Facilitator’s Name
Introduction
Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest writer in the history of English Literature. The literary piece by Shakespeare is still regarded as masterpieces and myriad playwright takes the major inspiration from him. In the initial days of his efforts, he mainly focused on comedies and histories, but later his focus was on tragedies. Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth were his finest works on tragedies (Gielgud & McEvoy 187). Later in his career, he focused on tragic comedies that can also be titled as romances. He wrote numerous manuscripts. Among them, only those were survived which were in the printed form. Apart from that, those manuscripts that were failed to transmute into printed form were failed to survive. Numerous scholars tried hard to establish the original work written by Shakespeare. The scholars worked hard for recovering those for more than 350 years. Shakespeare started to create his plays in the years between 1590 to 1614. His work was started printing in cheap quarto editions from 1594. His entire literary journey depicts some themes that he always portrayed through his writings. These themes include: love, appearance and reality, marriage, revenge, conflict, and change. This research paper will analyze the aforementioned themes by closely studying each of them.
Appearance and Reality
The first major theme that is usual in Shakespeare’s plays is appearance and reality. He intentionally adds scenes in such a way that it highlights the difference between the two sides of the screen. The title of one of his play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is self-explanatory, which highlights the aforementioned themes. Many of his scenes are presented in night with moonlight. When moon shines on a surface, it presents a different image than its reality. In many instances, the Shakespeare defines a situation in which the character dreams a thing. The way the character dreams, it shows that he/she takes the dream as reality. Even the readers of the play are framed in a way that it inclines them to think if the dream was not dream, but it was a reality. This dream then disrupts and after this the readers come to know that it was just a dream. Through such situations, Shakespeare encourages the readers to make a clear boundary between appearance and reality.
Marriage
Another interesting theme of Shakespeare’s plays is marriage. The true and ultimate fulfillment of romance is based on marriage. For instance, if we study Midsummer Night’s Dream, all the bitterness in relationship and all the damages are cured through marriage. The way Shakespeare highlights the event of marriage as if this is the solution to all the problems that arise in relationships. In the Act IV of the Midsummer Night’s Dream, the triple marriage marks as the solution to the problems two young couple faced in their relationship. Marriage live in contrast with life of lovers is less romantic and without the feeling of love. The association of love and romance is only equated with the couples who are unmarried. The couples without any formal relationships, lives an unstable life and face many challenges from the society. Not only they face challenges, but also there is a lack of stability (Ackroyd 223). On contrast, the married couple lives a comparatively stable life. Although, marriage remains a source of joy, but sometimes the things goes astray. For example, in Othello, marriage caused the bitterness in relationship. Before marriage, relationship of the couple was pleasant but it turns out to be completely negative after getting married. Although, Shakespeare never explicitly regarded marriage as positive or negative but he has always portrayed marriage as a life turning point.
Love and Romance
In most of his plays the love and romance end in death or other tragedy. He depicted the love in an idealized manner for instance in Romeo and Juliet, the treatment of love depicted in a breath taken way. This play is one of the iconic stories of passion and love. Still today, young lovers are considered as William Shakespeare’s character Romeo. The romantic love is embodied in Romeo and Juliet in that the feeling of love is depicted as a force of nature which is so firmed and strong that it compasses all the societal conventions. In the beginning of Romeo Juliet play, Romeo fall in love with Rosaline but that was the immature infatuation. The real and true love was between Romeo and Juliet and there love was a fate. Initially both fall in love with someone else, and at last they managed to find each other and fall in love. The other comedic play known as A Midsummer Night’s Dream depicts a dominant theme of love. In this play, he explores how people fall in love with physical appearance of the being (Crewe 223). The play depicts that people may fell in love at first sight by looking the physical appearance of a person. That feeling of infatuation turns out to be declined and decreased as the time passes by. The play emphasizes on the fact that the true love is eternal and not associated with the materialistic things. It is not bound to the physical attraction but with the inner soul and beautiful heart. The story depicts that love is not an easy path; lovers have to confront with different challenges either in the form of societal pressure or anything else. They have to face hardships, however, the story suggests that in the end, true love never fails and makes out its own way. The true lovers in the end find happiness and harmony. The audience and reader of the play are forced to believe the fact that love is whimsical and irrational if it is experienced by youngsters.
