LOVE

1. MADNESS LOVE WOMAN REVENGE MAGIC … your humble patience pray gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. CLASS V E

2. WOMEN IN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM ROMEO & JULIET JULIUS CAESAR HAMLET OTHELLO KING LEAR MACBETH THE TEMPEST TITANIA JULIET CALPURNIA GERTRUDE DESDEMONA CORDELIA LADY MACBETH MIRANDA HELENA NURSE OPHELIA EMILIA REGAN HERMIA LADY CAPULET GONERIL Bob Marley: “no woman no cry”

3. JULIUS CAESAR • CALPURNIA • Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,Yet now they fright me. There is one within,Besides the things that we have heard and seen,Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.A lioness hath whelped in the streets;And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;The noise of battle hurtled in the air,Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,And I do fear them.

5. ROMEO & JULIET JULIET O Romeo, Romeo!wherefore art you Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name! Or, if thou wilt not be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet LADY CAPULET Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee NURSE Faith, here it is./ Romeo is banish’d; and all the world to nothing That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you;/ Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,/ I think it best you married with the County. O, he’s a lovely gentleman!/ Romeo’s dishcoult to him. An eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye/ As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match,/ For it excels your first; or if it did not, Your first is dead - or ‘twere as good he were/ As living here, and you no use of him

8. THE NURSE The nurse is the comic character of the play together with Mercuzio. Her function is to give wise advice to Juliet who loves Romeo but her father has given the consent to marry Paris. At first the nurse helps Juliet to speak with Romeo but when the boy is banished from Verona the nurse suggested Juliet to marry Paris because he could become a good husband. So we can see that he considers money more important than true love. But at the end she understands that for Juliet Romeo is more important than Paris and she decides to help the girl to arrive at her aim. The nurse is an important character also because she is the only one, together with Friar Laurence, to know everything so she becomes an important point of union in the play.

9. HAMLET GERTRUDE What have I done that thou dar’st wagty tongue in -noise so rude again si me • OPHELIA • My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;And, with them, words of so sweet breath composedAs made the things more rich: their perfume lost,Take these again; for to the noble mindRich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.There, my lord.

11. OTHELLO EMILIA But I do think it is their husband’ faults if wives do fall: say that they slack their duties, and pour our treasures into foreign laps; • DESDEMONA • Your wife, my lord; your trueAnd loyal wife.

16. THE TEMPEST MIRANDA I might call him A thing divine; for nothing natural I ever saw so noble

17. MACBETH LADY MACBETH Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of thing. Go , get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hand. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there: go, carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood

19. GONERIL CORDELIA REGAN

20. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM HELENA So methinks:And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,Mine own, and not mine own. • HERMIA • Methinks I see these things with parted eye,When every thing seems double. • TITANIA • Out of this wood do not desire to go:Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.I am a spirit of no common rate;The summer still doth tend upon my state;And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;And I will purge thy mortal grossness soThat thou shalt like an airy spirit go.Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

21. KING LEAR • GONERIL • By day and night he wrongs me; every hourHe flashes into one gross crime or other,That sets us all at odds: I'll not endure it:His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids usOn every trifle. When he returns from hunting,I will not speak with him; say I am sick:If you come slack of former services,You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer. • CORDELIA • Alack, 'tis he: why, he was met even nowAs mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud;Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,With bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,Darnel, and all the idle weeds that growIn our sustaining corn. A century send forth;Search every acre in the high-grown field,And bring him to our eye. • REGAN • Out, treacherous villain!Thou call'st on him that hates thee: it was heThat made the overture of thy treasons to us;Who is too good to pity thee.

