WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE TRAGEDIES
The Plays of Tragic Conception
Romeo and Juliet (1591-1595)
source: an Italian tale translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter
in 1582;
quite similar in plot, theme, and dramatic ending to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, told
by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.
characters:
the Montagues: Lord Montague; Lady Montague; Romeo, his son; Benvolio, Romeo’s
cousin; servants.
the Capulets: Lord Capulet; Lady Capulet; Juliet, their daughter; Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin;
Rosaline, a niece of lord Capulet; Juliet’s nurse; servants.
the ruling house of Verona: Prince Escalus; Count Paris, his kinsman and Juliet’s suitor;
Mercutio, another kinsman of the prince and friend of Romeo.
Friar Laurence; Friar John; an apothecary.
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo: Romeo experiences a love of such purity and passion that he kills himself when
he believes that the object of his love, Juliet, has died. The power of Romeo’s love,
however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is far more complex.
At the beginning of the play, he appears as a great reader of love poetry and a young man
smitten by Rosaline’s charms. Rosaline, of course, slips from Romeo’s mind at the first
sight of Juliet. But Juliet is no mere replacement. Romeo’s love for her is far deeper,
more authentic and unique than the clichéd love he felt for Rosaline. Romeo’s love
matures over the course of the play from the shallow desire to be in love to a profound
and intense passion.
Yet Romeo’s deep capacity for love is merely a part of his larger capacity for intense
feeling of all kinds, in other words, for his incapacity for moderation. Love compels
him to sneak into the garden of his enemy’s daughter, risking death simply to catch a
glimpse of her. Anger compels him to kill his wife’s cousin in a reckless duel to
avenge his friend’s death. Despair compels him to commit suicide upon hearing of
Juliet’s death. Such extreme behavior dominates Romeo’s character throughout the
play and contributes to the ultimate tragedy that befalls the lovers. Had Romeo
restrained himself from killing Tybalt, or waited even one day before killing himself
after hearing the news of Juliet’s death, matters might have ended happily.
Among his friends, especially while bantering with Mercutio, Romeo shows glimpses
of his social persona. He is intelligent, quick-witted, fond of verbal jousting
(particularly about sex), loyal, and unafraid of danger.
Romeo and Juliet
Juliet: Having not quite reached her fourteenth birthday, Juliet is of an age that stands on
the border between immaturity and maturity. At the play’s beginning, she seems merely
an obedient, naïve child. When Lady Capulet mentions Paris’s interest in marrying Juliet,
Juliet dutifully responds that she will try to see if she can love him, a response that seems
childish in its obedience and in its immature conception of love. However, Juliet already
gives glimpses of her determination, strength, and sober-mindedness from her earliest
scenes, which offer a preview of the woman she will become.
Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. Though
profoundly in love with him, Juliet is able to see and criticize Romeo’s rash decisions
and his tendency to romanticize things. After Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished,
Juliet does not follow him blindly. She makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her
loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities. Essentially, Juliet cuts
herself loose from her prior social moorings—her Nurse, her parents, and her social
position in Verona—in order to try to reunite with Romeo. When she wakes in the
tomb to find Romeo dead, she does not kill herself out of feminine weakness, but
rather out of an intensity of love, just as Romeo did. Juliet’s suicide actually requires
more nerve than Romeo’s: while he swallows poison, she stabs herself through the
heart with a dagger.
Juliet’s development from a wide-eyed girl into a self-assured, loyal, and capable
woman is one of Shakespeare’s early triumphs of characterization. It also marks one of
his most confident and rounded treatments of a female character.
Romeo and Juliet
Friar Laurence: He is a kindhearted cleric who helps Romeo and Juliet throughout the
play. He performs their marriage and gives generally good advice, especially with regard
to the need for moderation. But Friar Laurence is also the most scheming and political
character in the play: he marries Romeo and Juliet as part of a plan to end the civil strife
in Verona; he spirits Romeo into Juliet’s room and then out of Verona; he devises the
plan to reunite Romeo and Juliet through the deceptive ruse of a sleeping potion that
seems to arise from almost mystic knowledge. This mystical knowledge seems out of
place for a Catholic friar; why does he have such knowledge, and what could such
knowledge mean? The answers are not clear. In addition, though Friar Laurence’s plans
seem well conceived and well intentioned, they serve as the main mechanisms through
which the fated tragedy of the play occurs. The Friar is not only subject to the fate that
dominates the play—in many ways he brings that fate about.
Mercutio: With a lightning-quick wit and a clever mind, Mercutio is one of Shakespere’s
most memorable characters. Though he constantly puns, jokes, and teases—sometimes in
fun, sometimes with bitterness—Mercutio is not a mere jester or prankster. With his wild
words, Mercutio punctures romantic sentiments and blind self-love in the play. He mocks
at Romeo’s self-indulgence just as he ridicules Tybalt’s arrogance and adherence to
fashion. The critic Stephen Greenblatt describes Mercutio as a force within the play that
functions to deflate the possibility of romantic love and the power of tragic fate. Unlike
the other characters who blame their deaths on fate, Mercutio dies cursing all Montagues
and Capulets. Mercutio believes that specific people are responsible for his death rather
than some external impersonal force.
Romeo and Juliet.
Themes and Motifs
Love is naturally the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on
romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between
Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force
that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions. In the course of the play, the
young lovers are driven to defy their entire social world: families, friends, and ruler.
Shakespeare is not interested in portraying a prettied-up, dainty version of love, the kind
that bad poets write about, and whose bad poetry Romeo reads while pining for Rosaline.
Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal, powerful emotion that captures individuals and
catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves. The play does not
make a specific moral statement about the relationships between love and society,
religion, and family; rather, it portrays the chaos and passion of being in love, combining
images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an impressionistic rush leading to
the play’s tragic conclusion.
Love as a cause of violence: The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and
Juliet, and they are always connected to passion, whether that passion is love or hate.
Love seems to push the lovers closer to love and violence; they are plagued with thoughts
of suicide, and a willingness to experience it. The lovers’ double suicide is the highest,
most potent expression of love that they can make. It is only through death that they can
preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in
its defense. In the play, love emerges as an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction
as to happiness. But in its extreme passion, the love that Romeo and Juliet experience
also appears so exquisitely beautiful that few would want, or be able, to resist its power.
Romeo and Juliet.
Themes and Motifs
the individual versus society: Much of Romeo and Juliet involves the lovers’ struggles
against public and social institutions that either explicitly or implicitly oppose the
existence of their love. Such structures range from the concrete to the abstract: families
and the placement of familial power in the father; law and the desire for public order;
religion; and the social importance placed on masculine honor. These institutions often
come into conflict with each other. The importance of honor, for example, time and again
results in brawls that disturb the public peace. One could see Romeo and Juliet as a battle
between the responsibilities and actions demanded by social institutions and those
demanded by the private desires of the individual. Romeo and Juliet’s appreciation of
night, with its darkness and privacy, and their renunciation of their names, with its
attendant loss of obligation, make sense in the context of individuals who wish to escape
the public world. But the lovers cannot stop the night from becoming day. And Romeo
cannot cease being a Montague simply because he wants to; the rest of the world will not
let him. The lovers’ suicides can be understood as the ultimate night, the ultimate
privacy.
the inevitability of fate: In its first address to the audience, the Chorus states that Romeo
and Juliet are “star-crossed”—that is to say that fate (a power often vested in the
movements of the stars) controls them. This sense of fate permeates the play, and not just
for the audience. The mechanism of fate works in all of the events surrounding the lovers:
the feud between their families (which is never explained); the horrible series of
accidents that ruin Friar Laurence’s seemingly well-intentioned plans at the end of the
play; and the tragic timing of Romeo’s suicide and Juliet’s awakening. These events are
not mere coincidences, but rather manifestations of fate that help bring about the
unavoidable outcome of the young lovers’ deaths.
