In the epilogue of As You Like It, Rosalind discusses the nature of real and performed gender identity in a final bid to resolve the gender confusion extant throughout the play. The events leading up to the epilogue make such resolution necessary, fraught as they...
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It, feminine homoeroticism emerges as an interplay of passive and aggressive opposition. Women take the sphere of romantic love — one sphere to which they have access in the midst of an oppressive patriarchal order...
In the pastoral setting of the Forest of Arden in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the characters are physically removed from society, and thus from the political, economic, and sexual rules that govern social life. If Arden is a paradise, however, it is an...
William Shakespeare is an author who is known best for his tragedies, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar: plays in which the heroes lose. However, Shakespeare also wrote comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and As You...
From the viewpoint of our world today, Shakespeare’s era seems about as conservatively-minded as a society could get. Shakespeare completely demolishes this notion, with his progressive suggestions of a normalcy in homosexuality and transgenderism in his comedy, As You Like It. He first introduces these...
“In the latter part of the 19th century, Japan opened up for trade with the West. Merchant adventurers arrived from all over the world, many of them English. Some traded in silk and rice and lived in enclaves around the ‘treaty ports.’ They brought their...
“Cleanse the foul body of th’infected world / If they will patiently receive my medicine” (Shakespeare 304). William Shakespeare addresses an ailment known as melancholy through the character Jaques in As You Like It. In this quote, Jaques blames the outside world for imposing their...
Introduction to Shakespeare’s Comedies, a comedy does not demand the ‘the degree of concentration and belief’ required by tragedy. As a result, an audience of a play ‘is amusedly aware that it’s all a play, a game that they are sharing with the actors’. FN1...
Northrop Frye and C. L. Barber’s “green world” and “misrule” theories are very much evident in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (ASYI). Frye discusses his “green world” theory in his books Anatomy of Criticism, in 1957, and A Natural Perspective, in 1965. In it,...
Cross-dressing on the early modern stage was a highly exploited theatrical device. It subverted the traditional conceptions of gender, evoking a recurring sense of dramatic irony. Jean E. Howard explains that “behavioural differences” and “distinctions of dress” were considered very significant in the Renaissance period...
Rosalind’s literal significance in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” is grounded in her motivation in acting as Ganymede, for it is her sole perspective that elucidates the reader of the biases of society’s gender roles. The necessity for Rosalind to perform as Ganymede defines her...
Introduction In William Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” the character Enobarbus plays a multifaceted and crucial role. As a trusted follower and close friend of Antony, he serves as a confidant to the protagonist, offering a unique perspective on the unfolding events. Enobarbus also assumes the...
The title characters of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra are difficult to fully understand due to their seemingly illogical actions towards one another. At times, they seem to be in direct opposition to each other’s causes, yet still fully and passionately in love with one another....
With six of its seven scenes set in the West, Act Two of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ by William Shakespeare largely concerns the politics of Rome. Act Two is important in further developing the characters of Antony, Octavius, Cleopatra and Enobarbus. Within this Act, we find,...
By the end of the play, the eponymous, tragic hero Antony has lost the battle of Actium and ultimately kills himself after the defeat. Due to this many would say that Caesar has achieved a complete victory over his rival; however, is it this simple?...
Shakespeare uses stagecraft in a number of different ways to create dramatic effects in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. Jacobean stages were very simple, not much more than an empty wooden platform thrust into the middle of spectators with no scenery to raise or lower. The sheer...
William Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra and Samuel Johnson’s exploration of Shakespeare’s techniques and his verity within theatre in ‘The Plays of William Shakespeare’ both engage the topic of the representation of reality. The play itself follows the destructive nature of the Roman general Antony...
The Battle of Actium is one of the more pivotal moments in Antony and Cleopatra. Mark Antony, having lost the battle, undergoes a period of self-reflection and emotional trauma which changes our perception of the character. The analysis of the extract given attempts to discuss...
In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare constructs conflicts between world empire and human passion. The sensual and wasteful opulence of the East, where ‘the the beds are softer’ is juxtaposed to the cold, bare efficiency of the West. Egypt stands for passion, sensuality, and decadence, Rome...