Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet explains love through the use of three different kinds of love: unrequited love between Romeo and Rosaline, true love between Romeo and Juliet, and cynical love from Mercutio and the Nurse. The use of common, era...

Romeo and Juliet

The concept of fate functions as a central theme in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In the opening prologue of the play, the Chorus informs the audience that Romeo and Juliet are "Star ñ cross'd Lovers" (Prologue l.6). In other words, the Chorus...

The Romance of Tristan

The themes of misinterpretation and passivity are threaded throughout Beroul's text "The Romance of Tristan": characters often misread signs and events, as well as each other. There are several key misinterpretations in the story that reveal where...

Richard III

From the very opening of William Shakespeare's tragic historical drama Richard III, the isolation of the main protagonist is made quite clear, for Richard progressively separates himself from the other main characters and gradually breaks the...

Richard III

And lived with looking on his images;

But now two mirrors of his princely semblance

Are cracked in pieces by malignant death,

And I for comfort have but one false glass

That grieves me when I see my shame in him.

Thus does the Duchess of York lament...

Richard III

In William Shakespeare's Richard III, Richard opens the play by informing the audience that, since he is "not shap'd for sportive tricks " (I.i.16) that are expected in the peacetime following the York's victory, he can only prove a spiteful,...

Richard III

'Distortum vultum sequitur distortio morum.'

[Distortion of character follows a distorted countenance.] --Thomas More

Shakespeare's Richard III from the so-titled play shares the unsettling characteristic of being expressly "determined to prove a...

Richard III

Shakespeare's Richard III is a play pervasive in figurative language, one of the most notable being the symbolic image of the sun and the shadow it casts. In an examination of a short passage from the text, it will be argued that Richard is...

Richard II

Thus I play in one person many people,

And none contented. Sometimes I am king,

Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,

And so I am.

V:v:31-34, King Richard II

While entangled in the throes of dramatic suspense, the self-reflexive concept of...

Richard II

Shakespeare's genius in character and plot development is exemplified in two of his most complex history plays, Richard II and Henry IV, Part I. With these sequential plays, Shakespeare vividly develops characters and sets up complicated plots by...

Richard II

How valid is the distinction between history and tragedy in Richard II?

An attempt to sort Shakespeare's plays into neat categories may appear to have its benefits when striving to understand his work, but even a superficial reading of Richard II...

Return of the Native

"Hardy summons into us a graphic dimension, and then, apparently without realizing the danger in doing so, he allows another Eustacia to enter his novel. This Eustacia emerges, through a consistent patter of speech and action as a creature unfit...