Shakespeare's plays

Every day, we hear the term ‘love’ in a plethora of situations. So, what is love? According to Shakespeare, in sonnet 116 - The first quatrain describes love as an unchangeable force in the lines “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / O no! it is an ever-fixed mark.” Shakespeare enforces the fact that true love always perseveres, no matter what it’s up against by using the metaphor, “That looks on tempests and is never shaken” in the…

In the fifth scene of act one, she is reading a letter from Macbeth that describes his encounter with the witches. After she reads the letter she becomes excited and wants to aid her husband in anyway she can. She fears that he won’t be able to complete the task without her help. “Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.”(1.5.16) Lady Macbeth is willing to do anything to help her husband become king. She is willing to take control to ensure…

Within the final act of the play, Shakespeare highlights Henry’s calculating nature despite his victory at the Battle of Agincourt and his subsequent success in winning Katharine’s hand in marriage via the Treaty of Troyes as a result. However, despite Henry’s victory, he still attempts to woo Katharine for her hand in marriage. Moreover, this highlights the considerable power balance between the two, as regardless of Katharine’s broken English, Henry mocks Katharine by repeatedly using the…

Macbeth has been a well renowned play throughout its time period, and into modern society. While the play may take place within feudal times, the ideologies from the play can still be applied to how we live today. Shakespeare elegantly displays the mental destruction of Macbeth as he takes action to only achieve one thing: make sure he stays king. It is important to take away that when you are too focused on power, you can lose sight on what is important and travel down a destructive path. Our…

In life, negative choices lead to dire consequences on both a moral and psychological level. In William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Macbeth deteriorates morally while Lady Macbeth loses her sanity because of their misguided ambition and quest for power. Both characters approach the decision to go for the crown differently, and react uniquely to the strain of the murders. However, Macbeth’s decline is the more dramatic of the two. Before killing Duncan, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have very…

Every day, we hear the term ‘love’ in several different situations. So, what is love? According to Shakespeare, in sonnet 116 - The first quatrain describes love as an unchangeable force in the lines “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration find, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / O no! it is an ever-fixed mark.” Shakespeare enforces how true love always perseveres, no matter what it’s up against by using the metaphor, “That looks on tempests and is never shaken” in the second…

Shakespeare’s successful career continued to grow rapidly as his 154 sonnets were published. As more people read deeper into the sonnets there have been multiple theories on who Shakespeare was writing about specifically in the sonnets. For example, with the first sonnet up to sonnet 126 the poet introduces the “fair youth” which the reader can then infer that the poet might be talking about a male. However, the dark lady is introduced in sonnet 127, and then brought up again in sonnet 128.…

Shakespeare 's Sonnets is the title of a gathering of 154 pieces approve to William Shakespeare which cover points, for instance, the movement of time, love, fabulousness and mortality. As the famous professor A.C. Bradley who said, “The sonnets to the friend are, so far as we know, unique in Renaissance literature in being a prolonged and varied record of the intense affection of an older friend for a younger, and of other feelings arising from their relations.” (Oxford 330) It was initially…

Throughout William Shakespeare’s sonnets, there are many highs and lows in his love life. Shakespeare encounters jealousy, heartbreak, utter bliss, and everything in between. All of the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a man. This man is Shakespeare’s rival poet, but also his younger, extremely handsome lover. However, this lover is not faithful and gives Shakespeare as much grief as he does pleasure. The poem I chose to analyze is Sonnet 71. The organization of the sonnet and the meaning…

Sonnets 31 and 39 more closely follow an Italian- Petrarchan form. This is because they are written in 14 lines and are organized in octaves and sestets. Additionally, turns of these sonnets occur at line 9, also known as the beginning of a sestet. In Sonnet 31, the moon appears sad, quiet, and pale. The speaker attribute’s the moon’s mood to that of his own, where he is most likely in love with a woman who does not love him back and therefore thinks of him as foolish. The speaker reveals his…