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Introduction
William Shakespeare is a dramatist and poet of Elizabethan Period (1558 1603) in United Kingdom.
His advent is truly a wonderful affair in the sphere of English literature. He is successful tragedy writer
after the death of Christopher Marlow who is called the pioneer of tragedy. When Marlow died,
Shakespeare revealed himself to fulfill the emptiness of Marlow. Shakespeare was born at Stratford
upon Avon in England. He spent his childhood in the edge of the river Avon. He also saw the society
and the oppression of the landlords of that time. He faced the extreme torment in his life. In that period
of Queen Elizabeth stage performance flourished which was patronized by the queen. So sometimes the
play groups were there to stage drama and Shakespeare enjoyed them cordially. When Shakespeare
comes in London, he attends in the Lord Chamberlians Men as a teacher of Horses. He was a good
performer too. But he gained fame as a play pather. The scholars, of university occupied the stage of
that time, who mocked him as all known in the time of Christopher Marlow who died in 1593. As a
result there made a huge gap for his death and at that time Shakespeare came to fill the gap as well as
Shakespeare is the worshipper of human love. Immortal love is the root of echo of his life. He leads his
life and forgets all cicatrices of his life with this attachment of love. So he depicted the sign of
immortal love through his dramatic characters. Every heroic character is philanderer. Thats why
conscience or good thinking is awakened in philanderers minds. Conscience is born in love. If that
conscience is in inauspicious power, it cannot be forever. That power will be defeated one day. That
occurs in the play King Lear where Lear repents for his activity. Lears conscience is covered by
passion. As a result he misunderstands Cordelia and believes Goneril as well as Regan. Repenting for
his recognized fault, he kept the sign in the root of human greatness. Macbeth also followed that policy.
These heroic characters are philanthropic. Their hearts are formed with the hard metal of love.
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Delicious beauty of appearance has been flourished with the passionate confidence of love burning and
firing with the fire of sacrifice through Shakespeares tragedy. There are a lot of problem, barrier and
sorrow in his comedies too. Where there is love, is tragedy. The character itself invokes tragedy. No
miraculous power bears tragedy in their life and it is not a story of lost fortune character. They are the
creator of their deplorable situation. In the speech of Aristotle, It is in our action what we do that we
As Shakespeare is the worshipper of human love, he established only human loves in his poetry and
plays. So where there is inequality and ferocious cruelty in the society, Shakespeare flourished them
with acute sharpness and where conflict as well as envy is not merely from selfishness, he presented
them washing in tears of love. Like in the play Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a character who had a
congenital conflict to the Christian religion and that conflict united in his mind for bitter refusal,
negligence and hatred of the Christians. Aversion merely plants aversion in human mind. Hate comes
of Shylocks mind for the Christians cruel behavior. So Shakespeare showed Shylock as a cruel
compromise less fighter against Christians injustice but at the same time, he is showed as a militant
beloved who reveals the sorrow and pain of human mind. On the other hand Shakespeare illuminates
The highest perfect development of Shakespeares dramatic brilliance flourished through his tragedies
those he wrote within 1601 1608. He illustrated the most difficult problem of life through his
tragedies. Human life is also mysterious world. So the characters of Shakespeares tragedy are the
representative of diversified classes of human society. Their mentality, purposes, behavior and
characteristics are many colored. Someone who is honest or dishonest, gentleman or Satan and
someone is also mixed with good and evil. All classes of people are in Shakespeares plays.
As the conflict that is presented in Shakespeares tragedy is mainly the conflict of morality. Conflict
occurs with the classes of people who entirely accustom to lead the life full of lust with virulent enjoys
of wealth and money leaving their conscience and morality. That occurs in King Lear. Lear is opposed
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cruelly by Regan and Goneril for the lust of property and wealth and Lear said Through tattered
clothes small vices do appear, robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance
of justice hurtles breaks. It is the main conflict in tragedy. On the contrary Shakespeare also presents
the particular conflict of heroes. No heroes are without their congenital sacraments beliefs and dogmas.
There has to be conflicted between ones moral conscience and intuitions. Morality is an overall virtue
but personal sacrament is beneath and there is the seed of essential but unexpected destruction. That is
occurred with King Lear. He wanted merely an oral adherence from his daughters that he got from
others and became a sacrament in his life. When Cordelia knocked in the root of that intuition, the cruel
shape of his personal prejudice injured Cordelia. And for this. he invokes his catastrophe in his life.
Similarly, it is happened for the great warrior Macbeth who killed the Scottish King Duncan in the
prompting of Lady Macbeth and the Witches prophecy following his congenital superstition. From the
starting there was the shape of acute conflict of moral sense and personal superstition in the mind of
Macbeth. So Shakespeare emphasizes on conflict in his drama and made it clear in the stage of life.
Shakespeare declares the victory of love and reveals the universal truth of life through his tragic plays.
We see it in the play King Lear who one day deprived Cordelia of parental love and affection. But
when Cordelia was hanged on for Lear, his love for Cordelia becomes immortal embarrassing death in
the inhabited world and society. We also see Shakespeares artistic strategy, applied efficiency and
artistic design in his drama where he followed Aristotle. He shows his greatness and intelligence to
depict the characters which are fit for in the particular places like the character of hero, Satan, head of
the army, servant, gentleman etc. never loss their appeal in the stage of life.
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Background of the Topic
In English literature, a group of writers is considered the key figures of the Elizabethan period
including Christopher Marlow, William Shakespeare, King James I, Ben Johnson, Robert Greene,
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Thomas Kyd, John Webster, Richard Burbage,
Sir Walter Raleiph. William Shakespeare is one of the prominent figures. He depicted the fault
inequality, dissimilarities, oppression, injustice and the religious conflict very intelligently through his
writings. He shows the different kinds of characters of different profession in his drama. He represents
the human love in different way like in Macbeth and King Lear. Though here we see the tragic
moment, there is depicted the human love through tragic scenes. Macbeth killed Duncan for the
temptation of Lady Macbeth and Lear deprives Cordelia of his parental love and affection for his
recognized passion. So last we see the tragic death of Macbeth and Cordelia. Finally it may be said that
Objectives
The objective of the topic is to find out the magnificent contribution of William Shakespeare as a
dramatist and poet in English literature. It will help me to know about Shakespeare. His tragedy helps
me to know the various characteristics of human behavior that Shakespeare depicted from the society.
We will also know the variation of male and female characters as well as their influence on human
society. So this thesis brings me a golden opportunity to know the style, theme, content, virtue and
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Literature Review:
Female characters play an important role for the dramatic run of events in Shakespeares plays. Just as
in reality, women of Shakespeares dramas have been bound to rules and conventions of the patriarchal
Elizabethan era. Therefore, it was very common back in Elizabethan England to compel woman into
Even though the Queen herself was an unmarried woman, the roles of woman in society were
extremely restricted. Single women have been the property of their fathers and handed over to their
future husbands through marriage. In Elizabethan time, women were considered as the weaker sex and
dangerous, because their sexuality was supposedly mystic and therefore feared by men. Women of that
era were supposed to represent virtues like obedience, silence, sexual chastity, piety, humility,
constancy, and patience. All these virtues, of course, have their meaning in relationship to men. The
role allocation in Elizabethan society was strictly regulated; men were the breadwinners and woman
had to be obedient housewives and mothers. However, within this deprived, tight and organized scope,
The construction of female characters in Shakespeares plays reflects the Elizabethan image of woman
in general. For all that, Shakespeare supports the English Renaissance stereotypes of genders, their
roles and responsibilities in society, he also puts their representations into question, challenges, and
The womens point of view raises several questions; how is meaning related to gender? How is
maleness related to feminism? What are the females functions? Are there any at all?
Hence, feminist approaches to Shakespeare and all those questions are best understood in the context of
feminism itself: the drive to achieve rights and equality for women in social, political and economic
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life. However, this does not mean that feminism is anti-men; it is more against sexism. Consequently, it
is against the beliefs and practices that structure and maintain the subordination and oppression of
women.
Further, summing up, feminism reveals and challenges the cultural shaping of gender roles in all social
institutions like family, work, politics, religion, and, of course, in literature and drama. Feminist
criticism examines how female experience is portrayed in literature and drama. It tries to expose how,
in plays, in novels and other writing, patriarchal ideology often stereotypes, distorts, ignores or
represses that experience, misrepresenting how women feel, think and act (Gibson, 1998, pp.30-31).