Shakespeare’s Second Period of Creation
a significant change in tone: the brightness and sunshine of the earlier plays give way to
gloomy seriousness and even bitterness, which seem to affect even the comedies (see the
problem plays). Whether caused by personal disappointment or illustrative for a more
widely-spread depression, which seems to have affected the Elizabethan society at the
turn of the century, this change in tone has found its best expression particularly in the
plays that give the full measure of Shakespeare’s maturity as a playwright, namely the
tragedies:
Hamlet ;
Othello;
King Lear;
Macbeth;
Timon of Athens;
Antony and Cleopatra;
Coriolanus.
“In them, the world is pictured as full of evil forces and man as being either thoughtless,
in which case he blindly answers the call of elementary passions – jealousy, ambition,
irrational love – or meditative, and then his meditative turn of mind paralyzes his will.”
(Gavriliu, 1978: 200-201) In particular in his so-called “great tragedies” (Hamlet,
Othello, King Lear and Macbeth), Shakespeare has endeavoured to translate his enhanced
awareness of the complexity of human nature and to contain “something of the larger
dimensions of life within the limiting formality of art” (Daiches, 1991: 271).
Hamlet (1601-1602)
circulated in the form of three separate texts:
the 1603 version, also referred to as the “bad quarto,” “apparently a garbled
reconstruction, largely from memory, of Shakespeare’s play put together by a player who
doubled the parts of Marcellus and the Second Player;”
the 1604 version, also referred to as the “good quarto,” representing Shakespeare’s full
text;
the 1623 version included in the First Folio, “a cut acting version, with nevertheless some
passages not in the 1604 quarto.” (Daiches, 1991: 267)
sources: probably the revenge tragedy Ur-Hamlet (no longer available nowadays)
attributed to Thomas Kyd; the original story: told, around 1200, by the Danish historian
Saxo Grammaticus in his Latin Historia Danica, and then retold, with only slight
alterations, in a collection of tragic stories by François de Belleforest.
Hamlet (1601-1602)
elements preserved from the original story:
Amleth’s feigning madness so that the usurping uncle would regard him as a completely
mindless lunatic not worth killing;
agents sent by the usurping uncle to find out whether Amleth’s idiocy is genuine: one of
these agents is a girl, the original of Ophelia, while another, presumably one of Amleth’s
friends, the original of Polonius.
the spy hiding in Amleth’s mother’s room to overhear a conversation between mother
and son, discovered and killed by Amleth;
an attempt to have Amleth put to death in England;
Amleth achieving his revenge, slaying his wicked uncle with his own sword.
Senecan elements incorporated in the play (presumably by Kyd):
the ghost crying for revenge (“Hamlet, revenge!”);
the original murder done secretly by poisoning;
madness ( Hamlet and Ophelia);
the final ‘massacre’ (the death of all the major characters, the fencing match, and the
poisoned rapier and drink);
the device of the play-within-the-play.
What cannot be, however, denied is that Shakespeare’s task was to rework the
melodramatic Senecan revenge play Ur-Hamlet and, thus, “to impose a new, tragic
meaning on a traditional story, by his arrangement and presentation of the action, by the
kind of life and motivation he gave to the characters, and by the overtones of meaning
and suggestion set up by his poetic handling of the characters’ language.” (Daiches,
1991: 268)
Hamlet (1601-1602)
characters: the guards Francisco and Bernardo; Marcellus; Horatio, prince Hamlet’s
friend; old Hamlet’s ghost; prince Hamlet; Claudius, his uncle; Gertrude, young Hamlet’s
mother and Claudius’s wife; Polonius, the royal counsellor; Laertes, Polonius’s son;
Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter; Fortinbras, prince of Norway; Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, two of Hamlet’s friends from Wittenberg; a troupe of actors; Osric.
Hamlet: a New Historicism Perspective
Hamlet’s attitude towards his mother’s marriage with Claudius:
the marriage is unlawful by Ecclesiastical canons (incest) → the tables of consanguinity :
a man may not marry his mother, his father’s sister or his mother’s sister, his sister, his
daughter or the daughter of his own son or daughter; to put it otherwise, the table of
consanguinity prohibits marriages with close blood ties, in the generations in which it
might plausibly occur (parent, sibling, offspring, and grandchild).
the marriage deprives Hamlet of his lawful succession → the table of affinity: it reflects
unions which might produce conflicting inheritance claims. By marrying Gertrude,
Claudius has caused the alienation of Hamlet’s line (“But now, my cousin Hamlet, and
my son”).
* Of course, one might say that this matter of succession is, in fact, rather ambiguous,
given the fact that, according to the Scandinavian system, the Danish throne was an
elective one, with the royal council naming the next king; therefore, even after his
father’s death, there was no actual guarantee that Hamlet and not his uncle might be
elected to the throne. But, by setting the action of the play in Denmark, Shakespeare
chooses to represent the matter of succession as conceived in the English society,
according to which Hamlet, as his father’s only son, is the rightful heir, which makes
his uncle a usurper.
Hamlet: a New Historicism Perspective
parallelism between certain characters and public figures of the time:
Hamlet’s figure seems to have been inspired by that of the Earl of Essex, whose rebellion
failed and brought about his execution under the charge of treason on February 25th,
1601;
Polonius – boring, meddling, given to wise old sentences and truisms, maintaining an
elaborate spying system on both friend and foe – might have been modelled after
Elizabeth’s treasurer, William Cecil;
Other characters correspond to some stock characters of those days that could be easily
identified among the aristocrats such as: Osric – the Elizabethan dandy; Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern – the obsequious courtiers; Laertes and Fortinbras – the men of few words,
but of great deeds; Horatio – the Roman friend; Ophelia – the ineffectual courtly love
heroine. (Muir and Schoenbaum, 1976: 168-179)
Hamlet: a Psychoanalytical Perspective
“The Problem of Hamlet” (Sigmund Freud)
↓
Oedipus complex = a child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the
opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy toward the parent of the same sex and the
unconscious wish for that parent's death. (See Oedipus who slew his father Laïus and
married his mother Jocasta)
Nevertheless, it is clear that an innate desire to kill one’s father and sleep with one’s
mother runs contrary to the very fabric of the society. The difference between this
innate urge and the demands of the civilization is then mediated by repression and
sublimation.
Id – Ego –Superego:
The id is the unorganised, the dark, inaccessible part of our personality that contains the
basic drives. It is the great reservoir of the libido, from which the ego seeks to
distinguish itself through various mechanisms of repression. Because of that
repression, the id seeks alternative expression for those impulses that we consider evil
or excessively sexual, impulses that we often felt as perfectly natural at an earlier or
archaic stage and have since repressed. The id is governed by the pleasure-principle
and is oriented towards one’s internal instincts and passions. Freud also argues on
occasion that the id represents the inheritance of the species, which is passed on to us
at birth.
