A large part of Hamlet's character is his indecisiveness. This can be argued is his tragic flaw.

Because of this, he finds it difficult to move forward on anything. For instance, he wants to believe the ghost, his father, but who's to say the ghost isn't lying? So, he writes a scene in the play for the visiting players which is supposed to solidify everything for him and help him make his decision. He watches Claudius, and gets the reaction Hamlet is hoping for, yet he still can't decide what to do. Indecision, procrastination and stagnation...Hamlet is a hopeless case until it is way too late to do anything about it. By that time, Claudius is on to him...Claudius is a man of action. Hamlet is a thinker. Hamlet spends too much time thinking of what to do or not to do, while Claudius makes a plan and works the plan. As a result, nearly everyone Hamlet loves is dead by the end of Act V. Hamlet is indecisive. Because of this, he finds it difficult to move forward on anything. For instance, he wants to believe the ghost, his father, but who's to say the ghost isn't lying? So, he writes a scene in the play for the visiting players which is supposed to solidify everything for him and help him make his decision. He watches Claudius, and gets the reaction Hamlet is hoping for, yet he still can't decide what to do. Indecision, procrastination and stagnation...Hamlet is a hopeless case until it is way too late to do anything about it. By that time, Claudius is on to him...Claudius is a man of action. Hamlet is a thinker. Hamlet spends too much time thinking of what to do or not to do, while Claudius makes a plan and works the plan. As a result, nearly everyone Hamlet loves is dead by the end of Act V. Hamlet is indecisive; this ultimately will be his tragic flaw. He is a scholar, a student at the University of Wittenburg, so killing does not come easily to him. When the ghost reveals to Hamlet that Claudius is his murderer, he asks Hamlet to revenge "This foul and most unnatural murder." Hamlet is hesitant to exact this revenge. Not only is his conscience weighty, but also he is unsure of the ghost's true intent. He ponders if the ghost (as the Protestants would believe) is an evil entity assuming the shape of his familar father, but really trying to lure his soul to hell via the act of murder. Hamlet decides he must "catch the conscience of the king" -- in other words, decide if guilty or not, so he plans for the actors in Act III to perform a similar plot on stage as his the poisoning of his dad. He delays to get this reaction; he continues this procrastination when finally in Act V as he himself is dying, he kills Claudius. The Angry Young Man Osborne's play was the first to explore the theme of the "Angry Young Man." This term describes a generation of postWorld War II artists and working class men who generally ascribed to leftist, sometimes anarchist, politics and social views. According to cultural critics, these young men were not a part of any organized movement but were, instead, individuals angry at a post-Victorian Britain that refused to acknowledge their social and class alienation. Jimmy Porter is often considered to be literature's seminal example of the angry young man. Jimmy is angry at the social and political structures that he believes has kept him from achieving his dreams and aspirations. He directs this anger towards his friends and, most notably, his wife Alison. The Kitchen Sink Drama Kitchen Sink drama is a term used to denote plays that rely on realism to explore domestic social relations. Realism, in British theater, was first experimented with in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw. This genre attempted to capture the lives of the British upper class in a way that realistically reflected the ordinary drama of ruling class British society. According to many critics, by the mid-twentieth century the genre of realism had become tired and unimaginative. Osborne's play returned imagination to the Realist genre by capturing the anger and immediacy of post-war youth culture and the alienation that resulted in the British working classes. Look Back in Anger was able to comment on a range of domestic social dilemmas in this time period. Most importantly, it was able to capture, through the character of Jimmy Porter, the anger of this generation that festered just below the surface of elite British culture. Loss of Childhood A theme that impacts the characters of Jimmy and Alison Porter is the idea of a lost childhood. Osborne uses specific examples -- the death of Jimmy's father when Jimmy was only ten, and how he was forced to watch the physical and mental demise of the man -- to demonstrate the way in which Jimmy is forced to deal with suffering from an early age. Alison's loss of childhood is best seen in the way that she was forced to grow up too fast by marrying Jimmy. Her youth is wasted in the anger and abuse that her husband levels upon her. Osborne suggests that a generation of British youth has experienced this same loss of childhood innocence. Osborne uses the examples of World War, the development of the atomic bomb, and the decline of the British Empire to show how an entire culture has lost the innocence that other generations were able to maintain.