Shakespeares plays are full with resourceful and self-confident women, who create their own space
and achieve or represent a spirited independence. There are several different personalities in
Shakespeare plays, who assert themselves in very different ways: Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Viola,
Rosalind, Desdemona, Portia, just to mention a few of them. Thus, the focus of this paper lies in the
tragic female characters Ophelia, Gertrude and Desdemona who merit equal, if not to say more
attention than male characters. It always seems that there is a tragic burden and guilt attached to their
characters that ends in their deaths. Gertrude is guilty of remarrying too soon and quickly after her
husbands death.
Methodology:
I have done this research work following analytical method. I have collected the data from only
secondary sources. As secondary source I have used different books of writers and journals and internet
website.
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Chapter-2
In a brief review it is to be observed, first of all that Shakespeares age was one of vast and significant
changes. The rise of the middle class and of a centralized government, and the disappearance of
medieval religious beliefs transformed England into a modern nation. Shakespeare was living in a
world which idealized self-realization, self respect and boldness of thought and action. His characters
are intensely individual and dynamic; his dramatic situations are precipitated by powerful impulses.
The intensity of his plays reflects the ferment of the expanding Renaissance.
In The Age of Shakespeare he attempts something different, although it is not entirely clear what. The
title, of course, suggests the general aim: to tell us about Shakespeare in his own times, and the book -
never less than elegant, judicious and wise - takes us on a pleasantly discursive journey through the
plays in chronological sequence, noting aspects of political life, giving a sense of performing practices
of the time, adducing the occasional biographical fact. Some of this information is illuminating, some
of it controversial and some of it plain wrong: James II is described as Charles I's nephew rather than
his son; the tiring house, he says, is "what we would call the green room" but was in fact more like a
quick-change booth; and he baldly states that at the Blackfriars Theatre, "the rich, in their boxes or on
the stage, were now closest to the action, which was not the case at the Globe but has been the same
ever since", which ignores the survival of the pit, swarming with low-life, until the mid-19th century. In
general, Kermode seems not to have a very strong sense of present-day theatre practice, telling us, for
instance, that Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare's boss, was "the ancestor of the modern theatre mogul".
Who might that be? The Ambassador Theatre Group? Or Nick Hytner? Neither of them bears much
Shakespeare in Love.
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Shakespeares Life (1564-1616)
William Shakespeare, a child of a middle class family, was born in 26 th April 1564 at Stratford on-on-
Avon in England to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. His father John Shakespeare was a head of the
city of Stratford -on-Avon Corporation and business man. They were eight siblings and third in number
but eldest son of his parents. His native Stratford, where he received a grammar school education,
where was taught by Priests of the Church. In his boyhood, he shared his fathers financial vicissitudes
for that reason he had to give up his institutional education. Though he left school very earl, he learnt
the Latin and Greek language from his school. His education was very little but education what he
learnt from his school was not small because the teachers who taught most of them were the scholars of
Oxford and Cambridge University. Though he left his school, he did not leave his study rather
Shakespeare was taught Italian language by an Italian scholar. He studied many books of the Latin,
Greek, and Italian writers and did not deprive of the poetic juice of Dante Petrarch. Then he, met Anne
Hathaway who was eight years older than Shakespeare, got married in November 1582.They gave birth
a daughter Susanna in 1583 and baptized her on May 26. After sometimes he left Stratford to London
and joined in The Blackfriars Play House that was established by the father of Richard Barben an
actor in 1576. He established The Globe Theatre and staged Ben Jonsons Everyman in his Humour
in that stage. Shakespeare wrote thirty seven dramas, two poetry, one hundred fifty four sonnets in his
life time. His life may be divided into three parts. First part was from 1590 to 1600, second part was
from 1601 to 1608 and third part was from 1609 to1612. He died in 23rd April in1616.
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Some Important Events of Shakespeares Life
26.
family.
actors.
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Chronological Chart of Shakespeares Works
1.Henry VI
---------- ---------
1591-92 2.Henry VI
3.Henry VI
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Poems
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Elizabethan Theater
Even in an era when popular entertainment included public executions and cock-fighting, theater
became central to Elizabethan social life. As drama shifted from a religious to a secular function in
society, playwrights and poets were among the leading artists of the day. Toward the end of the
sixteenth century, the popularity of plays written by scholars such as Christopher Marlowe, Robert
Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Lodge led to the building of theaters and to the development of
companies of actors, both professional and amateur. These companies of players traveled throughout
England, generally performing in London in the winter and spring, and navigating notoriously
neglected roads throughout the English countryside during the summers when plague ravaged the city.
Professional companies were also retained for the private entertainment of English aristocracy.
In spite of its popularity, the Elizabethan theater attracted criticism, censorship, and scorn from some
sectors of English society. The plays were often coarse and boisterous, and playwrights and actors
belonged to a bohemian class. Puritan leaders and officers of the Church of England considered actors
to be of questionable character, and they criticized playwrights for using the stage to disseminate their
irreverent opinions. They also feared the overcrowded theater spaces might lead to the spread of
disease. At times throughout the sixteenth century, Parliament censored plays for profanity, heresy, or
politics. But Queen Elizabeth and later King James offered protections that ultimately allowed the
theater to survive. To appease Puritan concerns, the Queen established rules prohibiting the
construction of theaters and theatrical performances within the London city limits. The rules were
loosely enforced, however, and playhouses such as the Curtain, the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan were
constructed just outside of London, within easy reach of the theater-going public. These public
playhouses paved the way for the eventual emergence of professional companies as stable business
organizations.
Among the actors who performed in the Elizabethan theater, Richard Burbage is perhaps the best
known. Burbage was the leading actor in Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and he
is credited with portraying a range of dramatic leads including Richard III, Hamlet, Lear, and Othello.
An actor himself, Shakespeare played roles in his own plays, usually as older male characters. Acting
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was not considered an appropriate profession for women in the Elizabethan era, and even into the
seventeenth century acting companies consisted of men with young boys playing the female roles.
Instead of clothing reflecting the station of their characters, Elizabethan actors wore lavish costumes
consistent with upper class dress. In contrast, stage scenery was minimal, perhaps consisting solely of
painted panels placed upstage.
Elizabethan theaters were makeshift, dirty, and loud, but nevertheless they attracted audiences as large
as 3,000 from all social classes. Performances were usually given in the afternoons, lasting two to three
hours. As in both ancient and contemporary theaters, each section of the theater bore a different price of
admission, with the lowest prices in the pit below stage level where patrons stood to watch the play.
Most performance spaces were arranged in-the-round, giving spectators the opportunity to watch
both the play and the behavior of other spectators. Etiquette did not prohibit the audiences from freely
expressing their distaste or satisfaction for the action on stage.
The rich theatrical flowering begun by Shakespeare and his contemporaries continued into the
seventeenth century, well beyond the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In 1642, however, with the country on
the verge of a civil war, the Puritan Parliament closed the theaters and forbade stage plays in an edict
that argued that theater distracted the fragmented nation from its efforts to appease and avert the wrath
of God. When King Charles II took the English throne in 1660, the theaters were reopened, and the
arts were again celebrated. His reign became known as the Restoration, but the greatest period of
England theatre had already run its course.
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Chapter-3
Although each play has its themes, there are some that run through several like a thread woven into a
piece of cloth. These common themes are often very broad. Here are some of them.
Drama emerges when characters are not what they seem. This is often the case in comedies, when a
characters real identity is concealed by disguise. In Twelfth Night, the disguised Viola says: I am not
that I play.
Deception
Sometimes one character fails to understand another, because he or she has been deceived. In The
Toming of the Shrew, Baptista is deceived by Lucentio and Hortensio, when he accepts them as teachers
of his daughters.
Change
Some of the central moments in the plays are when characters change their minds. Brutus agrees to join
the conspiracy; Coriolanus decides not to attack Rome; Macbeth decides to pursue the murder of
Duncan. What we see is a world based on the idea that change is the stuff of life.
