Questions tagged [william-shakespeare]
Questions about the workes of William Shakspeare, who writ many a famous plaie and poem. For questions about his plaies, may it please you to add a tag for the plaie (e.g. [hamlet]); for questions about his sonnets, may it please you to add the tag [poetry].
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Why would Hamlet fear suicide if he knew of life after death?
Prince Hamlet describes his fear of death in poetic phrases.
To be or not to be, that is the question: ...
To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—aye, there's the rub:
For in ...
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What is the source of "You can achieve a lot with hate, but even more with love" (Shakespeare?)
I have seen a postcard with a quote "You can achieve a lot with hate, but even more with love", signed "Shakespeare", in a French bookshop.
The quote is not exact, because I have translated it back ...
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What's the meaning of "give someone the lie" in Macbeth?
As I have noticed there are multiple interpretations of the following lines from William Shakespeare 's Macbeth. For example, "drink gave thee the lie" has been interpreted as diversely as "deceived ...
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Context of "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow"?
I go, I go; look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.
-- Puck, Act III Scene II, A Midsummer Night's Dream
This is a well-known line from a Shakespeare play, but did Shakespeare ...
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The meaning of "Lovers' Food"
This question is regarding a dialogue of Hermia in Scene 1 of Act 1 of 'The Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare where she mentions, "From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight." Please ...
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What effect did the knocking at the gate in "Macbeth" have on Thomas De Quincey?
In Thomas De Quincey's 1823 essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth", he describes the effect of the knocking at the gate (Macbeth, Act II, Scene 3) on him when he was a boy: "it [...
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Any textual evidence from Shakespeare's Macbeth regarding Macbeth's oath to kill the king?
In act 1, scene 7, Lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to keep his promise and kill king Duncan, but is there any textual evidence from the play regarding his earlier oath to kill the king?
Here, for ...
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If Hamlet, being a prince, outranked Horatio, why did he address him as "sir"?
Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2:
HAMLET:
So much for this, sir. Now shall you see the other.
You do remember all the circumstance?
HORATIO: Remember it, my lord!
Horatio replies to Hamlet calling ...
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Was Edmund in the Narnia series loosely inspired by Edmund in King Lear?
In King Lear, Edmund, resentful of his inferior status to his older brother, betrays his family and frames his brother as a traitor. This strikes me as being quite a bit like what Edmund does in The ...
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Did William Shakespeare hide things in his writings?
I was reading Shakespeare's third sonnet, and I noticed something funny. I am going to put in bold all the capital letters in the sonnet itself.
Sonnet III
When fortie Winters shall beseige thy brow,...
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Which of these sources is right about "The Tempest"?
This is part of a quote by Ferdinand in the beginning of scene 1 of act 3 of "The Tempest":
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy, least when I do it.
According to ...
kelvin
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How is Hamlet different from a conventional Elizabethan revenge play?
It is well known that Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy established the genre of revenge tragedy in Elizabethan drama. The play contains many elements such as the appearance of a ghost, a play within ...
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Inconsistencies in the character of Horatio in Hamlet
In the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet, Horatio is a friend and "fellow student" of the eponymous prince. A meticulous reading of the text will reveal certain apparent inconsistencies in the depiction ...
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What does Hamlet mean when he calls Claudius a "villain"?
In Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, prince Hamlet repeatedly calls Claudius a "villain". Here is a quote from Act 2 Scene 2 :
Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, ...
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Romeo and Juliet “Which then most sought where most might not be found”
What literary devices and rhetorical techniques does Shakespeare use in the following passage?
Benvolio. I, measuring his affections by my own,
which then most sought where most might not be found,
...
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Why did the Witches give the prophecy in the first place?
The 3 Witches prophecied to Macbeth that he would be king, thus setting the play into motion. Why did they do that? Did they realize that they were basically giving a self-fulfilling prophecy, and ...
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Play: With A Memorable Conversation between a villain and his henchman
I remember reading several lines from what I think was a Shakespearean type play. It was between a villain and one of his henchman, and I think they were discussing the murder of someone referred to ...
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Where and how did James Joyce condemn Hamlet as a failure?
Earlier this year, someone asked Why did T.S. Eliot make a statement that 'Coriolanus' was Shakespeare's masterpiece and that 'Hamlet' was an artistic failure?
If the Wikipedia article about William ...
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(How) have the interpretations of Macbeth's ending evolved over time?
I just attended a performance of Macbeth that ended on a much more ambivalent note than Shakespeare's original text. Instead of Malcolm and his posse picking up the shambles and Malcolm motivating his ...
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When was Shakespeare's The Tempest first analysed from a "post-colonial" perspective?
A recent answer from verbose mentioned:
Postcolonial approaches to The Tempest cast Prospero as colonizer, exercising imperial control over the original inhabitants of the island: Caliban and Ariel....
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Where did Edmond Malone place the Tempest in the chronology of Shakespeare's plays?
In an excellent answer to one of my previous questions, verbose writes:
Since The Tempest is the first play printed in the First Folio, it was often assumed to be an early play. Scholars such as ...
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Can three unstressed syllables constitute a substitute foot in Shakespeare?
While trying to ascertain the accentuation of certain names in Shakespeare, by analyzing lines of verse where they occur, I encountered a couple of lines that I was tempted to scan with a substitute ...
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Was Shakespeare a member of the lower classes?
Am I correct to assume there is a feud between academics considering Shakespeare's social origins? I understand that he was probably born as a member of the working classes (or even the Elizabethan ...
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When did Aristotle's Poetics first become available in England?
In a comment on a recent question about T. S. Eliot's essay on Hamlet, Peter Shor wrote,
According to Aristotle, in great tragedy the hero must have a fatal flaw that leads to his downfall. What ...
