Folger Shakespeare Library

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage” said by Ray Bradbury (Good Reads). For Hamlet, in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Denmark has him locked inside of a cage of confusion. After Old Hamlet’s death, Hamlet is sent into a depression like phase where he does not know what to do with himself. However, once he meets with Old Hamlet’s ghost, he suddenly has a surge of motivation. This motivation makes Hamlet appear insane to the people around him, and his devious…

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, seventeen year old Abigail William’s motivation is to win John Proctor's affection. This motivation remains steadfast throughout the play and is also a key factor into the scheme of eliminating anyone who stands in her way. Pointedly, Elizabeth Proctor, John’s wife is the focus of her ploy. Abigail feels she must find a way to eliminate Elizabeth from John’s life while still looking desirable to him. However, as the play develops, it is easy to see that Abigail…

In both life and literature, love exists as a hidden force that secretly drives all lives, propelling people's greatest desires and pushing them to extreme lengths if it means that they will get what they want. Love, in whatever form it comes in, will make people crazy. In fact, it will make them so crazy that centuries after a work has been written, students analyze the insanity behind the actions and the all powerful drive — love— that caused it. In Plato's Symposium, characters examine not…

The Wayang Kulit is a famous shadow puppet play in Indonesia. Wayang means shadow and Kulit means leather. This is to be said one of the earliest forms of puppet dancing, going back to the year 800. The origin of the Wayang Kulit comes from Indonesia, although there have been arguments that it also could have come from China. This style of theater is based on the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata". The Ramayana is a story where a prince Rama tries to rescue his wife from an evil king and The…

they have killed their superior because of their greed. Directly after he murders king Duncan, Macbeth shows that guilt is consuming him. “What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes! / Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood?”(Shakespeare Act II, Scene II). Macbeth shows that he is in disbelief of what he just did. He also wonders if anything will ever purge him of the great weight that he has just put on his own shoulders. Directly after she killed the singer Selena, when…

1 / 2 Literature is sculpted by both the context in which it is composed as well as the perpetual essence of humanity, thus presenting relevance to societies of any era. Shaped by the postmodernist defiance of antecedent convictions, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet acts as medium for his indictment of human dissatisfaction — ceaseless and inevitable. A product of the subversive 1996, the film criticises humanity’s natural inclination toward idealism and hedonism, exhorting viewers to forsake…

Jill M. Hebert considers the duality of Morgan Le Fay in her book Morgan Le Fay, Shapeshifter. Hebert explains that the contradicting characterizations of Morgan stem from authorial manipulation; in each story that mentions Morgan, the author has slightly changed her character traits and personality to fit the author's vision of who she should be. Morgan is a complex legend and that is exactly why Hebert claims that to limit her as either a witch or a goddess would be undermining who she is. Her…

The Physician’s Tale is a moral allegory centered around a knight named Virginius, his daughter Virginia, and a powerful judge named Appius. The tale starts with a detailed analysis on the beauty of Virginia, describing has as fair and in “excellent beauty”, as well as claiming that Nature had “Moulded her to so great an excellence”. Her beauty is put into perspective when several allusions to the great ancient artists of Pygmalion, Apelles, and Zeuxis are made: “Behold now, I, Nature,/Thus can…

They have become well known in Roman poetry by their readers; Lesbia, Cynthia, Delia, Nemesis and Corinna. They are told to us as being some of the most beautiful and enchanting ladies in Rome by their hopeless romantic lovers. These poems are filled with passion, longing, romance, frustration, lust, jealousy, and heartache. All these women in their own way are examples of the role of the “cruel beloved” that is present throughout Roman erotic poetry. Lovely as they may be, their perspective…

Eve Richards L.Liebl 10A Hour 4 Expository Essay 1 Nov. 2017 This quote by Sidney Howard describes the struggles these characters have to go through and what they have to give up in order to get what they want, "One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it." In William Shakespear's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, many characters have their goals, motivations or wants that are driving their actions. Three people in this play all have one thing in…