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Knowing yourself
One of the most important changes is the one in which a character wakes up to something in him or
herself, which was previously hidden. When he first sees Juliet, Romeo discovers that he was not really
Human nature
Shakespeares characters often reflect on what it is to be a human being. Sometimes they use the word
nature, at other times they play on the word kind, meaning type, as in humankind, as well as
considerate and helpful. Hamlet does this in his riddling conversation with Claudius; A little more than
kin and less than kind. Hamlet is hinting that what is kind in the former sense is not kind in the
latter.
Shakespeare always shows us characters of groups; those we see on stage are brothers, sisters,
daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, lords, servants, friends, kings and subjects. Because thats what
people are like, it matters that we belong. Therefore divisions in families and nations, as in King Lear
One of the most important forms of not belonging is being lost. In Shakespeare there are a number of
ways in which a character can be lost; the lovers in AMidsummer Nights are physically, emotionally
and, in so far as they fear for their sanity, mentally lost. Finding also comes in different forms;
characters can find themselves through self-knowledge, discover a long-lost member of the family and
Freedom
One of the questions that haunts a character in a dramatic crisis is the extent to which he or she is free
to act or not to act. Theres the uneasy feeling that the stars are what really govern us. Hence, as a part
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of his persuasion of Brutus, Cassius has to assert that the reason why things are as they are lies not in
Death
In many plays the characters know that they are going to die. Even if a character does not realize this,
the audience often does. King Lear claims at the beginning of the play that he is preparing for death,
yet the audience sees that for much of the action he is willful, inconsiderate, thoughtless and reckless-
qualities which suggest that hes not someone trying to live out what is left to him in the certainty that
hes mortal.
Renewal
As well as a sense of morality, Shakespeares characters often seek and find renewal. Renewal can be
finding the lost (The Winters Tale), marrying the right person (the comedies), restoring a broken
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The themes love and war
This is a big but not surprising claim. It big because it says that many areas of Shakespeare can be
illuminated by those two ideas. It is not surprising because almost from the very beginnings of
civilization love and war have been the themes of literature. The plot of Homers The Iliad is how the
love of Paris for Helen led to the Trojan War. Shakespeare(who wrote about the Trojan War in Troilus
and Cressida) also sees these two mighty themes entwined in human affairs. Not every play is about
love and war, but the feelings and ideas associated with them are present in very many of the plays. At
Thirty-eight plays by Shakespeare have survived. The word love appears in all of them. In some it is
That list, of course, does not include word that are grammatically related to love such as loved,
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There are fewer mentions of war in Shakespeare, but they are, nevertheless, numerous. Of the 38
plays, it appears in 33 of them. But of the five plays in which it does not appear, one is Romeo and
Juliet, a play based in a city in which the two leading families are virtually in a state of civil war, and
another is The Merchant of Venice, which can be read as being about a religious and cultural war
between Christians and Jews. Plays in which the word war frequently appears are:
Croilanus 40
Henry V 30
King John 22
It would be mistake to decide simply on the basis of those figures, that Shakespeare is three or four
Its clear that of the two love is the more important theme, but thats not something that can be
simply established by counting words. Counting words is useful, but it overlooks the visual impact of
Anyone who has seen productions of Macbeth will be aware of how many scenes there are with armed
soldiers, often smeared in sticky stage blood. This is also the case with King Lear. Regarding it in class,
its easy to overlook the fact that most of the second half of the play is set in a war, and that on stage
wed see uniforms, banners and weapons. The actual word is only mentioned four times in King Lear
(and only four times in Macbeth, too!) yet the theatrical experience is of camps and battlefield.
War, in the shape of vision and conflict, is found in Shakespeare in stories about divided cities
(Romeo and Juliet), split families (As You Like It), friends whove turned cool (Julius Caecar), children
who turn against parents (King Lear), tensions between classes (Coriolanus) as well as between
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factions within a nation (the Henry IV plays), within an empire (Antony and Cleopatra) and between
Young love
Love in Shakespeare is usually between the young. The energy and drive of Romeo and Juliet is the
joy, exuberance and passion of young love. Its pointless to complain that the characters are foolish.
That is what love does to you. The schemes, dodges, bursts of fanciful poetry and even the fights are all
Its up to the actor how he plays Romos first sight of Juliet. Since his words express wonder, it is clear
that something has happened to him. Whatever the actor does, it must be consistent with the words of
Of yonder knight?
(1.5.41-2)
He does not know who she is, but he says that she enriches the one whose hand shes holding (probably
in dance). What he says in his next speech shows that he has, in a moment, undergone a very drastic
change:
(1.5.51)
When love strikes, the whole of your life (including your idea of your past) changes.
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The value of love
When Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing has fallen in love with Hero, the possibility of having her
for herself is so wonderfully unlikely that he puts it in terms of the purchase of an exquisite jewel:
Love is the best thing that can happen to you, so its valued above everything else. This is why in
Shakespeare, even in the charmingly improbable plots of the comedies, is realistic about money. He
shows that one of the reasons for courting a girl is that shes rich. The buccaneering Petruchio in The
Taming of the Shrew says hes not put off by Kates reputation for being argumentative, because
In a far more romantic vein, the wonder of walking up to love after the disorienting nightmare of
confused feelings is expressed in A Midsummer Nights Dream in the image of finding a jewel:
(4.1.190)
Nor should it be forgotten that are bits of stage business in Shakespeare that depend upon the visible
presence of wealth. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia is associated (particularly in the early part of the
play) with money. She a lady richly left (1.1.161), whose hair is likened to a golden fleece (1.1.170),
and her father has decided that her husband will be the one who chooses which of the golden, silver and
lead caskets contains her picture. This stress on wealth is in keeping with the play as a whole; Venice
exists by trade, so all areas of its life are measured in terms of money. We can sum up the position in
this way:
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Love, action and enterprise
Its too easy to think of Shakespeares young lovers as embarrassingly romantic in their language and
spineless in their behavior. But in most plays love does not have that effect.
Would the Romeo who was soppy about Rosaline have killed Tybalt? The energy of that play drives its
In the passage from which the line above comes, Lucentio, having gone weak at the sight of Bianca,
is soon plotting an ingenious scheme that will enable him to court her. The words and now it is plotted
are spoken by his wily servant, Tranio, who dresses as Lcentio and plays his part with dazzling skill.
Comedies are not only about the young falling of love; the young are the ones who through intrigue
and trickery make the plot work. The movement of a comic plot is an expression of the energy of
young love.
Sex
Many of the words he uses have explicitly connotations. The words above are spoken by Polonius, who
warns his daughter Ophelia about being too familiar with Prince Hamlet. The blood he talks of is
Sex in Shakespeare is seen as the natural end of love. Marriage in a Shakespearean comedy is often
seen explicitly involving sex. When Hymen, the presiding deity of marriage, enters at the end of As
You Like It, he sings of marriage as the blessed bond of board and bed(5.4.140). Board means food
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One of the earliest poems was The Rape of Lucrece, in which Tarquin,the rapist, wrestles with
overwhelming and, irresistible lust. And sex can offend; Hamlet taunts Ophelia with a vocabulary that
some readers still find (and are supposed to find) shocking (Hamlet, 3.2.1070-11).
A jaundiced recoil against sex can be found in language of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida; having
seen the way the world goes,he cynically sums it up as wars and lecery(5.2.197).
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Shakespeares varied characters
What we see stage are not ideas but people. we see people arguing, wooing, pleading, praying,
denouncing, meditating and judging. Its out of these activities that themes emerge.
But whom do we see? What kinds of characters pass before us in Shakespeares theatre? The simple
answer is:
There are, to name a few: carpenters, constables, executioners, fairies, haberdashers, joiners,
merchants, soldiers, prisoners, priests, prostitutes, nuns, rogues, sailors, shepherds, singers, stewards,
tailors, tinkers, wrestlers as well as kings, queens, lords and young lovers.
Queen in Shakespeare
Shakespeare is less interested in the dramatic possibilities of queens than of kings. In many plays they
Victims of history
One of the features of the history plays is that there are women who are, so to speak, leftovers from the
political conflicts of the past. Their husbands and even their sons are dead, and they are left to mourn
In Richard III they form a chorus, which wails over the past and bitterly curses the one whos done the
killing. In particular, old Queen Margaret is like a ghost or banshee shrieking against the wickedness of
Richard. But theres nothing that she can do. Shes a victim of history.
