Sidney Poitier

Assassins, a twisted musical uncovering the American dream gone terribly wrong, was written by John Weidman with music and lyrics by Steven Sondheim in 1990. Twenty-five years later, director Jamie Lloyd and the Menier Chocolate Factory give new life to the production by elevating it from a purely American motif to an internationally relevant message about the nightmarish entitlement that leads some to act from a place of evil. The plot follows thirteen characters motivated by themes such as…

12 Angry Men Essay The movie, “Twelve Angry Men” can enlighten us on the topic of small group communication, giving an understanding both good and bad, about the structure and makeup of a group. As the story unfolds, it becomes evident that the jury must reach a decision of guilty or not guilty judgement in a capital murder case. The man on trial is a Latino teenager, accused of murdering his abusive father. If the young man is found guilty, he will be sentenced to death. While examining the…

Power is the ability to manipulate and control what one desires; it is convincing someone to do something without asking authority, but it also has a positive connotation with favourable characteristics to support it. Shakespeare uses these characteristics to contrast between the moral and the corrupt. However in “King Lear” there is a prominent aspect of power that corrupts the characters foreshadowing their death. Goneril and Regan are corrupted by the power given by their father Lear and…

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…

any lover of poetry must consider a perverse and wrong-headed attack.’ Sidney identifies several charges which make up this ‘wrong-headed attack’; that there are ‘many other more fruitful knowledges’ than poetry, that poetry ‘is the mother of lies,’ and that poetry ‘is the nurse of abuse.’ These perceptions confronting literature were legitimate beliefs in Elizabethan England and serve as pretext for Sidney penning Defence. Sidney opposes these contemporary opinions by challenging the hierarchy…

The reason or theories behind Shakespeare focusing on topics of love, friendship and marriage in his sonnets “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” - William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s dream. (Goodreads). William Shakespeare’s works, especially his sonnets, namely sonnet 30, sonnet 55 and sonnet 116 included ideas of love, friendship and marriage. Topics of such, are important to Shakespeare because of what went on in…

Both Oscar Wilde and Christina Rossetti present the attractiveness of wrongdoing and fear of its consequences in both similar and different ways within An Ideal Husband and Rossetti’s Selected Poems. Rossetti and Wilde consider the attractiveness of wrongdoing under different themes. Wilde looks more at a political side of wrongdoing, whereas Rossetti considers wrongdoing in a religious sense. Mrs. Cheveley is a character that is very attracted to wrongdoing; this is evident in An Ideal…

A sonnet is a poem usually consisting of fourteen lines linked by a regular rhythm and one of two mayor rhyme schemes - that of either an Italian or Shakespearean sonnet (Prescott, 2010). Such forms will be analyzed in the works of two of the greatest poets of all time – John Donne and William Shakespeare. They are worthy canonical figures that are still acknowledged and studied today, were influenced by cultural and historical features of the era in which they wrote and included aesthetics…

The characters portrayed by Browning in his dramatic monologues are various and often rise from the world of the Italian Renaissance. From the artist Fra Lippo Lippi who has become a monk without his will, to Andrea del Sarto, a great painter who has subordinated his art to the demands of an exploitative wife, Browning manages to reveal the true value of art. The pictures of great artists blended with historical detail are embodied in his poems. Vasari’s Lives of the artistsis the source of the…

Self-knowledge is defined as the understanding of oneself or one’s own motives or characters. In the tragedy of King Lear, death is a common factor as is most tragedies written by Shakespeare. Throughout King Lear, many of the characters lacked self-knowledge when the play began. Due to the circumstances at large, many of the characters in the play either began to change for the chance of surviving, such like Edgar. Other characters like Lear began to change, but some characters remained “true…