SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS

"SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS": Shakespeare didn't go to university and he didn't spoke very well Latin. He copied stories and he taken story from other plays. Shakespeare' s genius didn't lie in the way he constructed his plays. In fact, they were full of inconsistencies. The Shakespeare greatness lies in his ability to represented the complexity of life. In fact he spoke on life in all its complexity. He didn't transmitted message through his characters. Shakespeare was very good to use English language and he was good to use imagery to deal with his great universal themes. The language and the songs created the atmosphere. The language changed with the characters.

"SHAKESPEARE'S THEMES"

Shakespeare's texts presents 2 important themes: love and the passing of time. Shakespeare viewed love as a winning force; in fact Romeo and Juliet defy their families' wishes in the name of love. Antony and Cleopatra love for other reasons. Love however , is subject to the passing of time, so only art and poetry can beat the time. An other theme is the nature of power: this is a very contemporary theme; in fact people want absolute power above all(it isn't good for Shakespeare). Sometimes power is in contradiction with love : for example in the story of Romeo and Juliet where their families are in conflict and this situation ''kill'' Romeo and Juliet.

ROMEO AND JULIET" by William Shakespeare

The play begins with a prologue where it is explained the social context in which it is told the history of two lovers who succeeded in bringing the peace between their families, in struggle since many years. Then the history starts: Verona, in the 17^th century, is ruled by the prince Escalus who, tired for the continue hts between the Capulet and the Montague, two households of his territory, promulgates a law about not to begin a kick in the streets of the citadel. So, at the first moment, they control themselves and, when they meet each other, they say only some words of rage and vengeance. One day, Romeo, the son of Montague, has been convinced by his friend Mercutio, a relative of the prince, to participate at a party organised in the Capulet's house. There he meets Juliet, the daughter of the owner of the house where it is placed the dance, but only for few seconds, and he remains shined by her beauty. So, after the end of the party, he goes below the windows of his lover and they declare to each other their love, but Romeo must escape for fear to be discover and to provoke a bad situation because of the feud between their family. The next day, with the help of Friar Laurence and of Juliet's foster-mother, they can marry in secret and they can pass also the night together. Unfortunately after that date, Romeo meet Mercutio and Benvolio, one of his friends, while they were hting with Tybalt, Lady Capulet's nephew, and some of his relatives. He tries to stop the struggle but Mercutio dies and so, for vengeance, he kills Tybalt. When the Prince Escalus discovers it, he exiles Romeo, who can no longer stay in Verona, and goes to Mantua. As soon as Juliet hear about his departure, she starts to cry, using the excuse of the death of his cousin but his father, to console her, engages his daughter with Paris, a boy of good family. To escape from this marriage, she follows the piece of advice given her by Friar Laurence, who suggests her to drink a poison whose power is to show an alive person like dead for forty-two hours. The catholic worries himself about sending a letter to Romeo with the explication: Juliet would have take the toxin and, after two days, when everybody would have believed her dead, she would have reached his lover in Mantua. But, because of a setback, the correspondence can not arrives to Romeo who goes to the tomb of Capulet's daughter and, after having seen her body without life, he drinks a poison too to reach his lover. But after few seconds Juliet wakes up and, seeing the Montague's son dead, she kills herself with a dagger. The only good consequence of this history is that the two households can understand that their hts can only kill other of their relatives without bringing to any good solution.  

CHARACTERS OF "ROMEO AND JULIET":

Romeo: he is Montague's son and the lover of Juliet. He is very impulsive and passionate, two good characteristics but, if they are brought to the excess, they have got bad consequences ( in fact at the end Romeo dies ). He is very determined, actually, when he wants something or loves someone, he makes everything to defend his sentiments and the people he takes care of. He does not listen to the other pieces of advices, except if they arrive from Friar Laurence, the only person who seems to have got a little of authority on him, because he is extremely stubborn.

Juliet: she is Capulet's daughter and the lover of Romeo. She is very fragile and shy, but sometimes she seems to be impulsive like his sweetheart: for example during the conversation at her window, she declares immediately her feelings to Romeo, even if they met only few hours before. She is determined and she opposes to his father ( a strange thing for that time ) about the marriage with Paris because she is a girl who follows her heart instead of her mind.

CHARACTERS OF "MACBETH":

Macbeth is a bad person. He is a coward because of his submission to his wife and to the destiny, and also because he is not able to assume his responsibility. He wants to ascend to the throne only for the riches that it would derivate, not for the help he could give to the Scottish population and to the government of the land. Shakespeare uses images to create the character. At the end the spectator feels that Macbeth in unfit to reign through the effect of he hidden persuasive power of the imagery.

COMMENT OF: "THAT TIME OF YEAR.."

The difference between sonnet and tragedies depends on the object: tragedies the poet represents character's feelings, in sonnet the poet expresses his own feelings. The sonnet is divided in 3 stanzas. In the first stanza he describes autumn or early winter intended like the end of the season of life. In the second stanza Shakespeare describes sunset turning into night as a second metaphor of the death. In the third stanza he describes a fire which is fading out, consumed by that same wood, transformed in ashes, which once fed it. In the final couplet, which Shakespeare as first, introduced in the English sonnet, he put an unexpected conclusion: exhorts the reader to love life more. Shakespeare's sonnet as Petrarcha's ones composed of 14 lines, but has a different structure (4+4+4+2 instead 4+4+3+3). The rhyming pattern is ABAB CDCD GG. There are 10 syllables in each line.