Its not always easy to have sympathy for Shakespeares king; they can be arrogant, frivolous,
unscrupulous or self-pitying. However, when their queens show them affection we soften towards
them. No matter how wayward they are, if they are loved, then there is a warmth in the plays. Its this
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warmth that the queens supply. One of the reasons why we feel increasingly sympathy towards Richard
One of the signs of this softness and warmth is that the queens often use their husbands names as well
as their titles. This is how the Duchess of Gloucester speaks of her late husband:
Married couples
Its rare that Shakespeare explores married life. Neither the Montagues nor the Capulets make much
contribution to Romeo and Juliet except to provide the background of family hostility. We dont feel
that theres a strong interest in them as characters; they fulfill the needs of the plot, and not much else.
In two tragedies Macbeth and Othello the main characters are presented as husbands and wives.
Macbeth is Shakespeares most searching presentation of a married couple. They are loving
( sometimes almost embarrassingly so dearest chuck, 3.2.48); she understand how he thinks and
feels and above all what he wants, and when he hears what he takes to be good news the prophecies
of the weird sisters he immediately writes to her. Part of the tragedy of the play is that we see their
marriage crumble away before us lapses into sleepwalking, and he broods alone. We see something of
what the Macbeths marriage was like, but in the case of Othello and Desdemona what is haunting is
the feeling of what might have been. The marriage is destroyed almost as soon as it starts, so the theme
of the play becomes not only the disintegration of an outstanding figure but the rapid decline and death
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Lovers and theatrical conventions
Shakespeares plays are full loves: they turn up in the comedies, but they cant be kept out of the other
plays. Hotspur in Henry IV is give a loving wife, and one of the factors that makes Hamlet so
fascinatingly complex is the presence of Ophelia. In the late plays young couples bring new life to a
blighted world.
Shakespeare works with conventions- agreements between authors and audiences that certain actions,
characters or plots will be recognized and understood in a particular way. For instance, its a convention
in comedy that fathers want to stop their daughters finding love. It would be a mistake to think that
there must be some dark reason why a father is like this; its simply a matter that the convention
As we saw in 1.10, the most popular convention about lovers was one that came from the Italian
poet, Petrarch. Its not like Shakespeare to borrow a convention without in some way extending or
altering it. And this what he does. In some of his lovers, we can see the ghost, as it were, of the
Petrarchan convention. But usually it is a knowing ghost. Thats to say, lovers often know they are
When, in Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio returns from the wars promptly falls in love, his
commanding offer, Don Parado, recognizes that to be in love means behaving in the way lovers do. He
says of Claudio:
(1.1.289-90)
The image of a book of a word may be understood to mean either that he will model his behavior on
what it says in a book (Petrarchs poem) or that, like lovers in books, he will go and on.
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Shakespeare and conventions
Its not so much that Shakespeare works with conventions as that he presents his characters as doing so.
Its not that he thinks that a lover has a particular identity as that he shows lovers adopting the
conventional ones. He shows us that people deliberately behave in accordance with social and literary
conventions.
As we have seen in 1.10, Orsino deliberately models himself on Petrarchan conventions. He says:
(2.4.16)
In the first scene hes languid, moody, listens to music, speaks in a poetic manner, lavishes praises on
his beloved (through in a later scene he, conventionally, calls her cruel) and exist to broad alone under a
canopy of flowers. Orsino knows that theres a particular way of showing everyone that hes in love.
Theres a role for a lover and Orsino plays it for all hes worth.
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Conflict in Shakespeares play
As has been stressed, there can be conflict without there being war. The conflict between Antonio and
Shylock in The Merchant of Venice is tension behind that interesting yet disturbing play. We give a new
In Julius Caesar, Cassius wants to prevent Caesar gaining complete power in Rome. What he and his
fellow conspirators fear is that Caesar will become a king. Cassius recruits a group of citizens, who
Shakespeare presents envy as a powerful yet ugly element in human life. Its nastiest manifestation is in
Iago, who destroys Othello and nearly gets Cassio killed. Its not clear whether envy is the main motive
for his actions; whats uncomfortably true is that Iago is a victim of a corrupting and belittling envy.
he conflict of ambition
Ambition is often used of an attempt to seize power illegally. Lady Macbeth says her husband is not
without ambition(1.5.18), and when he is winding himself up to kill Duncan he rather desperately
Shakespeare shows that some of the most turbulent conflicts arise when two groups compete. In Romeo
and Juliet its two families- the Montagues and the Capulets; in Julius Caesar the friends and enemies
of Caesar: and in The Merchant of Venice the Christians and the Jews.
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Conflict between the generations
Quite often comedies have as their striating point the attempt by the older generation to control the
young, and the action gets stared when the young find ways of getting their own way. The clash of
generations, however, is not only a comic topic. One of the leading conflicts in King Lear (a play that
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Chapter-4
Macbeth- Macbeth is a Scottish general and the thane of Glamis who is led to wicked thoughts by the
prophecies of the three witches, especially after their prophecy that he will be made thane of Cawdor
comes true. Macbeth is a brave soldier and a powerful man, but he is not a virtuous one. He is easily
tempted into murder to fulfill his ambitions to the throne, and once he commits his first crime and is
crowned King of Scotland, he embarks on further atrocities with increasing ease. Ultimately, Macbeth
proves himself better suited to the battlefield than to political intrigue, because he lacks the skills
necessary to rule without being a tyrant. His response to every problem is violence and murder. Unlike
Shakespeares great villains, such as Iago in Othello and Richard III in Richard III, Macbeth is never
comfortable in his role as a criminal. He is unable to bear the psychological consequences of his
atrocities.
Lady Macbeth- Macbeths wife, a deeply ambitious woman who lusts for power and position. Early in
the play she seems to be the stronger and more ruthless of the two, as she urges her husband to kill
Duncan and seize the crown. After the bloodshed begins, however, Lady Macbeth falls victim to guilt
and madness to an even greater degree than her husband. Her conscience affects her to such an extent
that she eventually commits suicide. Interestingly, she and Macbeth are presented as being deeply in
love, and many of Lady Macbeths speeches imply that her influence over her husband is primarily
sexual. Their joint alienation from the world, occasioned by their partnership in crime, seems to
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The Three Witches- Three black and midnight hags who plot mischief against Macbeth using
charms, spells, and prophecies. Their predictions prompt him to murder Duncan, to order the deaths of
Banquo and his son, and to blindly believe in his own immortality. The play leaves the witches true
identity unclearaside from the fact that they are servants of Hecate, we know little about their place
in the cosmos. In some ways they resemble the mythological Fates, who impersonally weave the
threads of human destiny. They clearly take a perverse delight in using their knowledge of the future to
Banquo- The brave, noble general whose children, according to the witches prophecy, will inherit the
Scottish throne. Like Macbeth, Banquo thinks ambitious thoughts, but he does not translate those
thoughts into action. In a sense, Banquos character stands as a rebuke to Macbeth, since he represents
the path Macbeth chose not to take: a path in which ambition need not lead to betrayal and murder.
embodying Macbeths guilt for killing Banquo, the ghost also reminds Macbeth that he did not emulate
King Duncan- The good King of Scotland whom Macbeth, in his ambition for the crown, murders.
Duncan is the model of a virtuous, benevolent, and farsighted ruler. His death symbolizes the
destruction of an order in Scotland that can be restored only when Duncans line, in the person of
Macduff- A Scottish nobleman hostile to Macbeths kingship from the start. He eventually becomes a
leader of the crusade to unseat Macbeth. The crusades mission is to place the rightful king, Malcolm,
on the throne, but Macduff also desires vengeance for Macbeths murder of Macduffs wife and young
son.
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Malcolm- The son of Duncan, whose restoration to the throne signals Scotlands return to order
following Macbeths reign of terror. Malcolm becomes a serious challenge to Macbeth with Macduffs
aid (and the support of England). Prior to this, he appears weak and uncertain of his own power, as
Hecate- The goddess of witchcraft, who helps the three witches work their mischief on Macbeth.