Hamlet: a Psychoanalytical Perspective
For Freud, the ego is "the representative of the outer world to the id." In other words, the
ego represents and enforces the reality-principle whereas the id is concerned only
with the pleasure-principle. Whereas the ego is oriented towards perceptions in the
real world, the id is oriented towards internal instincts; whereas the ego is associated
with reason and sanity, the id belongs to the passions. The ego, however, is never
able fully to distinguish itself from the id, of which the ego is, in fact, a part. The ego
could also be said to be a defense against the superego and its ability to drive the
individual subject towards inaction or suicide as a result of crippling guilt. Freud
sometimes represents the ego as continually struggling to defend itself from three
dangers or masters: "from the external world, from the libido of the id, and from the
severity of the super-ego.“
The super-ego is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it
represents all moral restrictions and is the "advocate of a striving towards
perfection“. Originally, the super-ego had the task of repressing the Oedipus complex
and, so, is closely caught up in the psychodramas of the id; it is, in fact, a reaction-
formation against the primitive object-choices of the id, specifically those connected
with the Oedipus complex. The young heterosexual male deals with the Oedipus
complex by identifying with and internalizing the father and his prohibitions. As we
grow into adulthood, various other individuals or organizations will take over the
place of the father and his prohibitions (the church, the law, the police, the
government). Because of its connection to the id, the superego has the ability to
become excessively moral and thus lead to destructive effects. The super-ego is
 closely connected to the "ego ideal." (See Felluga, “Terms and Concepts” in
Introduction to Psychoanalysis,
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/psychterms.html)
Hamlet: a Psychoanalytical Perspective
Hamlet’s case: That Hamlet has fundamental urges which are not visible in the course of
the play is a tribute to the energy he has invested in repressing them. And he is successful
in repressing his jealousy for his father and attraction to his mother until Gertrude’s
remarriage with Claudius. Under the new circumstances, repression of incestuous and
parricidal drives must be carried out again, but it is hindered by the Ghost’s injunction to
kill Claudius, that is, to give vent to what he is trying to hold back. Julia Kristeva: The
suffering for the initial maternal loss (“incomplete or unsuccessful detachment from the
mother”) is painfully re-lived → melancholy, in modern terms maniac-depressive
psychosis, characterized, as it can be seen throughout the play, by symptoms of dejection,
refusal of food, insomnia, crazy behaviour, fits of delirium, and finally raving madness.
The original parental couple Old Hamlet - Gertrude, which, as a result of an initially
successful repression of oedipal urges, was conceived as perfect, pure is replaced by a
new one, Claudius – Gertrude, which in the light of the newly reactivated complex
appears shameful, lusty and corrupted:
“How weary, stale [prostitute], flat [to copulate], and unprofitable
Seem [to fornicate, with additional pun on 'seam': filth] to me all the uses [sexual
enjoyment] of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie [dung], 'tis an unweeded garden [womb]
That grows [becomes pregnant] to seed [semen], things [male sex] rank [in heat]
and gross [lewd] in nature [female sex]
Possess it [sexually] merely ['merrily', lecherously].” (Crunelle-Vanrigh)
Hamlet: a Psychoanalytical Perspective
Hamlet’s first soliloquy juxtaposes the pre-oedipal and the oedipal pattern, the dyad and
the triad, the merger and the end of the merger. Taking further the argumentation in
Freudian terms, along Julia Kristeva’s lines, the conclusion is that Hamlet’s melancholia
results from an incomplete detachment from the mother as much as from grieving for a
dead father.
(Observation: the “Orestes complex” – a more appropriate model for the action in
Hamlet: “Orestes killed his mother Clytemnestra and her lover, his father’s kinsman,
Aegisthus. The legend of Orestes, which historically marks a turning point in the
social position of the mother, has far more similarity to the story of Hamlet than has
the story of Oedipus.” – Frederic Wertham, “Critique of Freud’s Interpretation of
Hamlet” )
Hamlet: a Psychoanalytical Perspective
The function of the Ghost: preventing successful repression of oedipal urges - “the place
for the projection of the missing signifier”, a messenger of the “Law of the Father” in
Lacanian terms, which, by education, has been already assimilated by Hamlet; a
construction of Hamlet’s psyche, meant to constantly bring back, by transference, the
memory of the father of the Symbolic it stands for, in a context in which the Imaginary,
embodied by Gertrude, seems to be re-gaining ground. “Hamlet, torn between his dead
father and his all-too present mother is a man to double business bound. The duty of
remembering the father takes him along the paths of revenge; the necessity of detaching
himself from the mother takes him along that of Kristevan ‘matricide’, the only
alternative to asymbolia, depression and self-destruction. Such complementary demands
are registered in the play. Coextensive with the father’s ‘dread command’ to avenge him
is Hamlet’s readiness to avenge himself on his mother” (Crunelle-Vanrigh).
A key moment in the play for the understanding of Hamlet’s relationship with his mother
and his striving for ‘matricide’: the Closet Scene (Act III, Scene 3) → the son crosses
into the enclosure of his mother’s privacy to encounter her as a sexualized object.
Reproved for his offensive behaviour (with the familiar thou of maternal scolding),
Hamlet retaliates with the more grievous offence against his deceased natural father of
his mother’s remarriage to his brother. For once, his previously verbal assault is taken to
the point of turning into violence and he appears to be on the verge of killing Gertrude, of
killing off the mother; yet he fails. He turns his violence towards the man behind the
curtain, presumably the king – in fact Polonius –, turning matricidal intents into pseudo-
parricide.
Hamlet: a Psychoanalytical Perspective
The “mousetrap” (The Murder of Gonzago): There is a peculiar point where the story of
Gonzago’s death differs from Old Hamlet’s. The king is killed, the killer marries the
queen, but he is not the uncle, he is the nephew. From the Kristevan perspective, this
might be the moment of artistic triumph of the melancholiac. The mousetrap “enables
him to secure the ‘sublimatory grasp of the lost Thing’ which Kristeva describes, to
create a Gertrude swearing everlasting faith.” (Crunelle-Vanrigh)
Hamlet and Ophelia: Hamlet’s sexual repression leads to hostile, misogynist behaviour
regardless of whether the woman is perceived to be virtuous or lascivious. (Ernest Jones)
As long as ‘the mother has not been killed off,’ any woman will only be rejected as an
erotic object, “the melancholiac cannot cope with Eros,” therefore he is a misogynist.
(Julia Kristeva) (e.g. the Nunnery Scene)
Other interpretations of Ophelia’s evolution as a character: Jane Aldeman - Ophelia, a
sweet, obedient girl, is easily dominated/ manipulated by the ruling male forces in her
life, i.e., her cynical father, her unperceptive brother, and Hamlet who projects upon her
“the guilt” of feminine power threatening masculine identity – first embodied by his
mother -, breaking, by its uncontrolled sexuality, the limits of the patriarchal values of
womanhood. Triple victimization → madness → suicide (described by Gertrude in Act
IV, Scene 7): Ophelia returns to ‘her element,’ i.e. water, to satisfy her grief. (See the
“Ophelia complex” in G. Bachelard)
Hamlet: a Historicist Perspective
Why does Hamlet delay his revenge?
Avenger figures in the play:
the conventional avenger = he does not look for justice, but for personal satisfaction,
based on passion. Daring damnation, he sinks to the moral level of his victim and having
usurped heaven’s right to punish, is also condemned to death. (Bolt, 1990: 13-14) →
Laertes
the avenger who gives up revenge = Fortinbras. He also has a slain father, a fall in
fortune, and, like Hamlet for instance, an uncle on the throne to contend with. He is ready
to take action and regain his father’s lands from Denmark. Yet, when he is recalled to
order by the law, he is obedient, gives up taking justice into his own hands and he will be
eventually rewarded for that.