22. TITANIA She is the queen of the fairies. She was married to Oberon. She falls in love with a man with an ass head and this is a comic part of this comedy. She represented the woman in the world of the fairies but she is described like a common woman with her passions and her mistakes HERMIA She falls in love with Lysander. Their love is true love but her father has given Demetrius the consent to marry her. This love is similar to Romeo and Juliet love but at the end their love finishes well. Hermia follows her passions, she is impulsive HELENA Helena is a friend of Hermia who loves Demetrius so she follows him when he follows Hermia in the wood. Also Helena is impulsive she follows her emotion and her heart. At the end she married Demetrius

23. MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM INTRODUCTION LOVE MACBETH OTHELLO ROMEO &JULIET

24. SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER’S DAY? Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease halth all too short a date; Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

25. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM As the title itself says “ a Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a sort of “dream” and love is seen as the result of enchantment. In fact there’s no deep passion of affection but love is only physical love, it depends on sight: Puck puts a poison on the lovers’ eyelids to change their feeling, so magic is also important in this play. Infatuation is the only kind of love represented in “ Midsummer night’s dream”, and this love is irresponsible, capricious. In fact Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius fall in love and become indifferent to each other in a night because of Puck’s magic. Love is based on eyes and it can be noticed with Titania: The queen of the fairies falls in love with Bottom thanks to the love filter, because Bottom’s head is transformed into an ass’s head but Titania doesn’t matter. This is a strange situation, because Titania could have all the men she wants but by magic she chooses the worst one, a man transformed in a ridiculous animal. Queen “Somebody to love”

26. ROMEO &JULIET “ Love’s reason’s without reason”: this is one of the most representative sentences by Shakespeare, because he mainly writes about love. In fact in his plays love can be considered the main feeling of human life because it influences our existence. For example in Romeo and Juliet the lovers cannot escape from their tragic destiny and their destiny makes the story more moving and in contrast with their simple innocence and youth. Love between the two protagonists is excessive: “Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry”, They act following only passion. They believed in eternal love and for it they are ready to commit suicide.

27. OTHELLO

28. Madness “Fools had never less grace in a year, for wise men are grown foppish and know not how their wits to wear, their manners are so apish.”

29. MACBETH Love in “ Macbeth” is presented in a strange way, because Lady Macbeth is stronger than his husband and he obeys her because of his love. It’s a feeling based on ambition: at the beginning Lady Macbeth is ambitious but at the end also Macbeth wants to become more and more powerful. In fact when his wife dies, Macbeth is not sorry ( he says “ she should have died hereafter” ) but when the story starts, Macbeth kills the king to give his wife a proof of love ( she tells him that if he doesn’t commit the murder it means that he doesn’t love her) so this feeling is also used as a means of blackmail.

30. Introduction The tragedy of Hamlet Othello King Lear Macbeth

31. Introduction In ancient times, a lot of authors as Sofocle in “Aiace”, Euripide in “Eracle” and “Baccanti” and Seneca in “Hercules Furens” dealt with the way and effects of madness. This is a theme that unites the modern production to the antique one, because madness not only has always existed, but it has always scared the sane. Obviously the interpretation has changed: the antique thought that madness was inflicted by gods, while with the passing of time scientists has given more and more medical reasons. Sometimes it was described as a cheat planned by the mad himself. In the XVII century scientists began to give a rational explanation to madness because of the affirmation of the scientific and experimental method that brought about the birth of hospitals as centres of studies and research about mad people and their madness. It’s only at the beginning of this century that Shakespeare writes his plays about madness: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespeare wrote these plays in a period where madness began to be considered an illness and where mad were considered as “different”, that is as people one should be afraid of. This attention about the problem of madness indicates an important change in the attitude of the author about humane nature. Madness was considered a weakness that might be true or false. In fact in some cases madness is only false and it plays a strong attraction on all the art of this period. But in the cases of true madness, it can’t be considered as a punishment of an individual unrestrained pride or as a momentary darkening of reason caused by external events, but as a mental illness that started in the dark deep of common irrationality of every people. Mad people are usually weak people to whom their world and their certainities are destroyed finding themselves alone to face difficult situations. In these cases we can talk about these people of a first death, in fact, becoming mad, it seems that these people live in a transitory world between life and death that is, they are totally detached from reality, everyone fortheir own reasons. The reaction of wise people is different: some mad people are seen as a danger and for this cause people are afraid of them whereas for other mad people we feel mercy for their situation. In Shakespeare’s tragedy, the theme of madness is intimately bound to the theme of power and the connected motives of ambition, rebellion, greed and responsibility. But all mad characters, also the fool in King Lear, are joined by a feature: in their madness they reveal a deeper disturbing truth. Queen “Bohemian rapsody”

