Shakespeare Critical Thinkings Samples For Students

Introduction

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and Ben Jonson (1572-1637) are famous English poets, playwrights and authors. Herrick and Jonson grew up and wrote poems and plays in the same era and were both comparable to the great William Shakespeare. After his apprenticeship with his uncle ended abruptly, Herrick, aged 26 then, became a disciple of Ben Jonson who mentored him in literature. The two wrote five poems together. Herrick’s poetry was about religion, love and he was famed for writing on pastoral themes on the life in the English countryside. Ben Johnson on the other hand was best famed for satirical ...

Literary Criticism

15th of December
Beautiful Minds
Literal analysis is crucial elements that help in critical analysis of the works of literature. In the context of the play ‘Goodnight Desdemona, good morning Juliet' is an indication of a play that can be applied with the help of the theories. A vindication of the right of women according to Mary is evident in the play. Critically, we seek to understand the cries of women in the play and their seeking to find out the root causes of their problems and the best way to curb them. Her thought indicates that women ...

“How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?” William Shakespeare (Ward 150)
Not Rose Petals
“Our love is not rose petals
or Valentine candy –“ (Ward 150)
“ . . .it is dirt and sand”
“. . . it is the soil we roll in”

“Our love is dirt and sand

and coarse pebbles in a shallow brook.” (Ward 151)

Naming the Growth

“. . . to call a single plant from one lone seed

“love-in-a-mist,” then “devil-in- the bush” (Ward 38) repeated 4 times

“A love that’s lush is grand until we’re touched
Spring Begins in Hinckley, Ohio II
of last year’s leaves . . . I love how they love
what is used and then spoiled – how they, deep
in ...

Analysis of Selections from Nagel, What Does It All Mean?

Thomas Nagel’s 1987 book, What’s It All Mean?, offers an introduction to philosophical thought. He directs this book toward a person who has never studied philosophy before. He bases his introduction not in the writings of the great philosophers or great thinkers, but instead he offers nine categories of questions for his reader to think about. As he puts it, “The main concern of philosophy is to question and understand very common ideas that all of us use every day without thinking about them” (Nagel 5). By laying out these problems and his ideas about them, Nagel encourages ...

Shakespeare writes his play in an era where males are not accepting of women in power and authority. While the Elizabethan Age had Queen Elizabeth at the throne, many critics did not accept women in these positions readily. As a result, Shakespeare’s works reveal women in both negative and positive ways. Males controlled aspects of the society such as power and authority while women were expected to be submissive or weak and follow the orders as stipulated by these males. This submission was important to their survival in the society and within their families. During the Renaissance period, the ...

Why does Hamlet delay so long in following the ghost’s command? This is one of those mysteries in literature that seems to have persisted ever since the play was written, remaining unanswered and solved till today. For Hamlet, it is his first long soliloquy, and he rebukes himself for his delay in avenging his father’s death. The reason for Hamlet’s long delay in following the ghost’s command is integral to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, since the play revolves around it, but what is also important is to conclude the morality of such revenge.
The fact ...

Act I

- We learn that Othello is a racial outsider, yet still a highly respected soldier in Venice.
- Iago’s speech indicates that he is displeased with Cassio’s promotion and is developing a plot to get revenge on Othello. The line indicates his two faced tendancies. Othello, married to Desdemona, holds a place of honor as a general. Iago, one of Othello’s soldiers becomes angry that Othello has passed him up for promotion and develops a complex plan to ruin Othello by starting rumors about Desdemona
- He declares that his daughter was stolen from him by the magic of the ...

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a broadly comedic, yet immensely thematic work - much of these ideas about love, gender, transformation, and foolishness come through the character of Nick Bottom. Despite the subtle humor of many other characters in the play (Puck, for example), Nick Bottom has very on-the-nose, sensational humor in his repertoire. He is far from the primary focus of the play; he is the main character of the subplot of a troupe of actors producing a play telling the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Throughout the play, he deals with the situations that are presented to him ...

The Play Hamlet by William Shakespeare may have been written many centuries ago but it remains one of the most outstanding plays ever written during the renaissance. The play was written during a time when England was trying so much to suppress many of the traditions that people were practicing then, among them, traditional religious beliefs such as believe in ghosts. Ghosts were held in very high esteem and this may have been the main reason why Shakespeare chose to incorporate this aspect (Greenblat 16).
Greenbalt says that at the time when the play was written, there were very ...

Critical Essay

Macduff- A man on a mission
One of the lords describes Macduff as a man on a mission, who has left home seeking the support of King Edward in order to stop the shedding of innocent blood in Scotland, and to restore peace in his land, so that its people may live in harmony. But by being an ideal nobleman, was Macduff ignoring his duty to his family? It is unfair to declare that Macduff fails as a father and does not protect his wife and children.
Macbeth sends a messenger to bring Macduff back to his court. The latter however, keen ...