Hamlet and his many ‘masks’
Hamlet: a Historicist Perspective
Hamlet
the unambiguously Elizabethan noble prince: Educated at a new university (Wittenberg),
he lives in a specific extant castle (Elsinore) and is a connoisseur of modern plays and
modern fencing. In this intellectual milieu, ghosts are hard to believe in. A man of noble
principles, he passes brilliantly the test of fidelity – while most of the others at the court,
here including his own mother, fail it – remaining faithful to the memory of his father
and, at the same time, hiding his discontent with their behaviour. Loved by his people,
especially by his soldiers, he seeks their company, understands and respects them.
the avenger: “As a revenger, he ceases to be a noble prince and becomes a slave. It is a
role in which he cannot take even his trusty friends into his confidence.” (Bolt, 1990: 65)
The aim of his revenge should be to punish a “murder most foul” by an equally foul one.
This aspect might cast a new light on his decision not to kill Claudius when he finds him
alone, on his knees in prayer. What, for some psychoanalysts, is a proof of Hamlet
acknowledging in Claudius the very embodiment of his oedipal urges (he killed his father
and married his mother), might appear, from a different perspective, a refusal to inflict
too good an end for Claudius.
Hamlet: a Historicist Perspective
the malcontent: passionate and alienated, ‘released’ by the Ghost.
When in private, he may freely express in soliloquies his inner torment resulting from the
clash between two codes of values: the morality of revenge, reminiscent of a dark,
medieval past, and the dictates of his own temperament as a Renaissance philosopher and
Christian. (e.g. “To be or not to be…” - Act III, Scene 1: The deed with the “bare bodkin”
that Hamlet contemplates, directly related to that so much wished-for “quietus,” is cast a
new light upon with reference to the Great Chain of Being of the Elizabethan times. The
fear of death might prevent two kinds of incompatible actions: self-destruction or self-
assertion. “Quietus” may mean then pacification or the discharge of an obligation.
“Dispassionately exploring the maze of these implications, the ironist is not looking for
the right direction. Instead he questions the very value of any sort of movement, while
accepting that immobility too is painful.” Bolt, 1990: 51)
When in public, Hamlet the malcontent chooses to wear the mask of the fool and
consequently adapts his speech shifting from the blank verse, more appropriate for the
noble prince, to prose. That enables him to reject the society of Elsinore even while
remaining within it. As a fool, he may not be held responsible for what he says, but he
can use his folly as a stalking-horse to expose the truth. Furthermore, “because of the
traditional association of his role with the bawdy, the fool lends itself with facility to the
expression of misogyny” (Bolt, 1990: 72), which, as pointed out, characterizes the
malcontent. The “mousetrap” – a crucial moment when, though in public, he temporarily
drops his fool mask.
Hamlet: a Historicist Perspective
Hamlet’s death – an avenger and a noble prince: Once he has accepted his role as an
avenger, Hamlet regains his calm and the readiness of the soldier to die. He returns to
Elsinore as the prince ready to perform his allotted task. He does no longer feel he must
somehow manipulate the events. He just watches out for the opportunity which, sooner or
later, is sure to present itself. He dies an avenger, but eventually redeemed by the renewal
of conscience.
Hamlet: an Archetypal Approach
Hamlet and the Oedipus myth: the Sacrificial Scapegoat
Hamlet appears, just like Oedipus, as a haunted and sacrificial figure chosen to save his
community at the cost of his own life.
Ritual patterns:
a royal sufferer is associated with the degradation of an entire social order. Hence, images
of disease, evil, rottenness are recurrent to symbolise the overwhelming evil.
the destiny of the individual and of the society are closely intertwined.
the suffering of the royal victim is necessary before redemption and renewal are
achieved.

Hamlet: an Archetypal Approach

The Myth of Divine Appointment = the belief cherished by the Tudor monarchs since
Henry VII that the Tudors had been appointed to bring order and happiness out of
political chaos and civil strife. Any attempt to break the divine appointment should result
into social and political disorder. (see also Richard III, Macbeth and King Lear) →
Claudius’s murder of his kingly brother has subverted both the divinely ordained laws of
nature and the laws of the social organism regarding kingly succession and has turned
Denmark into a diseased state.
↓
imagery patterns of sickness, disease, corruption (e.g.: Act I, Scene I - Francisco: “’tis
bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart.” ; the Ghost; Act I, Scene 4 - Marcellus:
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”, etc.) Denmark emerges thus as a model
of natural and human degradation.
Hamlet: an Archetypal Approach
Claudius: “the serpent who now wears the crown” (Act I, Scene 5) He bears the primal
blood-curse of Cain in the Biblical myth. The natural cycle is interrupted, the nation
threatened by war and chaos. It is Hamlet’s task then to seek out the source of the disease
and to eliminate it so as to restore Denmark to its state of wholesome balance. (“The time
is out of joint; O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right.” Act I, Scene 5) →
Hamlet’s role is that of the Prince-Hero who must not only avenge his father’s murder,
but also offer himself as the Royal Scapegoat. He undertakes the mission of a cathartic
agent and accepts Laertes’s challenge to the duel.
The bloody climax: an essential component of the archetypal pattern of sacrifice –
atonement – catharsis that will involve the death of all those who have been infected by
the evil contagion: Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
even Ophelia. → Denmark – ‘reborn’ under the new regime of the one who disavowed
revenge, i.e., Fortinbras.
The motif of the Sacrificial Scapegoat is doubled by a long and difficult spiritual quest:
on the surface level, it is directed to solving the riddle of his father’s death, on the deeper
level, it explores the labyrinthine ways of human mystery (addressed in particular in the
soliloquies).
Hamlet: an Archetypal Approach
Northrop Frye – The Anatomy of Criticism: all narratives fall into one of the four mythoi:
Summer (romance): the movement within the ideal world of innocence: stories that
involve some type of search towards some kind of imaginative golden age in time or
space. The brave and virtuous heroes and heroines overcome villainous threats to
eventually attain their goals.
Autumn (tragedy): the movement from the ideal world to the real one, from innocence to
experience: The protagonist or hero of a story, usually an idealist, is given choices on
which to act upon but, eventually chooses the path to his demise or fall.
Winter (irony/ satire): the movement within the real world, the world of experience: Irony
– the real world seen through a tragic lens (characters may try to be heroic, but they never
achieve heroic goals). Satire – the real world seen through a comic lens (a world of
human folly, excess and incongruity, where human frailty is mocked at with biting,
merciless humour).
Spring (comedy): the movement from the world of experience to the world of innocence:
The hero who must break an arbitrary law often preventing him/her from something s/he
wants or requires. The hero is part of a new society that seeks to reform the existent
society, often converting others into joining this new movement.
Hamlet: an Archetypal Approach
The 4 mythoi in Hamlet:
The summer phase is ironically reversed in the unsacred marriage and triumph of
Claudius.
The autumn phase – the archetype of tragedy itself – encloses the myth of the dying god,
of violent death and isolation, as well as of the sacrifice of the hero.
The next phase is darkness and winter. Haunted by the spectre of defeat throughout the
play, the hero will triumph only in death.