Real Life In the play, Jimmy Porter is consumed with the desire to live a more real and full life. He compares this burning desire to the empty actions and attitudes of others. At first, he generalizes this emptiness by criticizing the lax writing and opinions of those in the newspapers. He then turns his angry gaze to those around him and close to him, Alison, Helena, and Cliff. Osborne's argument in the play for a real life is one in which men are allowed to feel a full range of emotions. The most real of these emotions is anger and Jimmy believes that this anger is his way of truly living. This idea was unique in British theater during the play's original run. Osborne argued in essays and criticisms that, until his play, British theater had subsumed the emotions of characters rendering them less realistic. Jimmy's desire for a real life is an attempt to restore raw emotion to the theater. Sloth in British Culture Jimmy Porter compares his quest for a more vibrant and emotional life to the slothfulness of the world around him. It is important to note that Jimmy does not see the world around him as dead, but merely asleep in some fundamental way. This is a fine line that Osborne walks throughout the play. Jimmy never argues that there is a nihilism within British culture. Instead, he sees a kind of slothfulness of character. His anger is an attempt to awaken those around him from this cultural sleep. This slothfulness of emotion is best seen in the relationship between Alison and Cliff. Alison describes her relationship with Cliff as "comfortable." They are physically and emotionally affectionate with each other, but neither seems to want to take their passion to another level of intimacy. In this way, their relationship is lazy. They cannot awaken enough passion to consummate their affair. Jimmy seems to subconsciously understand this, which is the reason he is not jealous of their affection towards one another. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire The character of Colonel Redfern, Alison's father, represents the decline of and nostalgia for the British Empire. The Colonel had been stationed for many years in India, a symbol of Britain's imperial reach into the world. The Edwardian age which corresponded to Britain's height of power, had been the happiest of his life. His nostalgia is representative of the denial that Osborne sees in the psyche of the British people. The world has moved on into an American age, he argues, and the people of the nation cannot understand why they are no longer the world's greatest power. Masculinity in Art Osborne has been accused by critics of misogynistic views in his plays. Many point toLook Back in Anger as the chief example. These critics accuse Osborne of glorifying young male anger and cruelty towards women and homosexuals. This is seen in the play in specific examples in which Jimmy Porter emotionally distresses Alison, his wife, and delivers a grisly monologue in which he wishes for Alison's mother's death. Osborne, however, asserts that he is attempting to restore a vision of true masculinity into a twentieth century culture that he sees as becoming increasingly feminized. This feminization is seen in the way that British culture shows an "indifference to anything but immediate, personal suffering." This causes a deadness within which Jimmy's visceral anger and masculine emotion is a retaliation against. The title itself implies that there is a dramatic story to this. Elliot combined his genius of poetry with drama to create this famous work. Most of the characters speak in verse giving the play a vert lyrical flow as well as intense tone. The vivid imagery is filled with alliterations, staggered rhyme schemes and bright personification. This is all the stuff of great poetry embedded into a consistent plot. Eliot sought to combine his poetic talent with the form of drama in this excellent and outstanding text. It is easy to see the massive influence that poetry has on this play, as there are only two sections that are written in verse, which are Thomas's Christmas sermon and the so-called "apologies" of the Knights to the audience. Apart from this, the rest of the characters speak in verse which is very powerful and is poetic in its intensity. Note, for example, the following quote from the opening speech of the Chorus: Now I fear disturbance of the quiet seasons: Winter shall come bringing death from the sea, Ruinous spring shall beat at our doors, Root and shoot shall eat our eyes and our ears, Disastrous summer burn up the beds of our streams And the poor shall wait for another decaying October.

