Raphael Holinshed

One of William Shakespeare’s great tragedies, King Lear, depicts the disastrous consequences and the descent into madness of an English King, Lear, after endowing and splitting his kingdom into 2 for his daughters. In Act 3, Scene 2, Lines 1- 26, this descent escalates into a climax as Lear stands in the middle of a heath, raging to the thunderstorm drowning on him from above to fall and cause destruction. Prior to this his two ungrateful daughters were relentlessly maltreating him, causing him to run outside in anguish and despair. His Fool attempts to urge him to go back to them and be in the sanctuary of a roof however Lear ignores him and continues to curse the weather and his daughters. This famous scene marks a rise to the climax of the play and the foredooming harrowing events that follow. The dramatic purpose of this passage contrasts Lear’s character and the mood to the beginning of the play. Shakespeare’s ingenious use of Pathetic Fallacy, which is the attribution of man’s deeds to nature, as well as vivid imagery and symbolism, help bring about to the audience the chaotic nature engulfing both Lear and his environment at the time. The scene begins with Lear and the Fool caught in the middle of an intense storm with Lear crying out above to “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!”, as he commands the elements to intensely plunge down onto them. Shakespeare’s heavy usage of personification can be seen in the first line. He humanizes the wind by depicting…

King Lear is a tragic play written by William Shakespeare sometime in the early 1600s. The play was first performed in front of an audience on December 26, 1606 at Whitehall Palace as part of his company’s Christmas celebrations. According to the introduction of the book “King Lear is Shakespeare’s most perfect embodiment both of his own artistic vision as a “poet” and of the tragic genre he and other early modern dramatists inherited from classical authors” (Ioppolo viii). The story is about a…

Imagine an arrogant king of England who plays the game “Who loves me the most?” with his three daughters. This unconventional contest will decide which daughter will receive the largest portion of land from his kingdom. Two of the daughters exaggerate their love for him, but one chooses to remain silent. Little did the king know that he would lose his power due to this competition. As the king loses everything and faces the consequences for his poor decisions, he starts to see the world in a…

Madness, craziness, insanity—all are terms derived from the human psychosis of unstable mental health. Through this mental instability, one can lose sight of proper reasoning and plunge themselves into a pseudo-reality of delusions and hallucinations that can result in the tragedy of not only self-deterioration, but have a stark impact on the people around you. However, this madness does not just manifest out of thin air, it evolves from deeper rooted problems. In William Shakespeare’s King Lear…

The birthplace of modern western democracy endured decades upon decades of civil war, but this same civil war that savaged Britain for so long also spurred the growth of democracy. The Wars of the Roses helped shape the future of Britain and the wider the world, and it also helped form the basis for William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Shakespeare lived in a time in British history only a century after the conclusion of this brutal conflict, and it had a powerful impact on his writing. Conflict over…

As depicted by the countless sold copies of this sort, tragedies appeal to the pathos of human pity. Having been distinguished from their beginning in ancient Greece, when authors such as Sophocles and Homer wrote rhetorics that are still being taught today. In fact, famous, talented Elizabethan playwright, William Shakespeare is best known for his tragedies including the acclaimed Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, it is no surprise that he exquisitely produced the play “Othello”, illustrating the…

The role of women in European society was they were to be the household doing women like things, bear children and many would say that women were the opposite of men in every way and were not to have men like qualities and should to be very matronly and do things they believe a woman should do. There are many different types of views of women and some humanist views were from people such as Baldassare Castiglione and Raphael who was a painter. Castiglione was a humanist scholar and diplomat…

Bernard Berenson was born in Lithuania in 1865, and moved to America when he was 9 years old. Berenson studied art history at Harvard on scholarship, and set off traveling Europe in 1887 with monetary help from patrons, specifically Isabella Stewart Gardner. When money started to run out Berenson still desired to stay in Europe, so he became active in the art market. In 1890 England, Berenson met his future wife, Mary Smith, and with her collaboration, began writing books on Italian art. His…

of this. (Leonardo) Da Vinci created the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Michelangelo was another influential artist of his time. He sculpted the statues Pieta and David, some of his most famous works of art. Two other widely known works of art are the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Creation of Adam. Michelangelo was influenced by the Greek mythological era and the Christian Religion. The Greek aspects are shown through his sculpting styles, he also made his sculptures larger than the…

The squealing pig demonstration of Galen is one of the most famous single physiological demonstrations of all time that even Leonardo da Vinci was inspired to produce a beautiful drawing of the recurrent laryngeal nerves (Gross, 1997). According to Gross (1998), it was Galen’s squealing pig demonstration that brought the first experimental and publicly repeatable evidence that the brain controls behavior. In his time, Galen even made lengthy arguments against Stoic philosophers, implying in…