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Full-Text Articles in Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory
I Was Crazy Once: An Examination Of Elizabethan Insanity In Shakespeare’S Work, Hope L. Kobus
I Was Crazy Once: An Examination Of Elizabethan Insanity In Shakespeare’S Work, Hope L. Kobus
Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)
William Shakespeare wrote numerous works, diving into the common motifs of love, revenge, power, but most importantly, madness. While Elizabethan audiences were more accustomed to seeing madness as a ploy for comedy, Shakespeare changed the appeal through shows such as King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth. He presents the power and ambition of women, as well as the failings of the upper-class, but he disguised them through the idea of insanity. At a time when the public had little understanding of mental health, it was easy to blame madness on gender, social status, and even the supernatural. Through …
Bloody Thoughts: Violence And Wit In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Aubrey Keller
Bloody Thoughts: Violence And Wit In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Aubrey Keller
Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects
In this Honors thesis, I examine the roles of wit and violence in Shakespeare's The Tempest, exploring my original suspicion that the play is a pacifist work. Noticing references to "bloody thoughts" in both Hamlet and The Tempest, I hypothesized that while Shakespeare resolves his tragedies using violence, he resolves his comedies using wit, making the two foil plot devices. I discovered that the plot is not propelled by either violence or wit on their own, but by Prospero's cunning. Rejecting the conventional reading of Prospero as a sorcerer, I read Prospero as a Machiavellian figure. I examine …