32. Hamlet At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is desperate, he is very angry, he feels himself betrayed by his mother because she was with her husband in a perfect union of strength and virtue. This was, for Hamlet, an imperishable fusion, a model for everybody. Now his mother has broken this “dream” which the son was clutched to and because of this he felt sure of himself. (act I scene II  “why she would hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on) But the anger is not against his mother, because the love and the admiration for her cannot disappear as for the need to keep a part of the previous world alive. The anger is against his uncle who broke the magic. First he is seen like a murderer, a evil person without any shadow of virtue and dignity. All the hate against him makes the young prince plan a diabolical project, absolutely mathematical and logical to assure the hell not only on earth but eternal to the murderer of his happiness. (act I scene IV “why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee”) From here the decision to pretend madness. (act I scene V “here, as before, never, so help you merci, how strange or odd some’er I bear myself) In madness Hamlet is tormented by doubts of how to act and when, whether to revenge soon or to wait for the moment when the victim is not ready to die. Not also this seems a delay for fear but also a diabolic will, the expression of a deep hate. Hamlet expresses very well the fears and doubts of a suffering man more than a mad, a man who fells betrayed by everybody, and also by the person which, after his mother, he most trusts; Ophelia. Hamlet perhaps wanted to share his woe with her but when understand that she doesn’t support him, he feels totally alone. In his monologues, to all appearance chaotic, he puts the criticism and the disappointment towards women. (act I scene II  “fragility your name is woman”) (act III scene II  Ophelia: “’tis brief, my lord.” Hamlet: “as woman’s love.”) The Ark “it takes a fool to remain sane”

33. The distrust towards humanity, men that are all swindlers and sinners. In the dialogue with the other characters Hamlet underlines the fault of his speakers: he says to Polonius that he is a dishonest and stupid man, he calls his “friends” snakes. When he speaks to his mother, Hamlet stresses her mistake, tells her about his anger, his woe, he confides in her. He finds only a bit of comfort when he speaks and plays with the actors. At the end, Hamlet dies for his faults: the inability to power and because he entrusts too much to rationality, but so he couldn’t resolve his doubt. But, before dying , Hamlet leaves a testament to the world: he leaves the truth, that he strongly wants to live in Horazio: there was too falsity, too ambiguity in society. He leaves his state to Fortinbras because Hamlet knows that he would be a better king than him. At the end Hamlet says “the rest is silence”; with these words he wants to express again the uncertainty of life: we can known only our own acts, nothing more.

34. OPHELIA Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter, is a simple, obedient and ingenuous girl. She loves Hamlet very much, but when her father orders her to see the prince no more, she doesn’t find the strength to rebel against him. When Hamlet pretends to be mad, she doesn’t understand his will and his woe, but she believes that he is really mad because she refused his love. But when her father, the person she is got on better to, dies, Ophelia, oppressed by her woe, becomes mad. She is more vexed up because the murderer is Hamlet. In her madness Ophelia goes on to name her father and speaks about him to everybody, she tells about his death, his funeral, his life. She says all with ingenuity, with tenderness but also with bitterness: she says that nobody mourned him properly. She sings love songs and, when she meets her brother Laertes, whom she loves very much, she doesn’t recognise him but she speaks to him, giving some flowers, imaginary, and explains him their meaning. In particular she speaks about rosemary that is for memory, to keep the remembrance of who is no more with us. So she doesn’t want to forget the dead, in her madness it seems that she accepted the fact. At the end Ophelia dies drowning in a small river while doing garlands. She dies singing old songs without fear as if she had already died with her father, with him her reason had died and in her madness she is not afraid to die, on the contrary, she wished that.

