Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Shakespeare's writing features extensive wordplay of double entendres and clever rhetorical flourishes. [27] Humour is a key element in all of Shakespeare's plays. His works have been considered controversial through the centuries for his use of bawdy punning, [28] to the extent that "virtually every play is shot through with sexual puns."
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" is a popular adage from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet seems to argue that it does not matter that Romeo is from her family's rival house of Montague. The reference is used to state that the names of things do not affect what they really are.
Hamlet seems the most educated in the rhetoric of all the characters, using anaphora, as the king does, but also asyndeton and highly developed metaphors, while at the same time managing to be precise and unflowery (as when he explains his inward emotion to his mother, saying "But I have that within which passes show, / These but the trappings ...
Shakespeare added hundreds of new words to the English language, including many commonly used words and colorful expressions that we still use today.
In Harold Bloom's words, Shakespeare "invented the formula that the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death". [181] Of Shakespeare's works, Romeo and Juliet has generated the most—and the most varied—adaptations, including prose and verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music, ballet, film, television ...
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England , they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio .
William Shakespeare's play Macbeth is said to be cursed, so actors avoid saying its name when in the theatre (the euphemism "The Scottish Play" is used instead).Actors also avoid even quoting the lines from Macbeth before performances, particularly the Witches' incantations.
"To be, or not to be" is a speech given by Prince Hamlet in the so-called "nunnery scene" of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). The speech is named for the opening phrase, itself among the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English literature, and has been referenced in many works of theatre, literature and music.