Drama

“I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget” (“Top Nine Arthur Miller Quotes”). This interesting quote is from Arthur Miller. He was an American writer who focused many of his plays on real life issues like racism and discrimination (“Arthur Miller”). His play The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1692. This was the time of the Salem witch trials. The play The Crucible may have been written 64 years ago, but it is still widely read in…

Antigone and the Death of a Salesman Most plays focus on a central theme. The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Antigone by Sophocles are two examples of plays which use betrayal as their central theme. Antigone is a Greek play by Sophocles. It is a Greek tragedy full of loyalty, betrayal, love and death. The play Antigone features many central themes with betrayal being the main theme of the story. The theme of betrayal is evident in the beginning of the play when the king Creon betrays…

Love can manifest itself in many ways, but some types of love are socially unacceptable, like a romantic or erotic love between family members. This type of taboo love occurs in the ancient Greek play Hippolytus and the 1962 film Phaedra when a stepmother falls in love with her stepson. And although the situations and themes appear similar on a surface level, when analyzing them further, it becomes easy to see that they are quite different. Hippolytus, written by Euripides and first performed…

Should there or should there not be a social class system? That is the question at hand in George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion; even though Shaw does not directly state this question, nor the answer to this question in the play’s five acts. It is blatantly made clear, though, that one of Shaw’s primary goals was to influence society to question itself for what it had developed for a social class system. Shaw himself states: I am, and have always been, and shall now always be, a revolutionary…

Exposition can be defined as the background information a playwright provides usually at the start of the play in order to for the readers to understand the dramatic situation and action as the play progresses. Using Freytag’s Pyramid, exposition can be marked by the part of the play before any rising action or conflict between the characters. As such, the exposition for Master Harold and the Boys, by Athol Fugard, can be until the point where Hally enters the play, since the entrance of Hally…

Antigone is a tragedy, written by Sophocles. It is the third of the three Theban plays but was the first written, chronologically. The play expands on the Theban legend that predated it and picks up where Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes ends . The play circumscribes various characters but Antigone is the one who is some way or the other connected to all the characters of the play. The most probable theme of the play is secular laws v divine law. Thus the conflict between secular law and divine…

Sophocles led an exemplary lifestyle in ancient Greece. He was a playwright, priest, and even took part in the Sicilian Expedition. As a result of these influential events and professions in his life he followed a traditional view of ancient Greek religion and society in his tragedies. As a result we as an audience get such characters as Antigone who deviates from the role and personality of ancient Greek women. In the tragedy Antigone, Polynices is left unburied and Antigone his sister believes…

The Bow of Herakles is a powerful symbol in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. It is used both as a visual and verbal motif throughout the play. Copious references to the Bow convey important themes that ultimately prepares the play’s audience for the events that transpire in the exodos. Some of these points include ___. The significance of the Bow is made evident in the play with several references to the prophecy within which it is invoked. The first of these references was an indirect allusion to the…

Equally enjoyable to watch, tragedy and comedies are polar opposites on stage. Tragedies are consumed by suffering, and death, while comedies include excitement and joyful scenes. Brutal scenes of violent combat, as well as internal combat, compete against the scenes of singing and dancing in a comedy. A tragedy focuses on the main character and their despair/pain, while a comedy is created the story of two lovers. By comparing Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear and Much Ado, the structural…

The namesake of the play, “Macbeth” is a man who faced a decision between his own personal passion and his moral obligations and duties. The two choices pulled at him and seemed to torment him even after he made a decision. Through the conflict that Macbeth felt because of his decisions, the reader can better empathize with him, and can obtain a more profound lesson from the story concerning decisions between personal passions and moral obligations. Macbeth is not what one would call “perfect.”…