35. King Lear Madness in King Lear is the central theme of the play: at the beginning of the narration, the fool tells about madness jokingly and annoyingly to make the king wise, without result. At the end of the play the king doesn’t bear all the suffered injustices and becomes crazy. In this moment the fool, who is the mirror character of Lear, disappears and the king takes the place of the fool. We can say that all the play is based on the alternation of these two characters. King Lear gets mad after he had been expelled by his two daughters, who had sworn they loved him, and he found out that the only one who really loved him was Cordelia, who had been disowned by himself. In his madness the King starts to tell and to discover the truth, perceiving the real condition of society that in this way discovers corruption and hypocrisy. In his speech he puts in evidence these aspects, above all in the dialogue with Gloucester, when the old king shows how wealth can hide sins.

36. Othello In Othello the theme of madness coincides with the theme of jealousy that drives the hero crazy. Jealousy is the thread of the play because it is the cause that destroys first Iago, then Othello and also Desdemona, who is the object of desire. Jealousy is, in the drama, a monster, created by the mind, created from by nothing and about nothing: so it is far stronger. Othello is a tragedy of jealousy, but also of confusion, of unsuccessful communication that will corrupt the meaning of what the actors are saying. The tragedy of jealousy is caused by the fact that the characters speak with a different code, they meet in disguise, for fraud. Appearance is subordinated to reality, falsehood is subject to truth. As in other Shakespearean famous tragedies, the conflict that subtends this play is the tragic conflict between appearance and reality. The inversion of the roles that involves the characters is possible because in the drama truth and falsity, appearance and reality are impossible to extricate: it is impossible to distinguish given and received information and so they are confused. Because of Iago’s words, Othello doesn’t see a separation between doubt and certainty, so Iago reinforces his “revenge” with allusions. The proceeding with denials and interruptions of time and place induces Othello to fill Iago’s gaps with his imagination, his opinions, and his language. At this point Othello falls in catalepsy: the extreme demonstration of his verbal breakdown, the inability to speak, the loss of language, not any speaking in prose but with rambling phrases: by this time he has lost the qualities that a man has got. Queen “I’m going slightly mad”

37. Macbeth The theme of madness is also present in Macbeth and it has a basic role. Lady Macbeth becomes mad after the murder of the king because of the remorse. It is she the most determinate and she almost forces the husband to commit the crime. So at the beginning of the play it is Lady Macbeth who represents the strongest character, then after the murder of the king, the remorse prevails over her feelings and she becomes mad. She starts to repeat the gesture she had committed after the killing when she got her hands dirty with blood. She repeats the gesture as to try to wash away the fault, to forget the acts thanks to that strength that herself had invoked. Afterwards she starts sleepwalking and confesses the crime.

38. Shakespeare • Revenge

39. OTHELLO HAMLET MACBETH KING LEAR THE TEMPEST The plot of a revenge tragedy does not need very complex interpretations: a murder has been committed , someone has been murdered, the relatives or the ghost of the murdered one feel the duty to set it right by taking justice into their own hands and killing the murderer. The tragedy will end with the annihilation of the murderer and preferably of the revenger as well. In the Elizabethan age, revenge was quite a difficult case. Formally, both State and Church warned against private revenge, which was seen as a major disturbance of law and a return to feudal lawlessness.The world of vendetta was also seen as a typical manifestation of Italian Machiavellian thought. However there was a distinction between instant retaliation, on the spur of a moment, which might be pardoned, and premeditated murder, which was instead condemned as the foulest manifestation of human wickedness.