Finally, the conclusion of the tragedy is brightened by the promise of dawn, spring and
rebirth under Fortinbras, following Hamlet’s defeat of the forces of darkness and winter
through his sacrificial death.
Othello (1603)
first performed by the King’s Men at the court of King James I on November 1, 1604;
historical setting: the wars between Venice and Turkey that raged in the latter part of the
sixteenth century. Cyprus, which is the setting for most of the action, was a Venetian
outpost attacked by the Turks in 1570 and conquered the following year. → source:The
History of the Turks by Richard Knolles, which was published in England in the autumn
of 1603.
other sources: an Italian prose tale written in 1565 by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinzio
(usually referred to as Cinthio) – a Moorish general is deceived by his ensign into
believing that his wife is unfaithful.
Othello (1603)
characters: Othello, the Moor; Roderigo, a Venetian gentleman; Iago, Othello’s ensign;
Michael Cassio, Othello’s lieutenant; Brabantio, a Venetian senator; Desdemona, his
daughter; the Duke of Venice; Montano, the governor of Cyprus; Emilia, Iago’s wife;
Bianca, Cassio’s mistress; Gratiano and Lodovico, Brabantio’s relatives.

Othello (1603). Main characters

Othello:
the question of Othello’s race: The word Moor now refers to the Islamic Arabic
inhabitants of North Africa who conquered Spain in the eighth century, but the term was
used rather broadly in the Elizabethan period and was sometimes applied to Africans
from other regions. Othello’s darkness or blackness is alluded to many times in the play,
but Shakespeare and other Elizabethans frequently described brunette or darker than
average Europeans as black. The opposition of black and white imagery that runs
throughout Othello is certainly a marker of difference between Othello and his European
peers.
While Moor characters abound on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, none are
given so major or heroic a role as Othello. Perhaps the most vividly stereotypical
black character of the period is Aaron, the villain of Shakespeare’s early play Titus
Andronicus. Aaron is lecherous, cunning, and vicious; Othello, by contrast, is a
noble figure of great authority, respected and admired by the duke and senate of
Venice as well as by those who serve him, such as Cassio, Montano, and Lodovico.
Only Iago voices an explicitly stereotypical view of Othello, depicting him from
the beginning as an animalistic, barbarous, foolish outsider.
Othello (1603). Main characters
Othello:
Beginning with the opening lines of the play, Othello remains at a distance from much
of the action that concerns and affects him. Roderigo and Iago refer ambiguously to
a “he” or “him” for much of the first scene. When they begin to specify whom they
are talking about, especially once they stand beneath Brabantio’s window (Act I,
scene 1), they do so with racial epithets, not names (e.g. “the Moor”, “the thick-
lips”, “an old black ram”, and “a Barbary horse”); his name will be first mentioned
only in Act I, scene 3. Later, Othello’s will be the last of the three ships to arrive at
Cyprus in Act II, scene 1; Othello will stand apart while Cassio and Iago supposedly
discuss Desdemona in Act IV, scene 1; and Othello will assume that Cassio is dead
without being present when the fight takes place in Act V, scene 1. Othello’s status
as an outsider may be the reason he is such easy prey for Iago.
Although Othello is a cultural and racial outsider in Venice, his skill as a soldier and
leader is nevertheless valuable and necessary to the state, and he is an integral part
of Venetian civic society. The Venetian government trusts Othello enough to put
him in full martial and political command of Cyprus. Those who consider Othello
their social and civic peer, such as Desdemona and Brabanzio, nevertheless seem
drawn to him because of his exotic qualities.
Othello sometimes makes a point of presenting himself as an outsider, whether
because he recognizes his exotic appeal or because he is self-conscious of and
defensive about his difference from other Venetians. While Othello is never rude in
his speech, he does allow his eloquence to suffer as he is put under increasing strain
by Iago’s plots. In the final moments of the play, Othello regains his composure and,
once again, seduces both his onstage and offstage audiences with his words. It is the
tension between Othello’s victimization at the hands of a foreign culture and his
own willingness to torment himself that makes him a tragic figure rather than
simply Iago’s ridiculous puppet.
Othello (1603). Main characters
Iago: The most heinous villain in Shakespeare, Iago is fascinating for his most terrible
characteristic: his utter lack of convincing motivation for his actions. In the first scene, he
claims to be angry at Othello for having passed him over for the position of lieutenant; at
the end of Act I, scene 3, Iago says he thinks Othello may have slept with his wife,
Emilia. None of these claims seems to adequately explain Iago’s deep hatred of Othello,
and Iago’s lack of motivation—or his inability or unwillingness to express his true
motivation—makes his actions all the more terrifying. He is willing to take revenge on
anyone—Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, Roderigo, even Emilia—at the slightest
provocation and enjoys the pain and damage he causes. Iago is often funny, especially in
his scenes with the foolish Roderigo, which serve as a showcase of Iago’s manipulative
abilities. He seems almost to wink at the audience as he revels in his own skill. It is
Iago’s talent for understanding and manipulating the desires of those around him that
makes him both a powerful and a compelling figure. Though the most inveterate liar,
Iago inspires all of the play’s characters the trait that is most lethal to Othello: trust.
Othello (1603). Main characters
Desdemona: Arguments that see Desdemona as stereotypically weak and submissive
ignore the conviction and authority of her first speech (“My noble father, / I do perceive
here a divided duty”- Act I, scene 3) and her fury after Othello strikes her (“I have not
deserved this” – Act IV, scene 1). Desdemona is at times a submissive character, most
notably in her willingness to take credit for her own murder. The play, then, depicts
Desdemona contradictorily as a self-effacing, faithful wife and as a bold, independent
personality. This contradiction may be intentional, meant to portray the way Desdemona
herself feels after defending her choice of marriage to her father in Act I, scene 3, and
then almost immediately being put in the position of defending her fidelity to her
husband. She begins the play as an independent person, but midway through she must
struggle against all odds to convince Othello that she is not too independent. The manner
in which Desdemona is murdered—smothered by a pillow in a bed covered in her
wedding sheets—is symbolic: she is literally suffocated beneath the demands put on her
fidelity. Since her first lines, Desdemona has seemed capable of meeting or even rising
above those demands. In the end, Othello stifles the speech that made Desdemona so
powerful. Like the audience, Desdemona seems able only to watch as her husband is
driven insane with jealousy. Though she maintains to the end that she is “guiltless,”
Desdemona also forgives her husband (Act V, scene 2). Her forgiveness of Othello may
help the audience to forgive him as well.
Othello (1603). Themes. Motifs. Symbols
The Incompatibility of Military Heroism & Love: Othello is a soldier. From the earliest
moments in the play, his career affects his married life. The military also provides
Othello with a means to gain acceptance in the Venetian society. While the Venetians in
the play are generally fearful of the prospect of Othello’s social entrance into the white
society through his marriage to Desdemona, all Venetians respect and honour him as a
soldier. Mercenary Moors were, in fact, commonplace at the time.
Othello predicates his success in love on his success as a soldier, wooing Desdemona
with tales of his military travels and battles. Once the Turks are drowned—by natural
rather than military might—Othello is left without anything to do. No longer having a
means of proving his manhood or honour in a public setting such as the court or the
battlefield, Othello begins to feel uneasy with his footing in a private setting, the
 bedroom. Iago capitalizes on this uneasiness. Desperate to cling to the security of his
former identity as a soldier while his current identity as a lover crumbles, Othello
begins to confuse the one with the other. Even in his final speech, Othello depends on
his identity as a soldier to glorify himself in the public’s memory, and to try to make
his audience forget his and Desdemona’s disastrous marital experience.
