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.
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 .
Shakespeare added hundreds of new words to the English language, including many commonly used words and colorful expressions that we still use today.
[18] Slightly later, George Colman the Elder singled out the play in a general discussion of Shakespeare's skill with supernatural elements in drama. [19] In 1735, Aaron Hill sounded an unusual but prescient note when he praised the seeming contradictions in Hamlet's temperament (rather than condemning them as violations of decorum). After ...
In Shakespeare's day, plays were most often performed at noon or in the afternoon in broad daylight. [d] This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion.
The siege of Troy was one of the popular literary subjects in England circa 1600 and was among the most important events in world history for the contemporaries of Shakespeare. [35] An abundance of allusions in Shakespeare's complete works show that Shakespeare felt able to assume his audience would be aware of this narrative material.
Title page of the first quarto (1600). The Life of Henry the Fifth, often to Henry V, is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written near 1599.It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War.