SHAKESPEARE PAPER

SHAKESPEARE PAPER

There are three plays written by William Shakespeare that scholars have been able to classify because they do not clearly adhere to a specific genre: Measure for Measure, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida. Pick one of these plays to read and, once you have completed reading the play, you will be asked to write an analysis in which you place the play in a genre. You must justify why you have chosen this genre citing not only what we have discussed but by using support from the text. I am not interested in what others have said about this play, only what you think, so do not cite other scholars, historians, authors, etc.
The paper should be 2-3 pages in length, 12 point times new roman font, double spaced. Grammar will count.
Information that we have discussed in class (it has to be used in the paper in combination with examples from the play)!
Shakespeare’s genres:
1. Comedies
– elder declares a law at the start
– 1 couple marries at the end
– Mistaken identity (twins with mistaken identity)
– Pants role (female character who had to present as a male in order to find out information)
– Fool or jester (somebody to make you laugh: observe the situation and make comments)
– Social authority is upheld (nobody is changing the government, the city or leader, at the end they are intact. Personal world (relationships) of the character is changed, but the world where they are existing does not changed)
– Protagonist has to learn a lesson
– Death is rarely mentioned (or off the stage)
2. Tragedies
– Senecan principles with violence (play with lot of blood)
– Pre-christian: world (can’t rely on dying on God’s cause, no hell/heaven)
– Heavy soliloquy (character speaks his thoughts out loud: To Be Or Not To Be?)
– Rigid society in which people and worlds gets destroyed
3. Histories
– Propaganda Plays set in England, with specific issues confronting a King
– We are stronger as one nation
– Heroic character must fall
– Positive ending MUST BE
4. Romances
– Not an original classification
– Lack of Unity and Place, no time frame
– Storybook adventures with a protagonist separated from family with a REUNION at the end
– Young lovers are at the core with a tragic romance
– Supernatural elements, miracles do happen
– Little use of soliloquy