Othello (1603). Themes. Motifs. Symbols
The Danger of Isolation: The action of Othello moves from the metropolis of Venice to
the island of Cyprus. Protected by military fortifications as well as by the forces of
nature, Cyprus faces little threat from external forces. Once Othello, Iago, Desdemona,
Emilia, and Roderigo have come to Cyprus, they have nothing to do but prey upon one
another. Most prominently, Othello is visibly isolated from the other characters by his
physical stature and the color of his skin. Iago is an expert at manipulating the distance
between characters, isolating his victims so that they fall prey to their own obsessions. At
the same time, Iago, of necessity always standing apart, falls prey to his own obsession
with revenge. The characters cannot be islands, the play seems to say: self-isolation as an
act of self-preservation leads ultimately to self-destruction. Such self-isolation leads to
the deaths of Roderigo, Iago, Othello, and even Emilia.
Sight and Blindness: When Desdemona asks to be allowed to accompany Othello to
Cyprus, she says that she “saw Othello’s visage in his mind, / And to his honours and his
valiant parts / Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate” (Act I, Scene 3). Othello’s
blackness, his visible difference from everyone around him, is of little importance to
Desdemona: she has the power to see him for what he is in a way that even Othello
himself cannot. Othello, though he demands “ocular proof” (Act III, scene 3), is
frequently convinced by things he does not see: he strips Cassio of his position as
lieutenant based on the story Iago tells; he relies on Iago’s story of seeing Cassio wipe his
beard with Desdemona’s handkerchief (Act III, scene 3); and he believes Cassio to be
dead simply because he hears him scream. The action of the play depends heavily on
characters not seeing things: Othello accuses his wife although he never sees her
infidelity.
Othello (1603). Themes. Motifs. Symbols
The Handkerchief: The handkerchief symbolizes different things to different characters.
Since the handkerchief was the first gift Desdemona received from Othello, she keeps it
about her constantly as a symbol of Othello’s love. Iago manipulates the handkerchief so
that Othello comes to see it as a symbol of Desdemona herself—her faith and chastity. By
taking possession of it, he is able to convert it into evidence of her infidelity. But the
handkerchief’s importance to Iago and Desdemona derives from its importance to Othello
himself. He tells Desdemona that it was woven by a 200-year-old sibyl, or female
prophet, using silk from sacred worms and dye extracted from the hearts of mummified
virgins. Othello claims that his mother used it to keep his father faithful to her, so, to him,
the handkerchief represents marital fidelity. The pattern of strawberries (dyed with
virgins’ blood) on a white background strongly suggests the bloodstains left on the sheets
on a virgin’s wedding night, so the handkerchief implicitly suggests a guarantee of
virginity as well as fidelity.
The “Willow” Song: As she prepares for bed in Act V, Desdemona sings a song about a
woman who is betrayed by her lover. She was taught the song by her mother’s maid who
suffered a misfortune similar to that of the woman in the song; she even died singing
“Willow.” The song’s lyrics suggest that both men and women are unfaithful to one
another. To Desdemona, the song seems to represent a melancholy and resigned
acceptance of her alienation from Othello’s affections, and singing it leads her to
question Emilia about the nature and practice of infidelity.
King Lear (1605)
setting: 8th century B.C. → Yet, the conflict between parents and children that it
foregrounds reflects anxieties that would have been close to home for Shakespeare’s
audience. E.g.:
a lawsuit that occurred not long before King Lear was written, in which the eldest of
three sisters tried to have her elderly father, Sir Brian Annesley, declared insane so that
she could take control of his property. Annesley’s youngest daughter, Cordell,
successfully defended her father against her sister.
the case of William Allen, a mayor of London who was treated very poorly by his three
daughters after dividing his wealth among them.
the transfer of power from Elizabeth I to James I, which occurred in 1603. Elizabeth had
produced no male heir, and the anxiety about who her successor would be was fueled by
fears that a dynastic struggle along the lines of the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses
might ensue.
King Lear demonstrates how vulnerable parents and noblemen are to the depredations of
unscrupulous children and thus how fragile the fabric of Elizabethan society actually was.
sources: Geoffrey of Monmouth (History of the English Kings, around 1140) - King Lear
(spelled "Leir"), described as a pre-Christian warrior king in what is now southwest
England (including Cornwall). The story also appears elsewhere in world folklore (e.g.
the Eastern European version – Sarea în bucate), as well as in Holinshed, who adds that
Cordelia succeeded her father as monarch and was deposed by the sons of her sisters.
King Lear (1605)
characters: King Lear; his three daughters – Goneril, Regan and Cordelia; the King of
France; the Fool; Earl of Kent; Earl of Gloucester; his illegitimate son, Edmund; his
legitimate son, Edgar/ “Poor Tom”; Duke of Cornwall, Regan’s husband; Duke of
Albany, Goneril’s husband.
King Lear: His basic flaw at the beginning of the play is that he values appearances above
reality. He wants to be treated as a king and to enjoy the title, but he does not want to
fulfill a king’s obligations of governing for the good of his subjects. Similarly, his test of
his daughters demonstrates that he values a flattering public display of love over real
love. Lear is simply blind to the truth. An important question to ask is whether Lear
develops as a character—whether he learns from his mistakes and becomes a better and
more insightful human being. In some ways the answer is no: he doesn’t completely
recover his sanity and emerge as a better king. But his values do change over the course
of the play. As he realizes his weakness and insignificance in comparison to the forces of
the natural world, he becomes a humble and caring individual. He comes to cherish
Cordelia above everything else and to place his own love for Cordelia above every other
consideration, to the point that he would rather live in prison with her than rule as a king
again.
Cordelia: an embodiment of devotion, kindness, beauty, and honesty contrasted with
Goneril and Regan, who are neither honest nor loving, and who manipulate their father
for their own ends. By refusing to take part in Lear’s love test at the beginning of the
play, Cordelia establishes herself as a repository of virtue. Though offstage throughout
most of the play, she is never far from the audience’s thoughts, and her beauty is
venerably described in religious terms. Cordelia’s reunion with Lear on the coast, at
Dover, marks the apparent restoration of order in the kingdom and the triumph of love
and forgiveness over hatred and spite. This fleeting moment of familial happiness makes
the devastating finale of King Lear much more cruel, as Cordelia, the personification of
kindness and virtue, becomes a literal sacrifice to the heartlessness of an apparently
unjust world.
King Lear (1605)
Goneril and Regan: largely indistinguishable in their villainy and spite, they are indeed
clever; yet, any sympathy that the audience can muster for them evaporates quickly, first
when they turn their father out into the storm (Act II) and then when they viciously put
out Gloucester’s eyes (Act III). Goneril and Regan are personifications of evil—they
have no conscience, only appetite. It is this greedy ambition that enables them to crush all
opposition and make themselves mistresses of Britain. Ultimately, however, this same
appetite brings about their undoing. Their desire for power is satisfied, but both harbor
sexual desire for Edmund, which destroys their alliance and eventually leads them to
destroy each other. Evil, the play suggests, inevitably turns in on itself.