40. * OPHELIA Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter, is a simple, obedient and ingenuous girl. She loves Hamlet very much, but when her father orders her to meet the prince no more, she doesn’t find the strength to rebel against him. When Hamlet pretends to be mad, she doesn’t understand his will and his woe, but she believes that he is really mad because she refused his love. So Ophelia tells this to her father and to king Claudius to help them to discover the true reason of Hamlet’s madness. But when her father, the person she is got on better to, dies, Ophelia, teared by the woe, becomes mad. She is more vexed up because the murderer of Polonius is Hamlet. In her madness Ophelia goes on to name her father and speaks about him to everybody, she tells about his death, his funeral, his life. She says all with ingenuity, with tenderness but also with bitterness she says that nobody cried him honestly. She sings love songs, when meets her brother Laertes, that she loves very much, she doesn’t recognise him but she speaks to him, gives him some flowers, imaginary, and explains him their meaning. In particular she speaks about rosemary that is for memory, to keep the remembrance of who is no more with us. So she doesn’t want to forget the dead, in her madness at seems that she accepted the fact. At the end Ophelia dies drowning in a small river while doing garlands. She dies singing old songs without fear as if she had already died with her father, with him her reason had died and with her ingenuity she is not afraid to die, on the contrary, she wished that.

41. HAMLET HAMLET’S REVENGE Hamlet is a play that very closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan theatre. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the Greeks, who wrote and performed the first plays. After the Greeks came Seneca, who was very influential to all Elizabethan playwrights. The Roman Seneca basically set all of the ideas and the norms for all revenge plays in the Re naissance. During the time of Elizabethan theatre, plays about tragedy and revenge were very common and a regular convention seemed to be formed on what aspects should be put into a typical revenge tragedies. In all revenge tragedies: 1. A CRIME IS COMMITTED and for various reason law and justice cannot punish the crime so the individual who is the main character, revenges it in spite of everything.The main character than usually had a period of doubt, where tries to decide whether or not to go through with the revenge, which usually involves though and complex planning. 2. THE APPEARANCE OF A GHOST, to get the avenger to go against his doubts. The avenger usually also had a very close relationship with the audience through soliloquies and aside. The original crime that will eventually be revenged is killing. U2 “With or without you”

42. 3. The crime has been committed AGAINST A FAMILY MEMBER OF THE REVENGER. 4. The avenger places himself OUTSIDE THE NORMAL MORAL ORDER of things, and often becomes more isolated as the play progresses, an isolation which brings to its most extreme consequence, MADNESS. The revenge must be taken out by the avenger or his trusted accomplices. 5. The avenger and his accomplices MAY ALSO DIE at the moment of success or even during the course of revenge. In Hamlet, Shakespeare follows the regular convention for a large part of the play. At the beginning, Shakespeare sets up the scene, presenting a ghost in a dark night. This sets up for the major theme of the play which is of course the revenge. The ghost appears to talk to Hamlet. The play immediately presents a gruesome, violent death. The ghost tells Hamlet that he has been given the role of the person who will take revenge upon Claudius. Act 1 scene 5 “So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear…..Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder!” Hamlet must now thinks of how to take revenge on Claudius, although he doesn’t know what to do about it. He thinks for a long period of time, supposing to do the act immediately, but instead he drags it on until the end of the play.

43. Although what was important was that all tragic heroes of the play at that time delayed their actual revenge until the end of the play, in most revenge plays,the revenger was often anonymous and well disguised. But Hamlet started a battle of wits with Claudius by feigning madness and calling it “antic disposition”; although the whole thing was a plan to get closer to Claudius to be able to revenge his father’s death more easily. The tactic was an advantage because it drew all attention on himself. Madness isolated him for the rest of the court because the people didn’t pay attention to what he thought or did because of his madness. Hamlet’s delay in killing Claudius takes on two distinct steps. First he had to prove that the ghost was actually telling the truth, and he did this by staging the play “The murder of Gonzago” at court. The second step sees Hamlet who could have killed Claudius while he was praying. If Hamlet had done it then Claudius would have gone to heaven because he was praying while Hamlet’s father was in purgatory because he didn’t even get the opportunity to confess. So Hamlet decided not to murder Claudius at this point of the play. Hamlet stands out from many other revenge plays because it enacts and analyses the conventions of its genre. It can be easily understood that Hamlet very closely follows the regular convention for all Elizabethan tragedies. First Hamlet is faced with the fact that he has to revenge the murder of his father and since there isn’t justice, he must apply justice with his own hands. His father’s ghost appears to guide Hamlet to Claudius and to inform Hamlet of the crime that Claudius has committed. Then Hamlet constantly delays his revenge and always finds a way to put it off until he finally does it in Act 5 scene 2. Hamlet at the same time continues to keep a close relationship with the audience with his seven main soliloquies. The only point that is changed is that the accomplice wasn’t killed because at the end of play, Horatio was the only one to survive, and weren’t it for Hamlet, Horatio would have committed suicide. If Horatio had killed himself, then the tragedy would have followed the regular convention for Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Hamlet is definitely a great example of a typical revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan revenge theatre. It followed every convention it required, it can be classified as a revenge play quite perfectly. Hamlet is one of the greatest revenge stories ever written.

