John Millington Synge chose the remote Aran Islands as the locale for his tragic play Riders to the Sea. The choice was a conscious one, and it yielded a surprising dividend for an artist who was, for years, groping for a fitting subject matter. The very limitations of space and time, which the play finds bound in, … Read more
Riders to the Sea is one of the best one-act plays in which a tragic vision of life has been depicted by J. M. Synge vividly. A proper analysis will show that as a dramatist, Synge has given an accurate picture of the habits and beliefs of the poor sea-faring people in the islands of Ireland. … Read more
Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles present spectacles of human suffering and inexorable necessity wheel in the backdrop of the massive machinery of inscrutable fate. Greek tragedy shows the essential pre-determination of the human situation on earth. In modern times, this Greek concept of tragedy lost favour with many tragic dramatists like O’Neil or Arthur … Read more
Shakespeare has used symbols in all his plays, but The Tempest is especially rich in this respect. Symbols can be figurative, characters, or objects that express a certain idea or concept. An artist can express much more through symbols than would otherwise be possible. Symbols enable an artist to express greatness by using the small, the infinite … Read more
Prospero is the central character in the play The Tempest. Indeed, he dominates the play from the beginning to the end. The entire action of the play, barring some of the deeds of Antonio, Sebastian, Alonso, Gonzalo, Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo, is manipulated by Prospero. Prospero is not an ordinary human being. Indeed, he is an … Read more
Many commentators agree in the belief that The Tempest is the last creation of Shakespeare. I will readily believe it. There is in The Tempest the solemn tone of a testament. Victor Hugo, A 19th century French poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. [Literariness.org] Shakespeare’s The Tempest has been variously interpreted as a romantic comedy, a comedy … Read more
One of the most prominent and exciting features of As You Like It is the three-fold manner in which Shakespeare presents humor. One can observe in this connection that Shakespeare has employed the word “humor” in a different sense. Humor, as used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, is a particular individual trait of a person’s character by … Read more