Critical Essay

Role reversals exhibited by Macbeth and his lady
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are dynamic characters and Shakespeare reveals the distinct and different thought processes of these two characters through soliloquies and dialogues. As the play progresses, their mindscapes alter until a complete reversal of roles occurs between the protagonist and his wife.
In the first act, a bleeding captain describes the protagonist as “brave Macbeth”, who is “valour’s minion” and a lion, who vanquishes the Irish rebels, as well as the Norwegian invaders to protect his king. Thus he wins the title “Thane of Cawdor”.This title probably lays ...

In Virginia Woolf's literary essay "A Room of One's Own," the author explores themes of feminism through the viewpoints of a narrator who has a unique and principled view of how women are represented in the world. Throughout the text itself, Woolf denotes many things that have held women back from holding positions of power and wealth, as well as granting them agency in society. This point then extends to the limited and restricted body of work that women are allowed to have, seemingly due to the inequalities presented by a patriarchal society. This text sheds some light on feminist attitudes toward ...

Introduction

This essay focuses on the William Shakespeare’s play No Fear and specifically on the part where the main character Hamlin hears and sees the players of the play he is making. It discusses the effects they have on Hamlin and the reasons for the effects coming up, what the players remind Hamlet of or what they might represent, and why in Hamlet, it initiates a response at the end like the soliloquy.
When Hamlet hears and sees the players it affects in a way that it makes him sad, it angers and it irritates him at the same time. ...

Incidents of dramatic irony in Act I and Act II:

- Everyone believes the king died as a result of a snake bite when in reality he had been poisoned. Ironic because Claudius had spread the rumor of the snakebite while he was really the killer. Characters: Ghost, Hamlet, Claudius. Sympathy for Hamlet, because he learned that the king was murdered. Antipathy for Claudius because we learn he is a murderer. Evidence: The testimony of the ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, “With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts— / O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power / So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust / The ...

“What are these/So wither’d and so wild in their attire,/That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,/And yet are on’t? Live you? or are you aught/That man may question?/You seem to understand me,/by each at once her chappy finger laying/Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,/And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/That you are so” (Shakespeare, Act I, scene III). Both in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart the main characters’ lives seem to be controlled by fate: both Macbeth and Okonkwo play out their lives in ...

Gender roles and gender-related stereotypes are often depicted in literary works. For example, Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” could be considered misogynistic because it promotes the stereotype that women are the root of all evil, manipulate men for their selfish needs, and create chaos because all female characters in the play show that form of behavior. On the other hand, it is also possible to notice the lack of stability and logic in the main character Macbeth who is depicted as a naïve, indecisive, and dependent character. In “Candide,” it is possible to notice that Voltaire depicts the vulnerability and ...

Candide is Voltaire’s attack on the philosophy of such Enlightenment thinkers as as Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, who believed that the present world was the best of all possible worlds, and that all things turn out for the best. They also believed that God exists, and since God has to be perfect, his world has to be perfect as well. The only reason that people see imperfection in the world is that they have limitations on their understanding. The violence that happens around (and to) Candide, and his fellow optimist, Pangloss, is Voltaire’s way of ridiculing the ...

Analysis of Shakespearean Plays

Ethnicity is often a source of conflict in most aspects of society; Victorian era notwithstanding. This is evident in two of Shakespeare’s dark characters (pun not intended) Aaron in Titus Andronicus and Othello. Considering the context of racial discrimination during this time, it may be safely assumed that both characters suffered prejudiced treatment. However, the use of ethnicity as a plot device differed with these two characters. One is used literally to show the racial discrimination suffered by the character and trigger the consequences that followed while the latter is a figurative representation of abstract ideas.

In the play of Titus ...

Macbeth and Oedipus are tragic heroes from two completely different periods of time. However, they have many similarities that join them together. As a first similarity, we can distinguish that they were both kings, driven by a force that lead them unconsciously to death. Even though Oedipus was in his youth and running away from his fate, he ended just like Macbeth. Both of these two tragic heroes had prophesies that needed to be fulfilled. They are on an unconscious search for their own fall and destruction. Macbeth is lead by the lust of powers that eventually lead him to destruction, ...

Gender roles and gender-related stereotypes are often depicted in literary works. For example, Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” could be considered misogynistic because it promotes the stereotype that women are the root of all evil, manipulate men for their selfish needs, and create chaos because all female characters in the play show that form of behavior. On the other hand, it is also possible to notice the lack of stability and logic in the main character Macbeth who is depicted as a naïve, indecisive, and dependent character. In “Candide,” it is possible to notice that Voltaire depicts the vulnerability and ...