44. KING LEAR EDMUND’S REVENGE This is one of the most important character of Shakespearean plays. He is the illegitimate son of Gloucester, considered inferior to Gloucester’s legitimate son Edgar. The play is King Lear, a tragedy with fictitious characters, treating the ingenuity of an old but not wise, king, who doesn’t succeed in distinguishing the falsity from the truth. The play can be divided in two parallel tales: the former about King Lear and his daughters, the latter about Gloucesters and his sons; in both we have a villain who plots against the protagonists. Edmund is a villain, who plots not only against his brother and father to obtain the power and the legitimacy, but he also rebels against a society that excludes and humiliates him. One of the most important monologue of Edmund in this play is his invocation to Nature; he asks what difference exists between a bastard son and a legitimate one. Act 2, scene1 “Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy lawMy services are bound. Wherefore should IStand in the plague of custom, and permitThe curiosity of nations to deprive me,For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?When my dimension are as well compact,My mind as generous, and my shape as true,As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they usWith base? With baseness? bastardy? base, base?Who in the lusty stealth of nature take More composition and fierce qualityThan doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops,

45. Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well then Legitimate Edgard, I must have your land: Our father’s love is to the bastard EdmundAs to th’legitimate. Fine word, ‘legitimate’!Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,And my invention thrive, Edmund the baseShall top th’legitimate-:I grow, I prosper;Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” Edmund’s revenge is brutal, cruel but not unjustified: in fact it happens to improve his social condition and to react against a society hostile to him. For this character the enemy is his brother Edgar who, with a lot of lies and falsehoods, loses his father’s trust and becomes a poor man; the father instead becomes a traitor, is tortured and dies for the wounds.At the beginning Edmund obtains power, wealth but at the end he dies in a worse condition if compared with his previous one.Through this character the author’s will is expressed; in fact Shakespearepresents a critical analysis of the XV century, marked by social divisions and inequalities.

46. THE TEMPEST CALIBAN’S REVENGE TO SOCIETY In “The Tempest” Shakespeare presents the character of Caliban; this name may be considered an anagram of the word “cannibal”. He was Sycorax’s son, a witch that kept Ariel prisoner for such a long time; he represents the native population of the island in opposition to the civilized world of Prospero and Miranda. This character, halfway between man and beast, rebels against his condition of slavery caused by Prospero. When Stephano and Trinculo arrive on the island after the shipwreck, Caliban meets for the first time unknown people: so they start to plot against Prospero to kill him and regain his lost island. After that Caliban’s attempt fails, he recognizes Prospero as his master. Prospero embodies the white colonizer that conquers people and places. Colonizers used to fascinate Indians using a lot of “presents” that were considered magic things: some of these, like guns and alcoholics, became harmful because they caused the destruction of these peoples. Colonizers were very interested to cut down native population to better conquer the new lands. Caliban understands that he can’t rebel, so he starts to learn the language of the colonizer trying to begin a new kind of relationship. Act 1 scene “CALIBAN I must eat my dinner. This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother, Which thou strok’s me, and made much of me ; wouldst give me Water with berries in’t; and how the less, That burn by day and night: and then I lov’d thee, And show’d thee all the qualities o’th’isle, The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile: Curs’d be I that did so! All the charms Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you! For am I all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’th’island.