Fleance- Banquos son, who survives Macbeths attempt to murder him. At the end of the play,
Fleances whereabouts are unknown. Presumably, he may come to rule Scotland, fulfilling the witches
The Murderers- A group of ruffians conscripted by Macbeth to murder Banquo, Fleance (whom they
Lady Macduff- Macduffs wife. The scene in her castle provides our only glimpse of a domestic realm
other than that of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. She and her home serve as contrasts to Lady Macbeth
Donalbain
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Chapter-5
Macbeth the drama is started with the conversation among the three Witches when Macbeth
and Banquo return from a victorious campaign fought on behalf of Duncan, King of Scotland,
and encounter three witches. They hail Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor and predict that he will
become King, and that Banquo will father a line of Kings. When Duncan rewards his bravery
in battle with the title of Thane of Cawdor, the seeds of ambition grow in Macbeth. Possessed
by the idea of becoming King and encouraged by his ruthlessly ambitious wife, Lady
Macbeth, he commits his first murder, killing the King who is staying with him. Macbeth is
crowned King, but begins to fear that Banquo suspects him and arranges for his murder.
Macbeth is haunted by Banquos ghost and, fearful that his crimes will be discovere, he
consults the Witches again. They tell him to beware of the old Kings general, Macduff, but
say that only a man not born of woman can harm Macbeth and that he will be safe until
Macbeths confidence, but when he hears that Macduff has gone to Englad to join forces with
the old Kings son, Malcolm, he arranges for the murder of Macduffs wife and her son. Lady
Macbeth goes mad and sleepwalks and Macbeths crimes increasingly prey on his mind.
advances, but the soldiers camouflage themselves with branches cut from the trees of Birnam
Wood so that it appears as if the woods are moving towards him. Macduff and Macbeth meet
and Macduff tells him that his was not a natural birth, so that technically he was not of a
woman. Macbeth knows then that the Witches predictions have proved true; he is killed in
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Macbeth is a play which deals with evil. Whats unclear is the extent to which the weird
sisters embody evil. When we see them in Act 1, Scene 3 before Macbeth arrives, they are
mischievous and nasty, but hardly wicked. The scene in which they throw revolting things
into their cauldron isnt exactly evil either. Macbeth does great evil, but his act can hardly be
blamed on the sisters. They predict, but dont tell what to do.
The one moment when its relevant to talk about evil occurs in the opening scene. Most of
this short scene is taken up with the agenda of the next meeting the date, place, time and
(1.1.10-11)
The really frightening word is is. The sisters say that what is fair good, beautiful, right is
foul ugly, shameful, wicked. The two things are identical. If they are, moral words collapse;
Is this what Macbeth is like? The answer can only be yes or no, its often observed that he
(1.3.36)
The day has been fair and foul. He knows the difference; but not at every moment in the play.
There are times when Macbeth wants to talk about what we would call his evil actions in
words that are robbed of moral significance. Listen to working himself up to killing Duncan:
(1.7.1-2)
The words he uses are about as morally neutral as possible. The murder is referred to as it,
the act is something that is done: neither of the words carry, as moral words do, the
judgment that what is being spoken of is either right or wrong. This moral neutrality comes
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close to the bluntness of identifying fair with foul. But at other moments Macbeth uses
(1.7.12-16)
Trust and murderer are both moral words, and as soon as he mentions host he knows that
he shouldnt be the killer of the man hes protecting. Perhaps the best way to understand the
blend of moral and non-moral words is to see the non-moral ones as an attempt to overcome
When Lady Macbeth enters in Act 1, Scene 7, Macbeth says they will proceed no further in
this business (line 31); by the end of the scene he prepares himself for this terrible feat
(line 80), Many people have asked what happens in between to make him apparently changes
his mind.
The first thing that needs to be said is that he does not really change his mind. The soliloquy
which opens the scene is about his desire to do it. He can see difficulties, which seem
I have no spur
Vaulting ambition
(1.7.25-7)
The image is of a rider facing a jump. The only thing the rider can do is dig his spurs in the
horse; all that Macbeth can use as a spur is his ambition. No matter how dangerous and
getting it by pretending hes no longer interested. What he gets is two very powerful acts of
persuasion.
(1.7.49)
Her ambiguities must be quite deliberate; do it means both kill the king and have sexual
intercourse. He must prove that hes a man not by making love but by stabbing an old man.
She knows him; she probably knows that he loves her; they are both young. Epic deeds have
(1.7.54-9)
This comes from nowhere. Lady Macbeth appears to produce it as an example of resolution,
but its a curious thing to choose. Most people would respond with disgust. If thats what it
means to keep a promise, its better to break it. Yet it works with Macbeth. Why?
Macbeth isnt disgusted; hes persuaded. Hes got what he wanted from her, The dreadful
truth is that Macbeth accepts the argument for the same reason that might lead us to reject it.
What she gives him is an image of something overwhelmingly wicked, something as wicked
as killing Duncan. When he sees it in all its wickedness, he has the courage to do it. Macbeth
what it will be like to be queen. To put it in modern terms, neither has a political programme.
All they want to do is tyrannize, to bathe Scotland in blood. A dead king, a murdered general,
The scene in which Macbeth returns from the murder of Duncan is the most tense in the play.
The opening exchange just single words and phrases evokes the fear and the thrill of what
Macbeth: When?
Macbeth: As descended?
(2.2.16-18)
The words might be whispered, but they speak loudly of their states of mind. Macbeth has
descended, and though he might not have spoken, the high tension of their words say a great
deal. They have been understood in terms of the language she uses in the persuasion scene:
(1.7.60-1)
The sticking place is a term either from archery or, more likely, tuning a musical
instrument. When the page will no longer turn, the sticking place has been reached. Turn it
more, and the strings break. In those one word exchanges we hear the strings snap.
We dont see the deed being done, but we share Lady Macbeths excitement as she gloats
that
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He is about it.
(2.2.5)
Do we sense both pleasure and fear in her words: the doors are open, so he might be seen
killing the old man? Do we hear an unnatural thrill in her words? Macbeth words at his guilt.
The actor should bring out the astonishment as well as the horror in:
Stuck in my throat.
(2.2.29-31)
Macbeth isnt tracing the connection between sin, and guilt, hes wondering at why when he
needs to say Amen, the word sticks in his throat. The crucial word is and not but; but
would have accounted for why he could not say it, and merely records that it sticks. The
Macbeths guilt is expressed in images, which have, as wed expect with Macbeth, a poetic
intensity. In little over 50 lines Macbeth talks in terms of religious ritual, public execution,
sleep, knitting, bathing, feeding and the sea. What come through is that he feels strongly that
One of the function of Act 2, Scene 2 is to show the difference in response between Lady
Macbeth and Macbeth; shes practical, whereas he explores the nature of what hes done with
(2.2.31-2)
This is hubris. We know that these deeds must be thought of in this way.
Its easy to see her sleepwalking in psychological terms repressed her guilt, so it takes
her over in the form of an illness, one symptom of which is sleepwalking. This isnt wrong;
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its merely too obvious. Shakespeare uses the scene to remind us of whats happened. Its the
nearest we get to see the killing of Duncan. What matters about the scene is its horror and
terror:
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. (5.1.37-8)
Thats what she saw when she went into the room. What she saw was not a king but an old
man, who looks like her father; and rather than the old man being shriveled, hes full of
blood. The terms she uses are those that should have guided them: its wrong to kill old men
in their beds. One of the functions of the sleepwalking scene is to remind us through the
Macbeth, 2.2.53-54
religious drama is also the most widely and seriously misunderstood in its relation to it.
Indeed, Macbeth might well appear to the an exception to the principle of Shakespearean
revision we have educed from the earlier tragedies. In those plays, the effect of mimetic
naturalization over and above the older models contained within them had been achieved
problematizing them. But Macbeth is unique among the major tragedies in having generated
nothing like the central and recurrent problems that have shaped interpretation if Hamlet,
Othello, King Lear, and even Antony and Cleopatra. Certain aspects of the play have of
course received more than their share of attention and re continuing matters of debate: the
status of its witches and of witchcraft; its topical relation to James I; the authorship of the
Hecate scenes, yet these are more pre-critical problems of background and provenance than
widely acknowledged to exist within a relatively familiar dramatic tradition, that critical
response to the play to it. This would seem to contrater of reflex in assimilating the play to it.