Hatred
The theme hatred depicts extreme dislike or feeling of abhor for other person. In all the plays of William Shakespeare, the feeling of abhore and hatred are involved. For instance in Romeo Juliet play, the feeling of abhore and hatred are depicted clearly between two families. The play turns out to a violent situation when they ended up killing each other. The violence and feeling of hatred is a common theme of William Shakespeare that can be seen in his every play. The other play Othello also depicted this theme; the play ends up with the killing of main character's wife just because of the feeling of abhore and jealousy (Darling 319). The main character Othello was a possessive man. Violence and hatred are the feelings that depicted in the play as the man Othello killed his wife because of jealous and possessive personality. He kept feeling of hatred against every person who interacted with his wife.
Deception
The theme deception was also used in William Shakespeare plays. For instance, in the play hamlet, father of hamlet got killed in a secret plot by hamlet’s son in order to seize the throne. In this play, because of deception two characters got killed, one was hamlet and the other one was Claudius and the throne was left to the prince of Norway. The theme of deception was also in the Romeo and Juliet play. Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other they wed secretly. The female character Juliet in order to avoid marrying with other person i.e., Paris, spread her death news. The deception theme in this play resulted in the adverse effects as the hero of the play killed himself when he visited his wife tomb and saw her death body. He was unable of the fact that his wife was just pretending to be death as she was deceiving others. The other play Macbeth also had deception theme in the story, the main character was tricking him to believe the fact he can control the fate. He started believing that he will be becoming king. He had delusion that no human being can harm him. The story ended up with the death of Macbeth and lady Macbeth.
Revenge
The notion of revenge is also a common theme in Shakespeare’s plays. For instance, the entire Hamlet is based on the idea of revenge. The entire life of Hamlet is dedicated to take revenge from the Claudius, who killed his father and married his mother. Initially Hamlet was unaware of this fact and he realized about after his father’s ghost tells him about the things that happened. Not only Hamlet develops an attitude of taking revenge from his uncle, but he also develops the same feeling for his mother. His thoughts continuously incline him to take revenge from the murders of his father and the people who supported it.
Another play Othello also depicts the theme of revenge. Othello loved Desdemona but things did not turn up well. Lago, who Othello did not choose to be his lieutenant, took revenge from him. He intentionally developed strategies, so Othello becomes suspicious on his wife. He thought as if his wife and his lieutenant Cassio were lovers (Kastan 124). This situation hampered the pleasant relationship between the couple and the Othello developed a feeling of disgrace for his wife due to this revelation. The scenario that arose from one revenge gave birth to another revenge. The themes of revenge do not stop here, as this idea is common in various plays by Shakespeare. Many plays have revenge as the core of the play and many plays have some specific situations that highlight the idea of revenge.
Conflict
A very common theme of Shakespeare’s plays is Conflict. The conflict in his plays takes many forms and is of different nature. There are conflicts between families, rulers, couples and more. For instance, Julius Ceasar, Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s dream. Normally, the conflicts in his plays becomes the reason behind the characterization. Many characters in the play appear and many show their reality as any conflicts arise. It will not be wrong to say that conflicts in Shakespeare’s plays are the major reason behind the continuity of the scenes. For instance, the entire Hamlet is based on the conflict between Hamlet’s uncle and him. A clear suspicion on his mother is also caused by the conflicts in the relationship. The bitterness in Othello’s relationship with his wife is also based on the conflicts in the relationship between Othello and Lago (McEvoy 178). These conflicts between the ideas, thoughts and feelings gave rise to the problems that appeared in these plays. We see a pattern in his plays, where the core of the story arises from conflicts and it ends with the end of conflicts. This pattern in Shakespeare’s plays is very common and majority of the plays are inspired from this idea.
Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded that Shakespeare work has been recognized worldwide. William Shakespeare wrote books on different themes like love, romance, tragedy, revenge, hatred as well as on history and literature. He did not write just plays, novels but also poems and sonnets. He is famous for his diverse writings styles. The aforementioned themes are discussed in the Shakespeare’s plays. His writing styles are known as blank verse. In his play, themes of love and romance are treated in a dubious and ambiguous way. William Shakespeare plays had tragic endings in almost all the plays. The aforementioned themes i.e., love, hatred, deception etc., were used in almost all the plays of William Shakespeare. He justified with all the themes in his plays and balances every aspect in his writing style. William Shakespeare plays discussed different notions of the plays. He worked on tragedies, comedies or romance and these themes always remain dominant in English literature.
Works Cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare: The Biography. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2005. Print.
Crewe, Jonathan V. The Pelican Shakespeare. New ed. New York, N: Penguin, 2000. Print.
Gielgud, John, and John Miller. Acting Shakespeare. New York: Scribner, 1992. Print.
McEvoy, Sean. Shakespeare the Basics. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Darling, Benjamin. Shakespeare on Love. Paramus, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print.
Kastan, David. William Shakespeare. New York: Sterling Pub., 2000. Print.
