Arts & Entertainment Essay Examples

The Importance of Being Victorian: Oscar Wilde “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility” (Wilde 14). As a brilliant writer of the 1800’s, Oscar Wilde devoted the majority of his works towards unveiling the harsh truths of the…

Potential passages for my exam * Act 1 Scene 1 Lines 1-70 (opening of the play) * Act 2 Scene 1 Lines 1-60 (Beatrice views on love) * Act 2 Scene 1 Lines 160-257 (Love Benedick and Beatrice) * Act 2 Scene 3 Lines 6-27 and 181-200 (Benedicks speeches on love) * Act 3 Scene…

The “quintessential American tragic hero”1 or “a passive victim of corrupted propagandist society”2; this is just one example of the conflicting views surrounding Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman”. Consumed with a flawed vision of the American Dream, this character is certainly a contemporary figure and his life remains symbolic and relevant…

Towards the end of the 19th century, Henrik Ibsen set out to write a play which represented a realistic society, a play without melodramatic language in unbelievable situations, and a play which attempted to show the realities of modern life. The result was unsurprisingly controversial, yet Ibsen sacrificed audience appeal for the naturalistic language he…

1. What kind of people do you think Kino and his wife are? First of all, Kino and his family seem to be poor people because we can see in the text that they have a quite bad standard of living: they live in a brush house, the baby sleeps in a hanging box, there…

So far. the drama has hurdled through seven scenes of mounting tenseness and now tithers on the threshold of regicide. At this point. Shakespeare freezes the action. In the tenseness of silence. both character and drama develop on new degrees. For Macbeth. this monologue. in A. C. Bradley’s words: “is where the powerful workings of…

At the beginning of this scene Othello does not engage in conversation with Desdemona, he simply tells her to go to bed. “Get to bed on th’instant; I will be returned forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there. Look’t be done. ” Here we can notice Othello’s use of imperatives; this implies that he has lost all…

In act 5 scene 2 of the drama ‘Othello’ . we witness Othello killing his married woman Desdemona because Iago tricked him into believing that she was perpetrating criminal conversation. Throughout the drama Iago fooled Othello into believing that his married woman was rip offing on him. this narrative line flood tides in this concluding…

In line 139 Juliet says, “My only love sprung from my only hate! ” Two types of love are at conflict here for Juliet. Romantic love (for Romeo) and love for her family, (because she was brought up to hate the Montague’s). This saddens her. There is another type of love in the play –…

“To be or not to be – that is the question” Hamlet famously declaims in the third act of William Shakespeare’s longest drama, and one of the most probing plays ever to be performed on stage. Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ was written around the year 1600 in the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I,…

My main reaction to Hamlet in these scenes is that he has a very changeable character. He treats different people in different ways, depending on whether he thinks they are plotting against him or not. But also his moods change from one extreme to the other, especially with Ophelia. In one extreme he will be…

In order to show that Act 5 scene ii, is a fitting close to the play Hamlet. I will be looking at how the characters have been brought to a close. I will also be looking at themes and the importance of order being restored in the court at the end of the play. The…

Many events have occurred in this complex play to put the main character, young Hamlet, in the position and frame of mind in which he finds himself at the beginning of the last scene of the play. Only months ago, his father died, seemingly from natural causes leaving everyone grief stricken. Yet within two months,…

Stubborn, irresponsible and shallow: three words to describe the character Jack, from ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. In Oscar Wilde’s light-hearted play, Jack is a wealthy young man, who is a main character involved in the complex plot(s). Throughout the play, Wilde slowly reveals different things about Jack so the audience feel like they are…

‘Macbeth’ gives us a classic example of the literary definition of a ‘tragic hero’. The title character is a Thane, of high birth, and an influential leader whose decisions affect many others. He possesses a number of admirable qualities, among these honesty and conscience. Along with these positive attributes, he also possesses a fatal flaw,…

The play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is one of the most well-known plays written by William Shakespeare. I think he intended to show what life is like for women in a society ruled by men; men were seen to be superior to women, as women had little rights. Women began life as property of their fathers;…

The play I am referring to is the romantic tragedy written by William Shakespeare in the 16th century, called ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The film was then interpreted again the 1990’s by a director called Baz Luhrmann. The key characters in this story are Romeo, one of the central protagonists; Juliet is the other main character….

‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a play written by William Shakespeare and is possibly his most renowned piece of work. The play is set during the Elizabethan period when daughters had to marry according to their parents’ wishes; males were potentate. A girl was ready to be married as soon as she hit the first stages…

Act 2 Scene 2 is a particularly famous scene in William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet. Often called the balcony scene, it is where the two lovers first meet to proclaim their love for each other. The balcony scene takes place after the ball in the Capulet Mansion, in Juliet’s orchard. The characters are presented…

Romeo and Juliet is the classic love story written by the infamous William Shakespeare, the Elizabethan playwright. It is set in Verona in the early 16th century and tells the story of two households- the Montagues and Capulets, who are equally alike in power, wealth, social status and dignity, as said in the prologue ‘two…

In this essay I will address how conflict is successfully used in Act 1 Scene 1 to prepare the audience for the rest of the play. It will firstly show how Shakespeare uses physical conflict between the two feuding families. Secondly I will demonstrate the idea that Shakespeare introduces emotional conflict through the character of…

Shakespeare’s plays present the relationships between men and women in various ways, as for example, Benedick is a supposed tyrant to women, while Romeo, a member of the Capulet household, is deeply in love with Juliet. Shakespeare makes the audience focus on how men and women portrayed themselves to society in the Renaissance period. Men…

Juliet is presented very similarly in both the film and in the text version when comparing in Act 1 Scene 5. This is the scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet each other and immediately fall in love. Although their presentation is largely the same, there are some slight differences. Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo…

I consider The Merchant of Venice as a comedy with tragic possibilities mostly due to the melancholy ending which leaves the reader thinking whether what happened during the play could be considered morally good or not. Aristotle produced the first ideas about what a tragic and comic play were. Shakespeare altered this slightly but the…

Soon enough the child ended up in the household of the childless king and queen of Corinth. As a young man he learned of his fate to kill his father and marry his mother. Fleeing his family and seeking refuge from his terrible future in a distant city-state of Thebes only brought the actualization of…

We discover about Slim’s many qualities such as his ability to bring out the secrets of others from them. This is shown in Chapter Three in which he questions George about him and Lennie going around together. Slim’s cunningness is shown not through the dialogue but through the description such as “Slims’ calm invitation to…

Shakespeare tends to use his minor characters to allow a brief interlude of comic relief in his tragedies. However, these minor characters are also pivotal characters through which Shakespeare can convey much deeper and darker meanings to the audience whilst using black humour. The minor characters of the Porter in Macbeth and the Clown in…

The tragedy, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was written in the year of 1593. The play includes a number of universal themes such as love, hate, death and loyalty so as to capture the imagination of a range of audiences. In this essay I am going to start by including a very brief history of the Globe…

William Shakespeare is considered to be among the greatest playwrights that have ever lived. He has written dozens and dozens of brilliant plays, most of those plays have been made into movies. One such play that has been made into a movie is “Othello. ” The play “Othello” is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. It…

Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ Undoubtedly ‘King Lear’ is considered to be one of the most tragic of Shakespearean plays. Shakespeare explores the boundaries of human nature and the extent. At the time the play was set, Lear would have been absolute monarch. At the beginning of the play Lear is at his zenith and a powerful…