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This would seem to contradict the argument so far advanced that Shakespearean tragedy is
fundamentally and finally unassimilable ti its models, and that this unassimilability is what
underlies and generates their problematic status and realistic effect in the first place. At the
risk of bringing chaos into order by discovering problems where none have existed, I want
now to reexamine the relation between Macbeth and its inscribed models in the light of the
previous discussion. It may turn out that those models are not quite the ones usually said to
lie behind the play, and its relation to them not the clear and settled congruity that it is
The tradition within which Macbeth is almost universally interpreted is that of orthodox
Christian tragedy, the characteristic features if which are already well developed as early as
Boccaccio and Lydgate and are familiar to all students of medieval and renaissance literature.
It typically presents the fall of a man who may be basically or originally good but is always
corruptible through the temptations if the world and his own pride or ambition. This action
occurs against the structure of a fundamentally ordered and benevolent universe, which is
finally self restorative despite the evil and chaos temporarily unleashed within it, since
crime will [win] out and sin is always repaid. Of course the point in this essentially didactic
genre is to illustrate the wages of human wrongdoing and the inexorability if divine purpose.
That Macbeth, with its malign forces of temptation embodied in the witches, its vacillating
but increasingly callous protagonist, and its restorative movement in the figures of Malcolm
and Macduff, has affinities with this tradition is obvious and undeniable. The moral pattern of
Shakespeares play is not essentially different from that set forth in Boccaccoo and Lydgate,
and there is no lack of more immediate versions of it with which Shakespeare would have
been well acquainted. He had drawn on A Mirror for Magistrates in previous histories and
tragedies; several sixteenth-century moralities deal with the same theme; and the same
pattern, though without political overtones, informs Doctor Faustus, a play with which
Macbeth is often compared. Shakespeares own early Marlovian monodrama, Richard III,
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falls squarely within this tradition if Christian tragedy, and its similarities with Macbeth were
Yet there is another dramatic tradition at work within Macbeth or, more accurately, a
subgenre of this same tradition, that is at once much older than these examples and more
immediately and concretely present within the play. For here, as in Hamlet, Shakespeare
allows the primary model for his own action to remain at least partly in view. We have
already seen how the cry of the elder Hamlets ghost to remember me is more than a
reminder to his son to avenge his death; it simultaneously conjures up the older mode of
being and acting which would make revenge possible, which the action of Hamlet at once
repeats and supersedes, and which points with all the intentionality and ambiguity of any sign
toward the heart of the plays meaning. In Macbeth, too, the persistence of an older dramatic
mode within the world of Shakespeares play is no less explicitly recalled. Though there are
many places in Macbeth that could serve as an entry into this older world, the two modern
scholars who have consciously perceived its existence have both entered it through, so to
speak, its front door, the hell-gate of Inverness with its attendant devil-porter. For here too
the purpose of the Porters request, I pray you remember the porter(2.3.22), is more than to
extract a tip from Macduff whom he has just admitted. The reference of his remark is
ambiguous, as Glynne Wickham observes, for it can be addressed by the actor both to
Macduff and to the audience. As in the porters dream, it is on two worlds at once; that of
Macbeths castle and that of another scene from another play which has just been recalled for
That other play, which Wickham advances as Shakespeares model for the particular form in
which he chose to cast act 2, scene 3, of Macbeth, and possibly for the play as a whole, is
The Harrowing of Hell in the medieval English mystery cycles. Derived from the apocryphal
Gospel of Nicodemus and adapted in two of the oldest rituals of the Roman Catholic liturgy,
it is enacted in all of the extant cycles, though details of staging and dialogue differ from one
to another. Between his crucifixion and resurrection, Christ comes to hell and demands of
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Lucifer the release of the souls of the prophets and patriarchs. In all versions, the arrival of
Christ is heralded by strange noises in the air and thunderous knocking at the castle gates. In
the York and Towneley plays, the gate of hell has a porter appropriately named Rybald, a
comic devil who breaks the news to Beelzebub of Christs arrival and questions David and
Christ himself as to his identity. Finally, Jesus breaks down the gate of hell, routs the resisting
devils and, after a debate with Satan, who tries to deny the prophecies of his godhead,
releases the prophets amid prayers and rejoicing. The Coventry version of the playlet, the one
that Shakespeare is almost certain to have seen, is not extant, but there is no reason to think it
was substantially different from the other versions. In fact, the Pardoner in John Heywoods
The Foure PP(1529?), is described as having been on easy terms with the devyll that kept the
gate, since he had oft in the play of Corpus Christi.played the devyll at Coventry, and is
himself addressed as Good maystery porter. With its castle setting, bumbling porter named
Rybald, Clamor vel sonitus materialis magnus in the depth of night, and background if
prophecy, the cyclic play of the Harrowing of Hell would have been easily evoked by the
business of Macbeth, 2.3, in the minds of many in Shakespeares audience who still
remembered the porter. Moreover, the memory of the old play would strongly foreshadow the
outcome of Macbeth as well, since Christs entry tnto and deliverance of the castle of hell
also looks forward to Macduffs second entry into Macbeths castle and triumph over the
The simplifications that have become doctrine in the tradition of interpretation of Macbeth
are the result not only of a failure to establish the plays relation to its models in its full
ambivalence, but of a failure to identify the plays primary models in the first ;ace. Just as
Hamlet has less to do with Senecan revenge drama than with native morality tradition, so
Macbeth has less to do with the morality play than with the tyrant plays of the biblical cycles.
Its nearest contemporary analogue is not Marlows Faustus, with which it is often compared
as a parallel study in the psychology of damnation, but Tamburlaine or even Edward II, those
early Elizabethan history plays which, like Macbeth, are modeled on the medieval tyrant
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plays that are the authentic prototypes of Elizabethan historical tragedy. The morality play is
more cerebral and voluntaristic than the cultic and animistic world of the cycles. It
emphasizes, that is, freedom of moral choice within a mental setting as opposed to the
communal and typological destiny unfolded in the cycles. This misplaced emphasis on moral
choice within Macbeth, where it receives little of the extended deliberation accorded to it in
Hamlet may well arise from the forced imposition of morality conventions upon the play and
may well underlie all the misguided adulation of the bland and reticent Banquo and the
equally misguided pity for Macbeth. For Macbeths choices and actions, as I have tried to
show, are not free in the way the morality protagonists are, but are largely determined his
own and his societys experiences soon after the play begins. The universe of Macbeth is not
ultimately and comically free, as it is even in those variations of the morality (like Faustus)
where the protagonist persists in choosing wrongly and thus qualifies as an object of tragic
pity, but is conditioned by forces largely outside his control. Of course those forces are no
longer the benign and providential ones embodied in the figures of God and his angels who
descend from above upon the human community below. Rather, they are disruptive forces
that periodically and inexplicably bubble up, as it were, from within human nature and
society, as the witches who incarnate and herald them seem to do from within the earth itself.
Unlike the morality protagonist, who is confronted at all points with a clear choice between
Macbeth, and the protagonist of Elizabethan historical tragedy generally, must struggle with
meaning as it ambiguously unfolds in the world. It is only by confusing these two dramatic
modes that such reassuring commonplaces as the Elizabethan world picture or the great
chain of being could misleadingly have been applied as a norm in the interpretation of
Shakespeares histories and tragedies in the first place, as if the natural condition they
present were order and the our own struggle with the meaning of Macbeth, the proper
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identification of those models actually implicit within the play thus roves crucial and affirms
There are some women characters, in Macbeth where Shakespeare depicts them in different
angle; those play various roles to show the women behavior in reality. There the three
Witches, three sisters are the supernatural element, play vital role to turn the scene from
opening to end. Lady Macbeth, the central woman character in the drama, who changes the
setting of the drama into different way, is called the fourth witches. She makes her husband
Macbeth kill Duncan the King of Scotlad. Here Shakespeare shows the power of woman
whose is neglected in the society. The writer wants to make the Elizabethan spectators that a
woman do everything good and bad for the society. And he wants to depict that without the
support of woman, man cannot perform any work successfully that may be good or bad for
human. Women have power to bring up, to love and at the same time to destroy. The other
most other works of art. This play portrays women to be manipulative, violent, and evil.