For many centuries, this sonnet divided scholars in their responses to it. Many felt that Shakespeare was being deliberately critical of his lover and, therefore, were inclined to dismiss it as a rather cynical poem disparaging his mistress – unconventional for its time, but still straightforward. (Matz, 47). However, there is now a wider critical consensus that this poem is a comic parody of the type of exaggerated love poems written by some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. (Matz, 48). Crutwell writes:

Vendler says, “ this sonnet is a reply poem to a poet who has just written a sonnet to his mistress....Shakespeare’s speaker retorts, I don’ ...

This paper will conduct a literary analysis of Macbeth. The main purpose of the research is to examine the moral and ethical issues present in the play. In particular, the research examines different aspects of characterization, setting, and imagery in order to provide an in-depth understanding of the ethical and moral issues that surround Macbeth’s plot. From the play, it is clear that Shakespeare uses characterization to depict moral and ethical dilemmas in the play. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are both unethical characters in the play since they are engaged in a number of murders and executions that ...

In any discussion of the conscience and the icons that have become examples of what conscience means, there is a need to discover what a conscience is and from where it comes. Only then can the discovery of iconic roles such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sophocles’ Oedipus be understood as examples of how the conscience works.
There can be no conscience without communication. The requirement of communication to establish a conscience is a common human trait. “There are tribes in Africa where a baby is called a kuntu, a ‘thing,’ not a muntu, a ‘person’” (Lederer 3). It ...

The individuals of the same sex vividly use the term homosocial to implore an assortment of situations and the relationships mutual. This although virtually is used to in the various instances to exclusively refer to the relationship between men which has the sexual inference in an angle that depicts the contrast of the term homoerotic. The contrast that is derived in the two terms helps vividly to explore the and explain the cloud of contrast that is being derived in the connotations that the various scholars try to link the two terms together.
The term, which on the ...

Sandra K. Fischer’s seminal work, “Hearing Ophelia: Gender and Tragic Discourse in Hamlet” goes on to portray the fact that the play by William Shakespeare goes on to use the female characters as simple buffers to the entire narrative only to the extent that they work to bring out the omnipotence and significance of the male characters in the play. Now, if one delves deep into the narrative of this Shakespearean play, it would become clear that Fischer has correctly pointed out to the innate nature of the narrative to reiterate the patriarchal parameters of the then society ...

The Hollow Crown Film is basically a series which is based on the Shakespeare’s second teratology named the Henriad. This includes Richard II, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V. the most basic analysis gathered from watching the series concludes that it is based on the political scenarios of England in Shakespearean era. There are many references made by the author which have been convincingly portrayed in the film series (PBS).
As The Hollow Crown begins with Richard II, the film takes the reader back in time when King Richard II tries to solve things for his cousin ...

Fantasy is fiction that is often set in an imaginary universe. Characters exhibit behavior that is out of the ordinary as seen in A Midsummer night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and also Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The two exhibits a child and young lovers get into a fairy tale kind- of life. They transition into a mundane world, they take part in the activities of the magical world that are away from reality and most often the reader gets immersed in it too. The constructed world moves from the conscious and subconscious and vice ...

Victorian era saw many social, political, economical and religious changes. French and industrial revolution changed the whole cycle of this era and this massive metamorphosis is visible in the novels and essays of this time. The Bronte sisters, Dickens, Jane Austen and Eliot portray the effect of these changes on the lives of the people quite aptly.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens is not only a story about passions, unfulfilled love and heart break but also about the major differences and clashes between the upper class and lower class. Similarly Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte shows the love of ...

Literal analysis is crucial elements that help in critical analysis of the works of literature. In the context of the play ‘Goodnight Desdemona, good morning Juliet' is an n indication of a play that can be applied with the help of the theories. A vindication of the right of women according to Mary is evident in the play. Critically, we seek to understand the cries of women in the play and their representing to find out the root causes of their problems and the best way to curb them. Her thought indicates that women should have access to education to ...

Introduction:

‘Suburban by John Ciardi’ and ‘The Secretary Chant’ by Mage Piercy are poems which are full of life experiences and are also replete with satire. This analysis attempts to convey certain messages and subtle lines which demonstrate that they are truly poems of the world.
"Suburban" by John Ciardi ,

“Yesterday Mrs. Friar phoned."Mr. Ciardi,

how do you do?" she said. "I am sorry to say
this isn't exactly a social call. The fact is
a large repulsive object in my petunias."

John Ciardi’s poem focuses on some intriguing aspects especially with regard to some sexual orientations especially with the parallel between a girl ...