First Consul

The first thing that comes to mind when trying to link William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet with the concept of metatheatre, is the play which is staged by young Hamlet to confront his uncle Claudius with the murder of the old king Hamlet. Nevertheless, even though nothing qualifies more as metatheatre than this particular scene, the play-within-a-play is not the only significant device of metatheatre in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There are several more metatheatrical plots that can be detected in the…

With as much as literature and entertainment have evolved in the past 400 years since the honored genius William Shakespeare popularized theatre and genres such as the Tragedy and Comedy, people still remember his work by reading and seeing it performed from time to time. People are even shown techniques he pioneered on his own such as words he invented and comic relief. In the play Macbeth, it has been debated for years about the value of the Porter’s scene and whether or not it is comic relief…

In the first chapter, Daschuk focuses on the earlier years of that period and on the medical aspects. He discusses the several diseases that affected Natives during the earlier years of the treaty period and how mostly religious groups treated them. He highlights…

those hardships were relieved and I wouldn’t have to live in an horrible place, where I couldn’t enjoy my life a bit. In my heart, I forgave my parents. ‘Happy days are coming,’ I said to myself once while riding a bus to an American school for the first time; in fact, a picture like that is worth a thousands of words. I was introduced by my teacher as an Asian kid, who flew from India to get an education in America; however, instead of giving me warm welcome, people had started mocking me,…

The effectiveness of the representation of particular groups in texts is often the source of much conjecture. The stage drama, The Secret River, adapted by Andrew Bovell and set between September 1813 and April 1814, is moderately effective in representing the Dharug people’s perspective of land ownership, inter-race relationships and their own cultural values. Such perspectives are conveyed by Bovell’s use of dramatic conventions in order to humanise the Dharug perspective and add a dimension…

Shakespeare is not just a person who lived 500 years ago, he is the kind that has written about 37 plays and 156 sonnets. His plays were played by only male actors on stage, even the female parts. Phyllis Rackin main point in his book Woman and Shakespeare, in titled chapter ‘Boys Will Be Girls’, has said that women actors play an important role on stage. The women perform the female parts as adequately as the male actors, it arises concern about masculine sexual identity and males on stage…

stupidity, which is defined at this “Behavior that shows lack of good sense or judgement.” Keeping this idea of stupidity in mind while analyzing Odysseus’s actions, we start to see where the line between the two qualities is blurred. Many readers at first glance find Odysseus incredibly brave by planning to attack all 108 suitors alone, at the same time. But it’s likely that this is only seen as courageous because he succeeded. When we look at Odysseus’s actual plan and execution, we see many…

In the play, As You Like it, Shakespeare pens through the character Jaques, the proverbial saying, “all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.” No doubt, we are all players on the world's stage, but like Shakespeare—whether we've ever put pen to page, or fingers to keyboard, to spin a yarn or not—I believe we are all storytellers as well. As the oft-quoted dictum goes, knowledge is power, and stories, ab initio have been its modus operandi. Romantic, or realistic,…

According to the organization dedicated to Shakespeare’s authorship, Shakespeare Authorship, it is listed that the first possibility of another author arose in 1769. “The Life and Adventures of Common Sense” by Herbert Lawrence questioned the possibility that Shakespeare might be a pen name. During the Renaissance era, in which Shakespeare was from, there seemed to be…

Slight Defects The “Glass Menagerie” is a play about memory, specifically the memories of the author Tennessee Williams himself. This play is meant to be biographical, but also is, at times, grossly unrealistic. That was Williams’ intention, however, to give the play a mortifying demeanor. This play is with hidden ulterior meanings as well as glimpses into the true life of Tennessee Williams. The play features Tom Wingfield, the main character and narrator of the play, Laura Wingfield, his…