Macbeth, the play, breaks away from the stereotype that men are the sinister ones and shows
Lady Macbeth is the greatest evil in the play and is the mastermind behind all of Macbeths
evil deeds. While Macbeth does the actual murdering, his actions and thoughts imply that he
does not really want to kill Duncan or Banquo. After Macbeth murders Duncan he whispers,
Macbeth hath murdered sleep This means that Macbeth has killed his innocence and he
feels regret for that. Also, once he returns from Duncans chamber with the bloody dagger he
does not want to return to the scene of the crime to put the dagger back because he does not
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want to relive what he has done. Again, this shows remorse. On the other hand, Lady
Macbeth angrily returns the dagger and calls Macbeth a coward. This shows that Lady
Macbeth feels no guilt for pressuring her husband into killing Duncan and a person without
guilt for such a crime as this is a person full of evil. Another aspect of evil is greed; and Lady
Macbeth is very greedy. When she hears of the witches prophecy she immediately forces
Macbeth to act on it. She forces him to do things that he would not have normally done just
so that she could be the queen of Scotland. She wanted Duncan dead so badly but since she
was a woman, and women were believed to be innocent and kind (this is illustrated when she
says unsex me here...), she practically could not. So, she forces her husband to do her will
Lady Macbeth resembles the exact opposite of what a lady usually resembles in literary
works. Shakespeare does this to show that not all women, as we know, are sweet and
courteous. He is showing the bad side of women which was never shown in literature before,
Lady Macbeth
A historical figure (c. 1005-1054) and a character in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is Macbeths
ruthless wife who, like the Witches, exerts an evil influence over her husband. Ambitious for
power and inspired by Macbeths account of the Witches prediction, she urges him to
overcome his scruples and to kill King Duncan. An accomplice in the Kings murder, she
herself drugs the soldiers guarding the King. Having pushed Macbeth into an abyss of evil,
she calls on the power of the Hell to conceal their crime. Steeped in murder, Lady Macbeth
finally goes mad, sleepwalking, endlessly washing imagined bloodstains from her hands.
In the scene of confusion where the murder of Duncan is discovered, Macbeth and Lennox
return from the royal chamber, Lennox describes the grooms who, as it seemed, had done the
deed:
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Their hands and faces were all badged with blood;
At this point Lady Macbeth exclaims, Help me hence, ho! Her husband takes no notice, but
Macduff calls out Look to the lady. This, after a few words aside between Malcom and
Donalbain, is repeated by Banquo, very shortly after, all except Duncans sons exeunt. (The
stage-exclamation Lady Macbeth is carried out, after Bmquos exclamation Look to the
lady, is not in the Ff. and was introduced by Rowe. If the Ff. are right,she can hardly have
Does Lady Macbeth really turn faint, or does she pretend? The latter seems to have been the
general view, and Whately pointed out that Macbeths indifference betrays his consciousness
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that , if he believed it to be real, he would equally show indifference, in order to display his
horror at the murder. And Miss Helen Faucit and others have held that there was no pretence.
In favour of the pretence it may be said (1) that Lady Macbeth, who herself took back the
daggers, saw the old King in his blood, and smeared the grooms, was not the woman to faint
at a mere description; (2) that she saw her husband over-acting his part, and saw the faces of
the lords, and wished to end the scene, - which she succeeded in doing.
But to the last argument it may be replied that she would not willingly have run the risk of
leaving her husband to act his part alone. And for other reasons (indicated above, p. 330 f.) I
decidedly believe that she is meant really to faint. She was no Goneril. She knew that she
could not kill the King herself; and she never expected to have to carry back the daggers, see
the bloody corpse, and smear the faces and hands of the grooms. But Macbeths agony
greatly alarmed her, and she was driven to the scene of horror to complete his task; and what
an impression it made on her we know from that sentence uttered in her sleep, Yet who
would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? She had now, furthet,
gone through the ordeal of the discovery. Is it not quite natural that the reaction should come,
and that it should come just when Macbeths description recalls the scene which had cost her
the greatest effort? Is it not likely, besides, that the expression on the faces of the lords would
force her to realize, what before the murder she had refused to consider, that she is far from
carrying out her intention of bearing a part in making their griefs and clamours roar upon his
death . She has left it all to her husband, and, after uttering but two sentences, the second of
which is answered very curtly by Banquo, for some time (an interval of 33 lines) she has said
nothing. I believe Shakespeare means this interval to be occupied in desperate efforts on her
part to prevent herself from giving way, as she sees for the first time something of the truth to
which she was formerly so blind, and which will destroy her in the end.
It should be observed that at the close of the Banquet scene, where she has gone through
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Shakespeare, of course, knew whether he meant the faint to be real: but I am not aware if
an actor of the part could show the audience whether it was real or pretended. If he could, he
Lady Macduff
A minor character in Macbeth; Lady Macduff is Macduffs loving wife. When Macduff has
left for England to raise an army against Macbeth, she is murdered with her son by Macbeths
hired assassins. Lady Macduffs gentleness as a wife and mother contrasts with Lady
Macbeths villainy.
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Treatment of Women in other Works of Shakespeare
In Shakespeare's King Lear he challenges traditional gender roles and suggests that when
* Gender roles are social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate by a
- Cordelia is very loyal because unlike her sisters she does not manipulate the
However she is not submissive since she disobeys her father by not participating in the
love test
She is compassionate due to her ability to forgive her father after banishing her
My Thesis
Traditionally women are thought to be more passive, submissive, quiet, and pure
- All of Lear's daughters behave differently... but do they all conform to the traditional
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- Shakespeare portrays his female characters in both lights, challenging traditional
gender roles
- He does not distinguish between his female characters, as all of them fail in the end
Quotation:
- Since they are women in power, they are represented as heartless women with the
desire of power.
-Women in Shakespeare are always put back in their traditional position at the end of
- Goneril wants to be Edmund's mistress because her husband is too weak for her and
- Significance of the love triangle shows the lack of true love and loyalty
What connections to Religious Values can be made with Cordelia? Is she a Religious
figure?
Quotes:
devil. Shakespeare makes it clear that when women are put in power, it often results
into chaos.
- Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air/Hang fated o'er men's faults light on
King Lear blames his problems on his daughters. Therefore readers are able to
empathize with him. However they find it hard to empathize with the daughters.
Quotes:
-"Neither can be enjoyed/If both remain alive: to take the widow/Exasperates, makes
mad her sister Goneril/And hardly shall I carry out my side/Her husband being alive."
(V, i, ll 58-62)
This shows that Edgar is just manipulating the two sisters and he does not care about
them.
Goneril is implying that her husband is too sensitive and gentle especially when she
says milky gentleness where she implies that he is weak for being so soft on Lear
Quote:
-He indicates that failure is inevitable when women try to take the "place" of men
- Only two characters survive and prosper at the end, which are Albany and Edgar
-They seem to have the greatest sense of morals ( Albany & Edgar)
-unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty
Cordelia is only telling the truth to her father, she does not want to profess her love
publicly and she loves him as a child should love their father. Because of this Lear is
angry and disowns her. Like Christ, she was punished for it by being banished and
- We can connect Christian values with Cordelia while looking at her virtues and
qualities.
- She did not act out selfish motives, her thoughts were pure which is the complete
- All throughout the play Cordelia's characteristics stand out above all the other
character's.
- Just like Christ, she was punished for her good deeds
- Connections to Virgin Mary can also be made (Lear carries her dead body) this is a
- Parental love also plays a large role, between Lear and his daughters and Gloucester
Ophelia, it would seem, wholly at the mercy of the male figures within her life, is
certainly a victim figure. Although it has been claimed by critics that Hamlet is unique
amongst Shakespeare's tragic heroes for not being to blame for the tragedy of the play,
if we are to consider the death of the heroine as part of this tragedy then surely we
between protests of undying love and cruelty such as his cold and accusing speech in
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the 'nunnery scene'. In short, Hamlet throughout the play uses Ophelia as a tool in his
revenge plan.
In the later tragedy, Othello, it can also be argued that the tragedy occurs from
adherence to patriarchal rules and stereotypes. Gayle Greene summarises this position
in her claim that the tragedy of Othello stems from 'men's misunderstandings of
them'. Certainly Desdemona's very much feminised qualities of passivity, softness and
and authority. After Othello in his jealousy has struck Desdemona and spoken harshly
to her, she tells Iago, 'I am a child to chiding'. Protected by a system which makes
women the weaker, dependent sex, Desdemona is unequipped to deal with such
patterns of behaviour for wives and daughters, these women lose their autonomy and
intimacy and do not achieve adulthood'. Desdemona thus retreats into childlike
In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare again explores the idea of the victim within a
patriarchal society. However, in this play the gender roles are inverted and it is Antony
who is the true victim. Stifled by the rules of the patriarchal society of Rome which
expects him to retain a masculine side only, and not to adopt the feminine qualities of
passion, emotion, and love, Antony's control over his life diminishes. Within such
patriarchal confines the role of lover must be subordinate to the male's political role.
