
neighbor after whom Hamnet was named, was often written as Hamlet Sadler and that, in the loose
orthography of the time, the names were virtually interchangeable. Shakespeare himself spelled
Sadler's first name as "Hamlett" in his will.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, written sometime
in the 1590s. It portrays the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors,
their interactions with the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta, and with the fairies who
inhabit a moonlit forest. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely
performed across the world.
Sources

It is not known exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first performed, but, on
the basis of topical references and an allusion to Spenser's Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1595 or 1596.
Some have theorised that the play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (numerous such
weddings took place in 1596), while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast
day of St. John. No concrete evidence exists to support either theory. In any case, it would have been
performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe in London.
Some features of the plot and characters can be traced to elements of earlier mythologically-based
literature; for example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is told in Ovid's Metamorphoses and the
transformation of Bottom into an ass is descended from Apuleius' The Golden Ass. Lysander was also an
ancient Greek warlord while Theseus and Hippolyta were respectively the Duke of Athens and Queen of
the Amazons. In addition, Shakespeare could have been working on Romeo and Juliet at about the same
time that he wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is possible to see Pyramus and Thisbe as a comic
reworking of the tragic play. A further, seldom noted source is The Knight's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales.
Synopsis
The play features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke
Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta, and set simultaneously in the woodland, and in
the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon.
In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to comply with her father Egeus's wish for her to marry his
chosen man, Demetrius. In response, Egeus quotes before Theseus an ancient Athenian law whereby a
daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or else face death. Theseus does not want this young
girl to die, and offers her another choice, lifelong chastity worshipping Diana as a nun. (The word 'nun' in
this sense is an anachronism.)
Hermia and her lover Lysander decide to elope by escaping through the forest at night. Hermia
informs her best friend Helena, but Helena has recently been rejected by Demetrius and decides to win
back his favour by revealing the plan to him. Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia.
Hermia and Lysander, believing themselves safely out of reach, sleep in the woods.
Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen, Titania, arrive in the forest outside Athens.
Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until after she has attended Theseus and Hippolyta's
wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to
Oberon for use as his "knight" or "henchman," since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers.
Oberon seeks to punish Titania's disobedience and recruits the mischievous Puck (also called Hobgoblin
and Robin Goodfellow) to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness" (a.k.a.
pansy), which makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing seen upon awakening. He instructs
Puck to retrieve the flower so that he can make Titania fall in love with some vile creature of the forest.
Oberon applies the juice to Titania in order to distract her and force her to give up the page-boy.
Having seen Demetrius act cruelly toward Helena, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of the
elixir on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Instead, Puck accidentally puts the juice on the eyes of
Lysander, who then falls in love with Helena. Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia and is
enraged. When Demetrius decides to go to sleep, Oberon sends Puck to get Helena while he charms
Demetrius' eyes. Due to Puck's errors, both lovers now fight over Helena instead of Hermia. Helena,
however, is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as neither loved her originally. The four

pursue and quarrel with each other most of the night, until they become so enraged that they seek a place
to duel each other to the death to settle the quarrel. Oberon orders Puck to keep the lovers from catching
up with one another in the forest and to re-charm Lysander for Hermia, to prevent them all from killing
each other.
Meanwhile, a band of lower-class labourers ("rude mechanicals", as they are famously described
by Puck) have arranged to perform a crude play about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus' wedding, and
venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their rehearsal. Nick Bottom, a stage-struck weaver, is
spotted by Puck, who transforms his head into that of an ass (donkey). Titania is awakened by Bottom's
singing and immediately falls in love with him. She treats him like a nobleman and lavishes him with
attention. While in this state of devotion, she encounters Oberon and casually gives him the Indian boy.
Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to remove the ass's head from
Bottom. The magical enchantment is removed from Lysander but is allowed to remain on Demetrius, so
that he may reciprocate Helena's love.
The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an early
morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius doesn't love Hermia anymore, Theseus overrules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers decide that the night's events must have
been a dream. After they all exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he must have experienced a
dream "past the wit of man." In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the mechanicals
perform "Pyramus and Thisbe." It is ridiculous and badly performed but gives everyone pleasure
regardless, and afterward everyone retires to bed. Finally, as night falls, Oberon and Titania bless the
house, its occupants, and the future children of the newlyweds, and Puck delivers a soliloquy to the
audience.
Characters

The men and women in the play of high social class:

Lysander, beloved of Hermia

Hermia, beloved of Lysander, engaged to Demetrius

Helena, in love with Demetrius

Demetrius, in love with Hermia but then falls in love with Helena later on.
Engaged to Hermia

Egeus, father of Hermia, wants to force Hermia to wed Demetrius

Theseus, Duke of Athens, good friend of Egeus

Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and betrothed of Theseus

The lower-class citizens in the play:

Philostrate, Master of the Revels for Theseus

The acting troupe (otherwise known as The Mechanicals):

Peter Quince, carpenter, who leads the troupe

Nick Bottom, weaver; he plays Pyramus in the troupe's production of "Pyramus

Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who plays Thisbe.

