Info about Novels
William Shakespeare’s Plays
Shakespeare’s work was written during the Elizabethan and early Jacobean era, in prose and more frequently in iambic pentameter. He would also use rhyming couplet to peak his audience’s curiosity, in addition to repeating rhythmic composition of lines. Shakespeare had an ingenious way of creating lines in his plays that could be interpreted in many ways.
In his plays there are certain vocabulary and grammatical forms that can be credited to this truly iconic genius that are now used every day. For example accommodation, amazement, courtship, lackluster, and using some nouns as verbs. In addition to phrases like all that glitters isn’t gold, green eyed monster and fancy free to name a few.
Shakespeare’s body of work, particularly his plays are known as the finest masterpieces in English Literature history. Granted there are some that may not appreciate authenticity of his work, the majority would agree his work is timeless and pure genius. Shakespearean plays fall into four categories comedy, history, poetry and tragedy.
His most popular plays consist of: Romeo and Juliet (tragedy), Hamlet (tragedy), Julius Caesar (tragedy), The Merchant of Venice (comedy), Macbeth (tragedy), A midsummer Night’s Dream (comedy) and King Henry VIII (history). Popular culture would argue of the two plays, Romeo and Juliet ranks as the most popular, on the other hand academically it would be Hamlet. Romeo and Juliet has been rated as the most intoxicating love story known to man vs. Hamlet’s story based on insanity and vengeance.
Romeo and Juliet told the story of a couple who intended on faking their own suicide to be able to run away together to escape their feuding families. While Romeo was banned for committing murder, Juliet’s family planned her nuptials to Paris. Desperate to deceive her family she faked her own suicide by drinking a sleeping potion. After finding Juliet and thinking she was dead, Romeo drank the poison thinking he could not live without her. When Juliet awoke to find her beloved dead, struck by grief she took her own life as well with a dagger.
Hamlet tells the story of a young prince driven mad after the murder of his father. He believed his father’s ghost appeared to him and advised he was in fact murdered by his brother to inherit the thrown and to marry Gertrude. Hamlet was revolted by what he considered an incestuous relationship between his mother and his father’s brother. He managed to kill his uncle and name his predecessor to the throne but tragically the story ends with his own death.
Both plays, with little comparison between the two, are in their own rights tragedies. Romeo and Juliet lives were tragically lost as a result of their everlasting love, while Hamlet consumed by grief and his love for his father lost his life. The characters in William Shakespeare’s plays have remained timeless and relatable mainly because people can visualize themselves in the character’s shoes. Hamlet was transformed from this gentle soul to a vengeful murderer after tragically losing his father.
William Shakespeare may have been motivated by the psychedelic drugs he purportedly used. Archaeologists found traces of certain substances in his pipes at his estate, and they speculate that he may have used psychoactive substances like cannabis to enhance his writing experience. Furthermore, it would not have been uncommon to try various herbs in pipes. Tobacco was just one of many substances used at the time.