There is no set rhyme scheme for these lines, and no set, regular rhtythm, but it is clear from their cadence and their flow that poetry is the medium that Eliot chooses to use to have his characters express their thoughts, feelings and emotion. One way in which Eliot brings out the artistic features of the poetic form therefore is through the exclusive use of verse for the words of the majority of characters, and the powerful imagery that their words use to paint vivid pictures for the audience of what is happening in the play. The above quote uses internal rhyme in "Root and shoot" and also alliteration in "burn up the beds," just two poetic techniques that highlight the use of poetry within the overall genre of drama that the play represents. English poetic drama in the twentieth century arose as a reaction to the deteriorating naturalistic prose plays of Ibsen, Shaw and Galsworthy. Its photographic realism failed to convey the tension and complexity of contemporary life. Stephen Phillips perhaps initiated the revival of poetic drama with Herod (1901), with great Irish writers like Yeats, Synge and O'Casey later reinforcing the movement. Eliot took to writing plays late while already enjoying colossal poetic fame. Also a mature critic, he was well acquainted with the nature of poetic drama, its failure in the nineteenth century, and the problems, technical or otherwise, that a verse dramatist might face in his time. Through his criticisms, he frequently advocated for the poetic drama and crossed the misconceptions about it. In Matthew Arnold's words, he created "a current of fresh ideas" to help it flourish. "The craving for poetic drama is permanent in human nature", Eliot once remarked. He knew that it was still possible in the twentieth century, only "it cannot be the work of one generation working together, but has to evolve by the small contributions of a number of people in succession, each contributing a little." He placed a high ideal of poetic plays before his age, beginning with Murder in the Cathedral, for which he did a lot of experimentation. First, he asserted that "no play should be written in verse for which prose is dramatically adequate." Clearly, the poetic drama needed to symbolise the emotional realities, in contrary to the socioeconomic issues that constituted the naturalistic plays. In Murder in the Cathedral, he chose to retell the inner conflict of Becket to win over temptations and be a martyr by losing "his will in the will of God". The Family Reunion, on the other hand, deals with the guilt complex of the protagonist, while The Cocktail Party examines personal inadequacies of married life in the modern context. These plays demonstrate religion as the ultimate meaning of... [continues] Murder in the Cathedral as a Poetic Drama English poetic drama in the twentieth century arose as a reaction to the deteriorating naturalistic prose plays of Ibsen, Shaw and Galsworthy. Its photographic realism failed to convey the tension and complexity of contemporary life. Stephen Phillips perhaps initiated the revival of poetic drama wit Premium842 Words4 Pages Do You Think Murder in Cathedral Is a Poetic Drama Different from the Other Plays of Your Course T.S.ELIOT is one of the great drametists in English literary worlde. From his literature, we can feel the great aesthetic pleasure. I have studied various plays included in my course. But murder in cathedral really different in them. It has its own greatness and the literary hei Premium585 Words3 Pages Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot - MonkeyNotes by PinkMonkey.com PinkMonkey Literature Notes on . . . Sample MonkeyNotes Note: this sample contains only excerpts and does not represent the full contents of the booknote. This will give you an idea of the format and content. Murder in Premium2682 Words11 Pages Murder in the Cathedral muder in the cathedraAustralian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 5(12): 2227-2230, 2011 ISSN 1991-8178 A Study of T. S. Eliots Murder in the Cathedral 1 Hamedreza Kohzadi and 2Fatemeh Azizmohammadi 1,2 Department of English Literature, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad Premium3590 Words15 Pages Murder in Cathedral T.S. Eliots Murder in the Cathedral is both a fascinating retelling of the twelfth-century assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket and a compelling call for resistance in the face of intimidation. Written against the backdrop of rising Fascism in twentieth-century Europe, Eliots classic vers Premium774 Words4 Pages

Elements of Drama Elements of Drama by: Christina Sheryl L. Sianghio Character Most simply a character is one of the persons who appears in the play, one of the dramatis personae (literally, the persons of the play). In another sense of the term, the treatment of the character is the basic part of the playwrigh Premium9002 Words37 Pages Mureder in the Cathedral Poetic drama still needed a suitable verse form, as the Elizabethan blank verse became clich in excessive use. Also a poetic drama written on the same theme, Tennyson's Becket tried to be Shakespearean and met an even worse reception than its predecessors. Murder in the Cathedral marks the maturin Premium474 Words2 Pages Realism in Modern Drama A Summer Project On REALISM IN MODERN DRAMA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in English Submitted by: BISMA IRFAN BA (Honors) English ll A0706110036 E Premium18884 Words76 Pages Notes on Drama FINAL PERIOD ELEMENTS OF DRAMA Drama comes from Greek words meaning "to do" or "to