Robin Starveling, the tailor who plays Moonshine.

Tom Snout, the tinker who plays the wall.

Snug, the joiner who plays the lion.

The supernatural characters:

Puck, a.k.a. Hobgoblin or Robin Goodfellow; a faun, servant to Oberon

Oberon, King of Fairies

Titania, Queen of Fairies

Titania's fairy servants (her "train"):

First Fairy

Peaseblossom, fairy

Cobweb, fairy

Moth (sometimes rendered as 'Mote') fairy

Mustardseed, fairy

Themes
Love
Writer David Bevington finds in the play what he refers to as the dark side of love. He writes that
the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers and by applying a love potion to Titanias eyes,
forcing her to fall in love with Bottom as an ass [3]. There are many dark sides of love that occur in A
Midsummer Nights Dream. Hippolyta is wood by a sword instead of being given love-tokens in the
same way Lysander has won Hermias love (1.1.17-30) [4]. What is even more disturbing is the possible
outcome that could have taken place at the forest. Shakespeare borrows the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe
from Ovids Metamorphoses, transforming it into a play that is performed at the end and using ideas of
the myth for the entire play. Like Pyramus and Thisbe, Hermia and Lysander escape to the forest to avoid
the tyranny of Hermias father. In the forest, both couples are met by problems and assume that a partner
is dead at some point. Hermia and Lysander are both met by Puck, who provides some comedic relief in
the play by confusing the four lovers in the forest. Despite the darkness and difficulty that obstructs the
love in A Midsummer Nights Dream, it is still a comedy as Benedetto Croce indicates. He writes, love
is sincere, yet deceives and is deceived; it imagines itself to be firm and constant, and turns out to be
fragile and fleeting [. This passage, like the play juxtaposes one idea next to another. The play is a

comedy, yet it harbors serious ideas. At the end of the play, Hermia and Lysander, happily married, watch
the play about the unfortunate lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, and are able to enjoy and laugh about the
play, not realizing the similarities between them. Although their story is very similar to that of Pyramus
and Thisbe, it does not end in tragic death . Hermia and Lysander are both oblivious to the dark side of
their love. They are not aware of the possible outcome that could have taken place at the forest.
Loss of Individual Identity
Maurice Hunt, Chair of the English Department at Baylor University writes of the blurring of the
identities of fantasy and reality in the play that make possible that pleasing, narcotic dreaminess
associated with the fairies of the play. By emphasizing this theme even in the setting of the play,
Shakespeare prepares the readers mind to accept the fantastic reality of the fairy world and its magical
happenings. This also seems to be the axis around which the plot conflicts in the play occur. Hunt
suggests that it is the breaking down of individual identities leads to the central conflict in the story. It is
the brawl between Oberon and Titania, based on a lack of recognition for the other in the relationship,
that drives the rest of the drama in the story and makes it dangerous for any of the other lovers to come
together due to the disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy dispute. Similarly, this failure to identify and
make distinction is what leads Puck to mistake one set of lovers for another in the forest and place the
juice of the flower on Lysanders eyes instead of Demetrius. Victor Kiernan, a Marxist scholar and
historian, writes that it is for the greater sake of love that this loss of identity takes place and that
individual characters are made to suffer accordingly: It was the more extravagant cult of love that struck
sensible people as irrational, and likely to have dubious effects on its acolytes. He believes that identities
in the play are not so much lost as they are blended together to create a type of haze through which
distinction becomes nearly impossible. It is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between
characters as a means of coping with the strange world within the forest, even in relationships as diverse
and seemingly unrealistic as the brief love between Titania and Bottom the Ass: It was the tidal force of
this social need that lent energy to relationships. David Marshall, an aesthetics scholar and English
Professor at the University of California - Santa Barbara, takes this theme to an even further conclusion,
pointing out that the loss of identity is especially played out in the description of the mechanicals their
assumption of other identities. In describing the occupations of the acting troupe, he writes Two
construct or put together, two mend and repair, one weaves and one sews. All join together what is apart
or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered. In Marshalls opinion, this loss of individual identity
not only blurs specificities, it creates new identities found in community, which Marshall points out may
lead to some understanding of Shakespeares opinions on love and marriage. Further, the mechanicals
understand this theme as they take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and
Thisbe. Marshall remarks that To be an actor is to double and divide oneself, to discover oneself in two
parts: both oneself and not oneself, both the part and not the part. He claims that the mechanicals
understand this and that each character, particularly among the lovers, has a sense of laying down
individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing. It seems that a desire to lose ones
individuality and find identity in the love of another is what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer
Nights Dream. It is the primary sense of motivation and is even reflected in the scenery and mood of the
story.
Ambiguous sexuality
In his essay "Preposterous Pleasures, Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's Dream", Douglas
E. Green explores possible interpretations of alternate sexuality that he finds within the text of the play, in