Edmund: the most complex and sympathetic of the play’s villains. He is a consummate
schemer, a Machiavellian character eager to seize any opportunity and willing to do
anything to achieve his goals. However, his ambition is interesting insofar as it reflects
not only a thirst for land and power but also a desire for the recognition denied to him by
his status as a bastard. His serial treachery is not merely self-interested; it is a conscious
rebellion against the social order that has denied him the same status as Gloucester’s
legitimate son, Edgar. He is the ultimate self-made man, and he is such a cold and
capable villain that it is entertaining to watch him work, much as the audience can
appreciate the clever wickedness of Iago in Othello. Only at the close of the play does
Edmund show a flicker of weakness and has a change of heart.

King Lear (1605)

The Fool: The Fool has no power other than his language. He is attached to Lear by a
strong bond, although he knows that honoring this bond is physically dangerous, for he is
fully aware of the consequences of what Lear is doing in his dealings with his daughters
and his headstrong rush away from the castle into the storm. As a fool, his role is to
provide a stream of riddling verbal commentary on the action, to expose the truth under
the words of others. But his commentary is curiously bitter and sad. He knows that his
words are ineffective; they may express important truths, but they will never penetrate
Lear's consciousness or do much to change the situation as it unfolds. At a time when the
ruling facts of life are clashes of power (military and natural), the Fool's language has no
significant effect on the action. The professional manipulator of language counts for very
little when so many others are twisting words to suit their own purposes. Faced with the
destructive collision of the rival groups and the ensuing suffering and chaos, the Fool
does what he can to transform the harshness of events to some form of linguistic play, not
because he has any solution to offer but simply because that's his way of dealing with
suffering. So long as one can talk and make jokes (even bitter ones) about experience,
one can, to an extent, endure that experience. The sadness of the Fool comes from his
awareness of the inadequacy of his language to do anything more than hold back the
chaos momentarily and of the necessity of making the attempt, because to stop talking
would be to surrender to the meaninglessness of the storm. The Fool’s death adds to the
quantity of needless suffering which has extinguished love, community, and possibilities
for beauty and meaning. The music is over, and nothing rests but the silence of total
destruction.
King Lear (1605). Themes. Motifs. Symbols
Justice: King Lear is a brutal play, filled with human cruelty and awful, seemingly
meaningless disasters. The play’s succession of terrible events raises an obvious question
for the characters—namely, whether there is any possibility of justice in the world, or
whether the world is fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to humankind. In the end,
we are left with only a terrifying uncertainty—although the wicked die, the good die
along with them, culminating in the awful image of Lear cradling Cordelia’s body in his
arms. There is goodness in the world of the play, but there is also madness and death, and
it is difficult to tell which triumphs in the end.
Authority versus Chaos: King Lear is about political authority as much as it is about
family dynamics. Lear is not only a father but also a king, and when he gives away his
authority to the unworthy and evil Goneril and Regan, he delivers not only himself and
his family but all of Britain into chaos and cruelty. As the two wicked sisters indulge
their appetite for power and Edmund begins his own ascension, the kingdom descends
into civil strife, and it becomes obvious that Lear has destroyed not only his own
authority but all authority in Britain. The stable, hierarchal order that Lear initially
represents falls apart and disorder engulfs the realm. The failure of authority in the face
of chaos recurs in Lear’s wanderings on the heath during the storm. Witnessing the
powerful forces of the natural world, Lear comes to understand that he, like the rest of
humankind, is insignificant in the world. This realization proves much more important
than the realization of his loss of political control, as it compels him to reprioritize his
values and become humble and caring. With this newfound understanding of himself,
Lear hopes to be able to confront the chaos in the political realm as well.
King Lear (1605). Themes. Motifs. Symbols
The Storm: As Lear wanders about a desolate heath in Act III, a terrible storm, strongly
but ambiguously symbolic, rages overhead. In part, the storm echoes Lear’s inner turmoil
and mounting madness: it is a physical, turbulent natural reflection of Lear’s internal
confusion. At the same time, the storm embodies the power of nature, which forces the
powerless king to recognize his own mortality and human frailty and to cultivate a sense
of humility for the first time. The storm may also symbolize some kind of divine justice,
as if nature itself is angry about the events in the play. Finally, the storm-engendered
chaos also symbolizes the political disarray that has engulfed Lear’s Britain.
Madness: Insanity occupies a central place in the play and is associated with both
disorder and hidden wisdom. The Fool, who offers Lear insight in the early sections of
the play, offers his counsel in a seemingly mad babble. Later, when Lear himself goes
mad, the turmoil in his mind mirrors the chaos that has descended upon his kingdom. At
the same time, however, it also provides him with important wisdom by reducing him to
his bare humanity, stripped of all royal pretensions. Lear thus learns humility. He is
joined in his real madness by Edgar’s feigned insanity, which also contains nuggets of
wisdom. Meanwhile, Edgar’s time as a supposedly insane beggar hardens him and
prepares him to defeat Edmund at the close of the play.
Blindness: Gloucester’s physical blindness symbolizes the metaphorical blindness that
grips both Gloucester and the play’s other father figure, Lear. The parallels between the
two men are clear: both have loyal and disloyal children, both are blind to the truth, and
both end up banishing the loyal children and making the wicked one(s) their heir(s). Only
when Gloucester has lost the use of his eyes and Lear has gone mad does each realize his
tremendous error. It is appropriate that the play brings them together near Dover in Act
IV to commiserate about how their blindness to the truth about their children has cost
them dearly.
King Lear (1605). Themes. Motifs. Symbols
Reconciliation: Darkness and unhappiness pervade King Lear, and the devastating Act V
represents one of the most tragic endings in literature. Nevertheless, the play presents the
central relationship—that between Lear and Cordelia—as a dramatic embodiment of true,
self-sacrificing love. Rather than despising Lear for banishing her, Cordelia remains
devoted, even from afar, and eventually brings an army from a foreign country to rescue
him from his tormentors. Lear, meanwhile, learns a tremendously cruel lesson in humility
and eventually reaches the point where he can reunite joyfully with Cordelia and
experience the balm of her forgiving love. Lear’s recognition of the error of his ways is
an ingredient vital to reconciliation with Cordelia, not because Cordelia feels wronged by
him but because he has understood the sincerity and depth of her love for him. His
maturation enables him to bring Cordelia back into his good graces, a testament to love’s
ability to flourish, even if only fleetingly, amid the horror and chaos that engulf the rest
of the play.

Macbeth (1606)
historical context: the reign of James I, who had been James VI of Scotland before he
succeeded to the English throne in 1603. James was a patron of Shakespeare’s acting
company, and of all the plays Shakespeare wrote under James’s reign, Macbeth most
clearly reflects the playwright’s close relationship with the sovereign. In focusing on
Macbeth, a figure from Scottish history, Shakespeare paid homage to his king’s Scottish
lineage. Additionally, the witches’ prophecy that Banquo will found a line of kings is a
clear nod to James’s family’s claim to have descended from the historical Banquo. In a
larger sense, the theme of bad versus good kingship, embodied by Macbeth and Duncan,
respectively, would have resonated at the royal court, where James was busy developing
his English version of the theory of divine right.
characters: King Duncan; his generals, Macbeth and Banquo; the three witches; Lady
Macbeth; Duncan’s sons Malcolm and Donalbain; Banquo’s son Fleance; Macduff.