act." A play is a story acted out. It shows people going through some eventful period in their lives, seriously or humorously. The speech and action of a play recreate the flow of human life. A play comes fully to Premium6432 Words26 Pages murder Eliot sought to combine his poetic talent with the form of drama in this excellent and outstanding text. It is easy to see the massive influence that poetry has on this play, as there are only two sections that are written in verse, which are Thomas's Christmas sermon and the so-called... Whats Up With the Title? Waiting for Godot is just that; a play about waiting. The title reflects the lack of action, or as one critic says, the less than action that fills the time normally taken up by plot. "Tragicomedy" is an apt description of the plays genre, since it combines the absurdly farcical with the tragically poignant melancholy of daily life. That "two acts" part of the title is significant, since duality is an important theme for the work. Of course, youll have to actually read the pla y to get to that part. Waiting for Godot is just that is really about just that, waiting. What should be some sort of action within the plot is taken up by waiting. This is, however, the point of it all. It is the absurdity of life which is at play here. It is the very act of waiting that makes this a "tragicomedy", a farcical look at what we all call life. Ben Johnson's comedy The Alchemist is a direct blow to society's tendency to believe in anything that is advertised, especially everything that is dubbed to be a quick money maker. Even today people rush to buy things that supposedly help them create business, sell things, or make quick cash. In Johnson's comedy everyone from every walk of life seemed to be enthralled by the possibility of having metal turn into gold, for acquiring the sorcere's stone, and for having things just by asking some magical power. This happened with everyone from a Lord to a butler. Ambition runs everywhere and affects everyone equally. Therefore, The Alchemist" is indeed an allegory to hunan irrational behavior and excessive ambition. To start with, the definition of an allegory is that it is a type of writing that has a double meaning. On one level, it is a romance or adventure etc while on another level, it is a description of a moral, spiritual or political reality common to all people either actually or potentially. While it is not specifically stated in the definition of allegory that the characters have titles as names , it is a common characteristic of allegory that they often do substitute names Having said this, the genre that Ben Jonson's The Alchemist is analyzed under is that of farce. Critics consider that his

characters, which are similar to the types in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, are farcical rather than allegorical. Jonson is using farce, with a whole catalog of "typical" characters, to mock the social element of swindlers and victims, a prevalent aspe The Alchemist is actually the name given to his character Subtle who is a cheat.Jonson has presented the society of then times through his characters.His characters,events and speeches in the play are allegorical.For example, when Subtle tells the Drugger all about the direction of the shop,where to keep the jars and what should be the position of doors and windows. This shows that how foolish and guuliable Drugger is and believes in the pretentions of Subtle. Another example is when Epicure Mammon tells the wonders of philosphers stone to Surly is allegorical.His sppech reflects that people were psedo in their thoughts who believed in pseudo science of Alchemy. The title of the play is also allegorical.In the play there is no alchemy of chemicals as it seems to be but there is only alchemy of words to bluff the public who is gulliable. Jonson has also attacked the puritanism in his play by the character of Anabaptist (Annainas and Tribulation). According to him it is their process of alchemy that has brought revolution in religious faith. ct of Jacobean society. Pygmalian Play as a Shavian Play The year of Pygmalion's London premiere, marked tremendous changes in British society. Social roles in the Victorian era were viewed as natural and largely fixed: there was a fixed and accepted social order. In the aftermath of WW1 this fixed order was becoming more elastic. Shaw was first and foremost a playwright but he was also a committed socialist. He questioned the absurdity of inhered wealth and status and vice versa. Liza's ability to fool society about her "real" identity raises questions about appearances and the fundamental absurdities of rules in society. Like all great Shavian drama Pygmalion is a richly complex play. It combines a central story of the transformation of a young woman with elements of myth, fairy tale, and romance. It also combines an interesting plot with an exploration of social identity and relations between men and women among other issues. The ability to morph and change, to move from one layer of society to another is also explored. Thematically and stylistically Shavian, then and worth noting that it contains elements of socialist theory, if that is the reading we choose. Throughout his adult life Bernard Shaw plumped for exchanging the present social order for another, yet most of his lengthy career was dedicated to effecting gradual change in a strictly constitutional manner. This becomes even more evident in his later work but is clearly evident here also. Rate answer: Flag as inappropriate Posted by mstokes on