After finding an extraordinary and powerful love with Cleopatra - which Shakespeare
the patriarchal laws. Like the typical female heroine of a tragedy, Antony's plight
remain away from Cleopatra and faithful to Octavia who symbolises Caesar and the
power of Patriarchal Rome. He says 'though I make this marriage for my peace,/ I'th'
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East my pleasure lies'. Inevitably he returns to Egypt and Cleopatra, and causes a rift
which can never again be cemented between himself and Caesar, which ultimately
results in war.
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Chapter -6
Findings
One of the persistent topics of interest in the field of Shakespeare studies is that which
considers the various roles that women play in the bards comedies and tragedies. Literary
and historical scholars affirm that women did not enjoy political, economic, or social parity
with men during Shakespeares time and this historical reality is important to keep in mind
when analyzing the variety of female characters in the plays of Shakespeare. In this
Shakespearean society, it was men who held exclusively the official posts of authority and
power, and men who possessed the agency and influence to direct the outcome of events.
Nevertheless, the careful reader notices a curious trend in many of Shakespeares plays: many
of Shakespeares female characters exercise a rather great deal of subtle forms of power and
influence, and often do so in unusual and even subversive ways that challenge traditional
gender roles. Although the male characters generally fail to notice or refuse to acknowledge
womens authority and influence openly, they are affected by it, often significantly so, and
although Shakespeare himself might not have been aware of the dissonances he create" , the
contemporary reader cannot help but be aware of them and in many cases, to view many of
the characters present in several plays by Shakespeare as some of the main motivators of
Some of the most interesting female characters in Shakespeares oeuvre are Hermia in A
Midsummer Nights Dream, Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night, and Gertrude, the Queen of
Denmark and Hamlets mother, in Hamlet. Although each of these women finds herself in a
social position and challenging situation that differs from the other, and though each employs
a unique strategy for coping with her problems and contesting gender roles by exerting
authority and influence subtly and subversively, these four women are similar in that they all
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insist upon their right to direct their own destinies and, at times, the destinies of others as
well. Furthermore, all three of these female characters from the aforementioned plays are all
quite developed and are in many ways some of the most complex characters presented in
their respective plays. As literary critic Ehnenn remarks regarding the women in many of
Shakespeares works, these characters, both in their own time and in ours, reveal tensions
and ruptures" in traditional gender roles and ideologies that are not resolved easily . Although
Shakespeare permits some of the female characters to exist fully outside of conventional
norms, others are put back into their place, so to speak, provoking an anxiety that gender
roles are neither stable nor essential". In other words, there is a constant tug-of-war in terms
of gender and power in many of these works where women are at once exerting a great deal
of power and influence while on the other hand are often being set back or marginalized at
In A Midsummer Nights Dream, the reader recognizes right away that Hermia is no ordinary
woman. Her father, Egeus, has dragged Hermia off to Theseuss court in a desperate attempt
to compel his daughter to comply with his wish that she marry Demetrius, rather than her
beloved, Lysander. Egeus does not choose the court on a whim; rather, he is hopeful that by
taking Hermia to the literal and symbolic seat of the highest authority of the land, she will
recognize and honor masculine authority and, by extension, will comply with traditional
gender roles, which dictated that a woman should marry to either preserve or advance social
ties and familial goals, not to gratify her own romantic or sexual needs or desires. Egeus, who
has arrived at the court full of vexationand complaint against [his] child" , is so insistent
about the importance of maintaining the dominant gender paradigm that he entreats Theseus
to use the full weight and penalty of the law to punish his daughter if she does not obey, even
if the punishment means death. Theseus, clearly invested in maintaining the prevailing social
order because it advances his own interests, concurs with Egeus, and admonishes Hermia,
saying, To you, your father should be as a god/One to whom you are but as a form in
in no uncertain terms.
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Chapter -07
Conclusion
- Cordelia is a stereotypical woman of the Shakespearean Era while Regan and Goneril
- "Nothing, my lord." "Nothing?" "Nothing." ..........."I love you as a child should love her
Cordelia declining to flatter her father can be interpreted as an opposition to authority, she
does not want to be ruled by patriarchy. Her saying nothing is the only way she could oppose
her father, with silence. It is the only proper way any women could object or oppose in that
time period. Her response is a passive one, this along with many of her other qualities shows
- "I must change names at home, and give the distaff/ Into my husband's hands." (4.2.16-17)
Goneril is asserting herself a man here, proving that Shakespeare challenges gender roles
Shakespeare also presents powerful women as deformed both in shape and in mind, saying
powerful women have the shape of a woman but the mind of a devil.
them all fail, he is referencing their place in society ...less superior to males.
After the examination of Shakespeare's play King Lear, one can tell that this is an anti-
feminine play. It degrades women and despite the fact that Shakespeare does challenge
traditional gender roles.. he resorts back to the failure of females in his play.
Everyone will receive a card with the answer written on it. We will ask questions after every
section and whoever feels they have the right answers will read their answer to their class. If
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What happens when women are put in a position of power? What about the males
aroundthem?
- Shakespeare makes it evident that when women are put in a position of power, the end
- In King Lear, the women's misdeeds results in their deaths and the males deaths also
None of the female characters truly embody the stereotypical binaries of what a woman can
and should be. Each character does her best to assert herself in a patriarchal society; and if
their actions should be deemed as wrong, then that is the fault of the said society for putting
them in such a position. Not only does it preach such ruthless behaviour, it only offers this
behaviour as a means of escape. Shakespeare shows that in women, as in men, there are a
range of characteristics, good and bad, and that these women are powerful enough to
Akin to Regan and Goneril, Lady Macbeth is renowned for being the evil wife who, for her
own gain, spurs her innocent husband onto his destruction. This one-sided reading of her
character omits many important factors in terms of her character. As Jameson points out,
Macbeth
is renowned for being considered one of Shakespeares most complex dramatic characters,
whilst on the other hand, the character of Lady Macbeth resolves itself into a few and simple
elements.[13] She goes on to say that generally speaking, the commentators seem to have
considered Lady Macbeth with reference to her husband, and as influencing the action of the
Yet through Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare again presents us with a character who is unsatisfied
with her role in a male dominated society and does what she can to elevate herself from this
sub-standard position, thus securing herself within the patriarchal strictures of society.
Admittedly, she is fiercely ambitious, yet in comparison to Macbeths lack of ambition, this is
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surely a positive thing. Macbeth cannot decide what he wants to do, continually changing his
mind, if he does make a decision, he lacks the motivation to actually go through with it. Lady
Macbeth, on the other hand, embodies a strong role, knowing exactly what she wants and
never considering not obtaining it. Shakespeare presents us with a positive female role model
who, by dominating her husband, subverts the belief that a wife is a weak character to be
dominated. As Jameson points out we must then bear in mind, that the first idea of
murdering Duncan is not suggested by Lady Macbeth to her husband: it springs within his
mind. [15] I have already asserted Lady Macbeths important role in the play in persuading
her husband; yet one could potentially view this persuasion as exactly what Macbeth wants:
he desires the role of king, but requires somebody to tell him how and when this should be
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Chapter-08
References
MACBETH. Published by arrangement with Facts on File, Inc. 132 West 31st Street, New
Cook, Judith. Women in Shakespeare. ed. pub. by Virgin Books A division of W.H. Allen &
Co Plc Sekforde House 175/9 St John Street, London ECIV 4LL, 1990.
Ghosh, Dr. Shital. History of English literature, Engraji Sahityer Ithas in Bengla, ed. pub.
Friends Book Corner, 16 Rafin Plaza 2nd floor, 3/B Mirpur Road, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2003.
Sen, Dr. S. Macbeth, New and Enlarged ed. FBC Editorial Board, Unique Pub. New Delhi,
India, 2012.
Cleopatra
by Liz Lewis
http://www.thetutorpages.com/tutor-article/a-level-english/gender-studies-in-king-lear-and-
macbeth/4308
http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/shakespeare_women.html
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