juxtaposition to the proscribed social mores of the culture at the time the play was written. He writes that
his essay "does not (seek to) rewrite A Midsummer Night's Dream as a gay play but rather explores some
of its 'homoerotic significations'...moments of 'queer' disruption and eruption in this Shakespearean
comedy.". Green states that he does not consider Shakspeare to have been a "sexual radical", but that the
play represented a "topsy-turvy world" or "temporary holiday" that mediates or negotiates the
"discontents of civilization", which while resolved neatly in the story's conclusion, do not resolve so
neatly in real life Green writes that the "sodomitical elements", "homoeroticism", "lesbianism", and even
"compulsory heterosexuality" in the story must be considered in the context of the "culture of early
modern England" as a commentary on the "aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political ideologies of
the prevailing order." Aspects of ambiguous sexuality and gender conflict in the story are also addressed
in essays by Shirley Garner and William W.E. Slights .
Other interpretations
Feminist
Male dominance is one thematic element found in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's
comedies often include a section in which females enjoy more power and freedom than they actually
possess. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena and Hermia escape into the woods for a night where
they do not fall under the laws of Theseus or Egeus. Upon their arrival in Athens, the couples are married.
Marriage is seen as the ultimate social achievement for women while men can go on to do many other
great things and gain societal recognition. In his article, "The Imperial Votaress," Louis Montrose draws
attention to male and female gender roles and norms present in the comedy in connection with
Elizabethan culture. In reference to the triple wedding, he says, "The festive conclusion in A Midsummer
Night's Dream depends upon the success of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested
in Amazon warriors, possessive mothers, unruly wives, and willful daughters are brought under the
control of lords and husbands". He says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a woman
changes hands from father to husband. A connection between flowers and sexuality is drawn. The juice
employed by Oberon can be seen as symbolizing menstrual blood as well as the sexual blood shed by
virgins. While blood as a result of menstruation is representative of a woman's power, blood as a result of
a first sexual encounter represents man's power over women.
There are points in the play, however, when there is an absence of patriarchal control. In his book,
Power on Display, Leonard Tennenhouse says the problem in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the
problem of "authority gone archaic". The Athenian law requiring a daughter to die if she does not do her
father's will is outdated. Tennenhouse contrasts the patriarchal rule of Theseus in Athens with that of
Oberon in the carnivalistic Faerie world. The disorder in the land of the faeries completely opposes the
world of Athens. He states that during times of carnival and festival, male power is broken down. For
example, what happens to the four lovers in the woods as well as Bottom's dream represents chaos that
contrasts with Thesus' political order. However, Theseus does not punish the lovers for their
disobedience. According to Tennenhouse, by forgiving of the lovers, he has made a distinction between
the law of the patriarch (Egeus) and that of the monarch (Theseus), creating two different voices of
authority. This distinction can be compared to the time of Elizabeth I in which monarchs were seen as
having two bodies: the body natural and the body mystical. Elizabeth's succession itself represented both
the voice of a patriarch as well as the voice of a monarch: (1) her father's will which stated that the crown
should pass to her and (2) the fact that she was the daughter of a king [23]. The challenge to patriarchal rule
in A Midsummer Night's Dream mirrors exactly what was occurring in the age of Elizabeth I.

Religious
Patricia Parker, professor of English at Stanford University and the editor of the New Arden
edition of this play has argued that it contains a religious allegory. It has been well established for two
centuries that Puck and Robin Goodfellow are both names for the devil from English folklore. Parker
argues that the character of 'Wall' acted by Snout represents the partition that exists between Earth and
Heaven and that comes down on the day of Apocalypse. Pyramus and Thisbe are a late Renaissance
allegory for Jesus and the Church, and that the source of the names Peter (petros, Greek for a stone), and
Quince (quoin, a term for a wedge shaped cornerstone) suggests his identity as St Peter. ( P.Parker
'Murals and Morals; A Midsummer Night's Dream' in (ed) Glenn W.Most, Aporemata;Kritische Studien
zur Philologiegeschichte, 1998 pgs 190-218). The play-within-the play therefore appears to be a religious
satire. The allegorical dimension was extended to the other characters and demonstrated in performance
by the Dark Lady Players in a New York production in March 2007 (Ted Merwin The Dark Lady as a
Bright Literary Light The Jewish Week, 23 March 2007 pgs 56-7).