Sunday January 17, 2010 at 11:28 AM kplhardison Student Graduate School Editor Expert Scribe Best answer as selected by question asker. The aspects of George Bernard Shaw's plays that are characteristic of Shavian plays (related to or pertaining to plays written by George Bernard Shaw) are wit, entertainment that intends to instruct, didactic themes, appeal to "life force", women characters more attuned to "life force" than men, reality is contrasted to conventional wisdom. Shavian plays share the characteristics... The best way of answering this question is to think about the themes of this excellent play and to consider if any of them are still relevant to today's society given the fact that society has changed to such a great extent in the intervening years. This will help us to establish whether this play does have themes that are universal and whether it has a message that applies to us today. Unfortunately, if we take this approach and examine the theme of social conformity, we can actually see how little the world and the people in it have changed over the years. The vast majority of the characters in this play act according to the norms and customs of society and show a complete inability to make decisions for themselves. Pegeen, when she challenges male authority, is one of the few characters that are able to think outside the restrictive box of society and its strict customs. Shawn Keogh is of course the perfect example of unthinking obedience to the dictates of society. He will not marry Pegeen until he has permission to do so from the Vatican. We can see this unthinking adherence again in the way that the villagers act towards Christy. At first he is feted as a hero because of his rebellion and his brave deeds, and men come to hear his story and women bear him gifts. Yet when the reality of his background is made known, again the villagers show their inability to think outside of society as they demand he is punished for his crimes as society dictates. People are shown in this play to be little more than robots in the hands of the society and culture of which they are a part. In the same way, we could still argue that this is very true for many humans and societies today and can be evidenced in our reluctance to embrace change, even when it can be for the better. At first glance Playboy seems wholly of its time - set in a bygone rural Ireland under English rule. But in fact its themes of authority and rebellion, self-reinvention and the power of language are timeless. When Christy boasts of "killing" his father, the locals at the shebeen are thrilled and admiring, not because they are full of bloodthirsty dreams, but because in their drab and oppressed lives, Christy's tale represents an attack on authority; a way

of changing the world through a single, decisive act (and also through poetic and narrative power - they never really believe he has killed his father, only through language he can let them believe that he might be wild enough, "gallous" enough to do something like that.) His tales are part of the same pattern in the play as Pegeen's dream of a "yellow gown" or his prowess in the Games - something special, thrilling and potentially liberating. When he "kills" his father again, and this time they witness the violent act, the villagers turn from him in disgust. In the end, though, Christy has the last laugh - by "daring to dream" that he could destroy authority, he starts a chain of events that lead to his genuinely managing to destroy his father's power over him - I believe that the play's ending asserts the triumph of fantasy, imagination and language over convention and repression. In the end Pegeen and the others are stuck with their old lives, while the father and son go off to start a new one - based on storytelling. Will Martin the playboy of The Western World, first written and performed just over one hundred years ago still addresses many themes that are relevant in today's society. The play is set in rural western Ireland, still under British rule and still in relative poverty, the play is set over just one day. The general themes that are addressed in the play are; feelings of community, the importance offantasy and reality, Heroism, love, authority and morality. All of which can be applied to today's society. When Christy Mahon first walks into Flaherty's tavern boasting eloquently of how he has killed his father, the townspeople do not berate him for committing an immoral and evil deed. Instead, his story of rising up and destroying his father (a figure of authority) inspires the people in the pub and Christy becomes an unlikely hero. This singular act signifies theimportance of fantasy and storytelling, the people in the tavern have not seen the deed and they do not know if its necessarily true but it creates a great deal of excitement in their rather mundane and boring lives. Storytelling, embellishment and stories of "heroism" are still just asimportant today, but expressed through different mediums such as the mass media rather than in the setting of a tavern. When Christy attempts to kill his father again in front of the villagers they turn against him, because seeing this immoral act in reality betrays the fantasy they had envisaged in their heads about Christy and his challenging of authority. In the end when Christy is banished from the Village with his father, Pegeen then laments betraying and losing Christy, The Playboy of the Western World. The ending signifies that language, fantasy and love is superior to mundane, boring and oppressive lives.