Essays and Notes
These brief essays and notes examine a variety of issues in some of the passages drawn from Shakespeare's works. Some essays and notes reference multiple passages. All are searchable by keyword and other categories such as character, theme, etc.
Tinker, Soldier, Broker, Bridegroom
Read the NoteMost metaphors are obvious, as when Buckingham speaks of Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII:
“This butcher’s cur is venomed-mouthed, and I
Have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best
Not wake him in his slumber.”
But Shakespeare sometimes more subtly invoked metaphor through the selective choice of vocabulary.
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Beatrice’s Sonnet
Read the NoteBeatrice closes Act 3 scene 1 of Much Ado About Nothing, speaking a sonnet.* Shakespeare occasionally used sonnets in his plays, for example, in Romeo and Juliet and Richard III, which were examined in previous essays. He didn’t insert these sonnets arbitrarily. He intended to achieve effects,
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Video: Lo! She is one of this confederacy
Read the NoteFrom Peter Hall’s film (January 30, 1968) of A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Michael Jayston, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, and David Warner.
Politics and the People
Read the NoteShakespeare often wrote about politics but most often he dealt with political infighting at court. Two of his Roman plays, however, deal specifically with politicians’ relationship with the people, the fickle masses. Julius Caesar and Coriolanus offer interesting observations about these fraught relationships, which are as true today as they were both in Elizabethan and Roman times. In both plays,
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Richard, Romeo, Juliet and the Sonnet
Read the NoteTwo of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, Richard III and Romeo and Juliet, open with sonnets and then employ variations on the sonnet’s structure for dramatic and poetic effect, which is not surprising. At this point in Shakespeare’s life he seems to have had dual career goals. First, he wanted to make money, which he could accomplish through theatre.
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Shakespeare and the Casting Couch
Read the NoteStories about women summoned as supplicants to the portals of men with the power to grant their wishes, for a price, are common across professions, across countries, across millennia. Shakespeare dramatized the dilemmas some of these women faced in more than one of his plays.
In both Henry VI Part 3 and Measure for Measure, for example,
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