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Perception of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by contemporaries
It is a common trope that high schoolers, and perhaps many more people, view Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as overdone and somewhat cheesy and shallow, for lack of better words. Would it have been ...
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Why did T.S. Eliot make a statement that 'Coriolanus' was Shakespeare's masterpiece and that 'Hamlet' was an artistic failure?
According to T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare actually failed as an artist in Hamlet. Those who have read the relevant critical essay by Eliot, could you kindly let me in on the title of that essay and explain ...
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What is meant by "came to practice" in John Manningham's description of Twelfth Night?
In the earliest mention of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"; John Manningham's Diary:
A good practice in it [was] to make the Steward believe his Lady . . . in love with him, by counterfeiting a ...
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Why is 'Hamlet' considered one of the very best plays ever?
When an intellectual work (philosophy book, literary book, painting etc) is studied there are (at least) two principal questions to be addressed:
What is this work about?
Why is this work important?
...
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Why does Macbeth say ‘throw physic to the dogs’?
In Act V, Scene III of Macbeth:
Macbeth:
Canst not thou not minister to a mind diseased
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious ...
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What does Hippolyta mean by "More witnesseth than fancy’s images"?
What does Hippolyta mean in this speech from Act V Scene I of A Midsummer Night's Dream?
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth ...
mBabaee
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Is there any significance in Shakespeare's use of the name "Laertes" (name of the father of Odysseus) in Hamlet?
Is there any significance in Shakespeare's use of "Laertes" (name of the father of Odysseus) in Hamlet?
Do we associate the name with The Odyssey more strongly than Shakespeare, to whom it was just ...
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Is there any connection between Paris of Troy and Paris of Verona?
I just noticed that a character in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has the same name as a character in Homer's Iliad: Paris. In both stories, Paris is one of two men who wish to be with the same woman; ...
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Does this passage in King Lear develop the theme of compassion or truth?
This is from Act 5 Scene 3 of King Lear:
A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have saved her. Now she’s gone for ever.—
Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha?
What is ’t thou say’st?—...
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What caused the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues?
As I understand it, the scholarship has so far not compellingly answered a significant question of the text of Romeo and Juliet; namely, why the Capulets and the Montagues are at war.
I am convinced ...
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Are there earlier incidences than Merchant of Venice of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other?
In act 2, scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice, Launcelot Gobbo is conflicted regarding whether to run from Shylock, or continue working for him. Shakespeare expresses this internal conflict by ...
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Why is "...Then fall, Caesar" always left out when talking about Caesar's last words?
From this link,
DECIUS BRUTUS: Great Caesar,
CAESAR: Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
CASCAL: Speak, hands for me!
CASCA first, then the other Conspirators and BRUTUS stab CAESAR
...
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Shorter version of The Merchant of Venice for school play
İs there any short version of the The Merchant of Venice to play?
We are going to play it in our class but the problem is that the story is too long and we don't have enough time for all of it. I need ...
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In the Hollow Crown speech, what does the line "Cover your heads" imply?
In the "hollow crown" speech in Richard II, there is a line with the words "Cover your heads". I need a paraphrase for this line. What does Shakespeare imply by this line in the context of this speech?...
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Is Caliban of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" based on a real life character?
In the book Over the Edge of the World the author Laurence Bergreen has described Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled ...
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What does the line “Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish. I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.” mean, from Hamlet?
“Excellent, i' faith, of the chameleon's dish. I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.”
Hamlet, act 3, scene 2
What does this sentence mean?
What are the chameleon, air and ...
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"What a piece of work is man" - echo in The Lord of the Rings?
In The Fellowship of the Ring, after Gandalf tells Frodo the story of the One Ring and challenges him to destroy it, Frodo looks at the ring and we read this description:
how rich and beautiful was ...
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In the Sonnet 29 by Shakespeare, does the speaker pity himself over lack of skill as an artist or contentment?
Here is the "Sonnet 29" by Shakespeare.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my
outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And
look upon ...
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Name of Shakespeare play in which a woman both saves and punishes a man
I'm trying to remember a quote I read from a Shakespeare book, but it has been at least 10 years so my memory of it is quite low.
The little I remember is a man that is trying to hide enters a woman'...
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Did King Richard III prove a villain because nature chose him to be a disabled person?
In the play King Richard III by Shakespeare did King Richard III become a villain because of nature selected him to be a disabled person (if we look at the villainous plot of the villain from his ...
user5000
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Why was Ophelia psychologically ill in the Shakespearean play Hamlet?
In the Shakespearean play Hamlet Ophelia became psychologically ill.
Was it because of Hamlet's behavior or how society treated her or what's the real reason behind her sudden illness?
Did ...
user5000
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Does Shakespeare steer the reader's sympathy towards Venus or towards Adonis?
In the narrative poem Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare reuses a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses (which he often used as a source of inspiration), but gives it an original spin: Venus's desire is ...
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How many Elizabethan or Jacobean manuscripts of Shakespeare sonnets have come down to us?
When Thomas Thorpe published Shake-speares Sonnets [sic!] in 1609, the sonnets (or at least a subset of them) had already circulated in manuscript for some time. Francis Meres already mentioned these ...
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Meaning of "And do not drop in for an after-loss" in Shakespeare's sonnet 90
Sonnet 90 by Shakespeare:
Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an ...
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In Early Modern English, how did 'see' semantically shift to mean 'note/record'?
John McWhorter PhD Linguistics (Stanford). Words on the Move (2016). p. 86. Emboldening mine.
Commonly we are told that Shakespeare's language is
"high," such that the challenge can be ...
user175
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What is the source of the quote "Robust grass endures mighty winds..."?
To those familiar with Shakespeare, do you know where this phrase comes from?
Robust grass endures mighty winds; loyal ministers emerge through ordeal
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