47. PROSPERO Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, n ot kindness! I have us’d thee, PFilth as thou art, with human care; and lodg’d thee In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child. CALIBAN O ho, O ho! Would’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me; O had peopled else This isle with Calibans. PROSPERO Abhorred slaves, Which any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confin’d into this rock, Who hadst deserv’d more than a prison. CALIBAN You taught me language; and my profit on’t Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language! PROSPERO Hag-seed, hence! Fetch us in fuel; and be quick, thou’rt best, To answer other business. Shrug’st thou, malice? If thou neglect’st, or dost unwillingly What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar; That beasts shall tremble at thy din. CALIBAN No, ‘pray thee. (aside) I must obey: his Art is of such pow’r, It would control my dam’s god, Setebos, And make a vassal of him. PROSPERO So, slave; hence!

48. PROSPERO’s REVENGE TO HIS BROTHER In the “The tempest” there is the very significant theme of the revenge of Prospero against his brother. Prospero has been waiting for a long time on the desert island and keeping this feeling in his heart. His project of revenge doesn’t change in the years and Prospero waits for the opportune moment for having justice. He plans all his actions with intelligence and ability. He is also a magician and uses magic to create the occasion of revenge, with Ariel’s help. He wants to revenge but he also admits that he has made a mistake. He recognizes his mistake but his brother shouldn't have thrown him from Milan; Prospero considers his brother him a traitor that has to pay for his action. The revenge is almost a duty and not a right: Prospero does it also for Miranda that has lived on a desert island instead of living as a princess in Milan. He wants to redeem his life and Miranda's life. He pays great attention to his plans because for him it is important to have a good revenge. He makes his brother crazy but then he has compassion of him. Prospero isn’t a bad person, but a sensible and good man; he needs intelligence and sense of limits not to exaggerate and not to fall in the same mistake. At the end of the Prospero returns to be duke of Milan, forgives his brother and brings him in Milan with himself. Shakespeare also teaches to respect human dignity and that we have to respect everybody. Prospero, in fact, refused the magic powers that before he had used for deceiving the other people and for treading on their dignity and abandoned his magic powers. For Shakespeare a man that wants to have revenge isn’t a bad one, but he is a person who wants have justice for a suffered wrong; in fact it is a normal thing to bring justice and redeem his right with everyone, also with a brother. It was a way to obscure the Catholic idea of forgiveness since, in that historical period, it was renounced by a lot of political parties. It is the demonstration that Shakespearian ideas were always modern and innovative.

49. MACBETH MACDUFF’S REVENGE TO MACBETH “Macbeth” was written by Shakespeare in 1606 and it is a tragedy; next to Duncan’s regicide organized by Macbeth and his wife, for ambition and thirst of power, to the killing of sleep, another important theme is Macduff’s revenge towards Macbeth. The mechanism of revenge is triggered in fourth act: Macduff, a Scottish nobleman, is looking forward to preparing war when his existence is deeply upset by a piece of news about the killing of his loved wife and children. In consequence of this tragic event, it is possible to witness Macduff’s psychological collapse: he holds himself responsible for this innocent murder and he suffers and his strong qualm of conscience begins to appear. At the end of this act the revenge has already been organized and victory comes up to Macduff; with this revenge Macduff wants to obtain a personal revenge, he wants to punish Macbeth’s atrocities, he wants to rebel against his limitless cruelty: Macduff therefore seems to act the part of the avenger and he shows whole his wickedness against Macbeth, considered as a devil.

50. The revenge takes place in fifth act and it represents the top of the dramatic power in this play: there is an attack to the castle of Dunsinane, Macbeth’s residence, and after it, there is the final duel, before verbal and then physical, between Macbeth and Macduff. Here Macduff shows all his rage talking to Macbeth offensive words. Macduff completes his personal revenge when he kills with sword the cruel tyrant and shows to the people his beheaded head. Therefore in this play revenge is an instrument to shout one’s despair, one’s inner destruction, to rebel against injustices, to balance the accounts and here especially to claim something important, for example the family; so it is the revenge of nature, of the whole mankind against symbolic evil.