Macbeth (1606)
Macbeth: The initial impression is that Macbeth is a brave and capable warrior. His
interaction with the witches reveals, however, that his physical courage is joined by a
consuming ambition and a tendency to self-doubt—the prediction that he will be king
brings him joy, but it also creates inner turmoil. These three attributes— bravery,
ambition, and self-doubt —struggle for mastery of Macbeth throughout the play.
Shakespeare uses Macbeth to show the terrible effects that ambition and guilt can have on
a man who lacks strength of character. We may classify Macbeth as irrevocably evil, but
his weak character separates him from Shakespeare’s great villains—Iago in Othello,
Richard III in Richard III, Edmund in King Lear—who are all strong enough to conquer
guilt and self-doubt. Macbeth, great warrior though he is, is ill equipped for the psychic
consequences of crime.
Before he kills Duncan, Macbeth is plagued by worry and almost aborts the crime.
After the murder, he fluctuates between fits of fevered action, in which he plots a
series of murders to secure his throne, and moments of terrible guilt (as when
Banquo’s ghost appears) and absolute pessimism (after his wife’s death, when he
seems to succumb to despair). These fluctuations reflect the tragic tension within
Macbeth: he is at once too ambitious to allow his conscience to stop him from
murdering his way to the top and too conscientious to be happy with himself as a
murderer. As things fall apart for him at the end of the play, he seems almost relieved
—with the English army at his gates, he can finally return to life as a warrior, and he
displays a kind of reckless bravado as his enemies surround him and drag him down.
Unlike many of Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes, Macbeth never seems to
contemplate suicide. Instead, he goes down fighting, bringing the play full circle: it
begins with Macbeth winning on the battlefield and ends with him dying in combat.
Macbeth (1606)
Lady Macbeth: one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters. She
is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband. She seems fully aware
of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one
point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself. This theme of
the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady Macbeth’s character: her
husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to
link masculinity to ambition and violence. Like the witches, Lady Macbeth uses female
methods of achieving power—that is, manipulation—to further her supposedly male
ambitions. Women, the play implies, can be as ambitious and cruel as men, yet social
constraints deny them the means to pursue these ambitions on their own. Lady Macbeth
manipulates her husband with remarkable effectiveness, overriding all his objections;
when he hesitates to murder, she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he
must commit murder to prove himself. Lady Macbeth’s remarkable strength of will
persists through the murder of the king—it is she who steadies her husband’s nerves
immediately after the crime has been perpetrated. Afterward, however, she begins a slow
slide into madness—just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the
crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly afterward. By the close of the play, she has
been reduced to sleepwalking through the castle, desperately trying to wash away an
invisible bloodstain. Significantly, she (apparently) kills herself, signaling her total
inability to deal with the legacy of her crimes.
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the three witches: Referred to as the “weird sisters” by many of the characters—they lurk
like dark thoughts and unconscious temptations to evil. In part, the mischief they cause
stems from their supernatural powers, but mainly it is the result of their understanding of
the weaknesses of their specific interlocutors—they play upon Macbeth’s ambition like
puppeteers. These witches exist as constant reminders of the potential for evil in the
human imagination. They are ineluctably part of the natural world, there to seduce
anyone who, like Macbeth, lets his imagination flirt with evil possibilities. They have no
particular abode and might pop up anywhere, momentarily, ready to incite an eternal
desire for evil in the human imagination, the evil which arises from a desire to violate our
fellow human beings in order to shape the world to our own deep emotional needs.
The audience is left to ask whether the witches are independent agents toying with
human lives, or agents of fate, whose prophecies are only reports of the inevitable. The
witches bear a striking and obviously intentional resemblance to the Fates, female
characters in both Norse and Greek mythology who weave the fabric of human lives
and then cut the threads to end them. Some of their prophecies seem self-fulfilling. For
example, it is doubtful that Macbeth would have murdered his king without the push
given by the witches’ predictions. In other cases, though, their prophecies are just
remarkably accurate readings of the future—it is hard to see Birnam Wood coming to
Dunsinane as being self-fulfilling in any way. The play offers no easy answers.
Instead, Shakespeare keeps the witches well outside the limits of human
comprehension. They embody an unreasoning, instinctive evil.
Shakespeare has the witches speak in rhyming couplets (their most famous line is
probably “Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn and cauldron bubble” in IV.1.10–
11), which separates them from the other characters, who mostly speak in blank verse.
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the corrupting power of unchecked ambition: The main theme of Macbeth—the
destruction wrought when ambition goes unchecked by moral constraints—finds its most
powerful expression in the play’s two main characters: Macbeth and his wife. In both
cases, ambition—helped, of course, by the malign prophecies of the witches—is what
drives the couple to ever more terrible atrocities. The problem, the play suggests, is that
once one decides to use violence to further one’s quest for power, it is difficult to stop.
There are always potential threats to the throne—Banquo, Fleance, Macduff—and it is
always tempting to use violent means to dispose of them.
the relationship between cruelty and masculinity: Characters in Macbeth frequently dwell
on issues of gender. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband by questioning his manhood,
wishes that she herself could be “unsexed,” and does not contradict Macbeth when he
says that a woman like her should give birth only to boys. In the same manner that Lady
Macbeth goads her husband on to murder, Macbeth provokes the murderers he hires to
kill Banquo by questioning their manhood. Such acts show that both Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth equate masculinity with naked aggression, and whenever they converse about
manhood, violence soon follows. Their understanding of manhood allows the political
order depicted in the play to descend into chaos.
At the same time, however, the audience cannot help noticing that women are also
sources of violence and evil. The witches’ prophecies spark Macbeth’s ambitions and
then encourage his violent behaviour; Lady Macbeth provides the brains and the will
behind her husband’s plotting; and the only divine being to appear is Hecate, the
goddess of witchcraft. Arguably, Macbeth traces the root of chaos and evil to women,
which has led some critics to argue that this is Shakespeare’s most misogynistic play.
While the male characters are just as violent and prone to evil as the women, the
aggression of the female characters is more striking because it goes against prevailing
expectations of how women ought to behave. Lady Macbeth’s behaviour certainly
shows that women can be as ambitious and cruel as men. Whether because of the
 constraints of her society or because she is not fearless enough to kill, Lady Macbeth
relies on deception and manipulation rather than violence to achieve her ends.
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the difference between kingship and tyranny: In the play, Duncan is always referred to as
a “king,” while Macbeth soon becomes known as the “tyrant.” The difference between
the two types of rulers seems to be expressed in a conversation that occurs in Act IV,
scene 3, when Macduff meets Malcolm in England. In order to test Macduff’s loyalty to
Scotland, Malcolm pretends that he would make an even worse king than Macbeth. He
tells Macduff of his reproachable qualities—among them a thirst for personal power and
a violent temperament, both of which seem to characterize Macbeth perfectly. On the
other hand, Malcolm says, “The king-becoming graces/ [are] justice, verity, temp’rance,
stableness, / Bounty, perseverance, mercy, [and] lowliness” (IV.3.92–93). The model
king, then, offers the kingdom an embodiment of order and justice, but also comfort and
affection. Under him, subjects are rewarded according to their merits, as when Duncan
makes Macbeth thane of Cawdor after Macbeth’s victory over the invaders. Most
important, the king must be loyal to Scotland above his own interests. Macbeth, by
contrast, brings only chaos to Scotland—symbolized by the bad weather and bizarre
supernatural events—and offers no real justice, only a habit of capriciously murdering
those he sees as a threat. As the embodiment of tyranny, he must be overcome by
Malcolm so that Scotland can have a true king once more.