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Joseph Bush IV

Mr. Vigil

British Literature

13 March 2018

The mamba of the Elizabethan Era

William Shakespeare was a part of the Elizabethan Era and is famous for writing several

plays that are still popular to this day. The era is known as the golden age of English writing

mainly because of the many innovated pieces of literature that came out of England such a plays

that told of drama and comedy. The main author during the era was William Shakespeare which

wrote plays about tragedy and comedy. Two of his works that are being analyzed are Hamlet and

A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Hamlet is arguably William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy and if

not his greatest influential play. On the flip side, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written in a

comedy style that still encompasses some elements of a tragedy. He uses his plays to portray life

lessons that can be taught throughout the play. Mainly about love or the existence of life,

Shakespeare tries to connect the audience or reader to understand different troubles the

characters face. A way he truly encompasses the issues in the Elizabeth era and the reason we do

certain actions in life is through soliloquy. A soliloquy is an act of speaking one's thoughts aloud

when by oneself or regardless of any listeners, especially by a character in a play. Through

soliloquy and his writing style, he teaches his peers the moral of a play through dialogue and

different elements of a play.

Hamlet is tragedy written by Shakespeare during the Elizabethan Era, yet the exact date

of when the play was published. Some speculation is around the fact that Shakespeare wrote the
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play earlier and called it “Ur-Hamlet” and then expanded on the idea later on in life. Hamlet is

the prince of Denmark in which he gets a visit from a ghostly figured that was his recently

deceased Father. The ghost tells hamlet that his Father’s brother, Claudius, had killed his father

to take control of the throne as well as marry his brother’s wife. He tells Hamlet to pick up a

sword and avenge the death of his Father. Now comes the decision that will change his life

forever, should he commit murder to avenge his death or should he distrust the ghost and not

take the information serious and respect the newly crowned king and stepdad? This sin will send

him to hell for eternity. While the death of his father lingers in hamlets mind, he has a lover as

well, Ophelia. She is in love with Hamlet but once his father death occurs, he loses focus on

Ophelia and in return, she commits suicide due to the unreciprocated love. Hamlet then commits

to avenging his father’s death and tries to show Claudius that he knows by reenacting the death

of his fathers through a play. During the performance, he wants to kill Claudius. Behind a

curtain, he hears a noise and thinks it is Claudius coming. He stabs the person but comes out to

be the person was Polonius, Ophelia’s Father. When Claudius figures out that Hamlet knows of

his actions of killing his Father, he wants to ship Hamlet to England to have him killed. He has

Hamlet arrested and he is on a boat to England but Hamlet escapes to flee back to Denmark. At

this point of time, he contemplates the reason for life, death, and the action one acts upon during

life. The ending is what makes the tragedy so interesting. An avenger named Laerters from

France want to kill Hamlet, so he team up with Claudius to kill Hamlet. They poison the sword

only to get it mixed with others. Hamlet gets his hands on the poisoned sword and kills Laarters

with it as well as stabs Claudius with it. Finally, his Father’s death has been avenged.

The significance of the performance of Hamlet is the struggle Hamlet faces on the temptation

of his fatherly ghost. We can think of the Ghost as the Devil, tempting one to do what feels right
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instead of what is morally right. He knows that Murdering in the act of revenge is morally

wrong. In the play, he even states that if he was to kill Claudius, he would be condemned to hell

for eternity. Well as explained, he missed handled the situation and plans to kill his stepdad. This

shows the struggle that William Shakespeare tries to teach his audience that a person can go

through during life:

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the

Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary,

stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an

unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.

That it should come to this! But two months dead!

Revenge and anger takes over Hamlet as well as temptations from a demonic creature. In the

quote above, Hamlet is contemplating suicide because life at the moment is unbearable to live

through. This shows that at times, life is a struggle to go through. Everyone has hard times and

hit rock bottom. At these moments, people make the wrong choices and thus act upon sins. In the

Elizabethan era, most citizens in England were Catholic and to make a better connection with the

audience in England and the moral of the story. Yet we can see the struggle of doing what is

right and to settle disputes and do what is correct. Claudius chooses to abandon his stepson to

protect his life. He banishes him to England going against the directions of his new wife, the

mother of Hamlet. Claudius than teams up with an enemy of his stepson to plan to kill him. The

morals of the characters in the play are corrupted. Being king and having power means more to

Claudius then his own Brother, the wishes of his new wife to not send her child to England, as

well as the plot to kill Hamlet. His greed for power is what drives Claudius to kill in order to

protect what he had already previously killed for.

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One of William Shakespeare’s greatest assets while writing plays is the usage of a

soliloquy. They create a dramatic effect that gives insights on character’s thoughts and what they

feel. Shakespeare is allowing the audience to understand the emotions running through the actor

rather than guessing. He wants to allow the peers to formulate the train of emotion in a

perspective other than their own because they will formulate a different thinking process of your

own. In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses soliloquy to talk about Hamlet’s train of thought:

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The

slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And

by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The

heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal

coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who

would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's

contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the

spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But

that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No

traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to

others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the

native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of

great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of
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action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins

remember'd!” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet)

This is one of Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquys and quotes through all of his literary

works. This is a soliloquy of Hamlet’s though process during the madness of everything he is

facing. His Father’s death is lingering over him and he is having suicidal thoughts. He wonders if

living is the best option for him or if he just end his life now to spare him the pain. He figures

suicide would be the noblest thing to do being that he cannot bear to look at the man who

murdered his father. He is yet to do something to avenge his Father’s death and is yet to confront

Claudius about him knowing what he had done. The key factor to point out is the fact that he

relates his issues to those of all mankind. Everyone shares a common trait, all of mankind goes

through troubles and what happens next is never certain. Yet what he is scared of most is the fact

he doesn’t know if there is life after death or what happens once one dies, that is why he doesn’t

commit suicide. We see how Shakespeare makes a connection that everyone has something in

common, we all go through hardships.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in Athens, Greece. Theseus is the Duke of

Athens and plans to marry Hippolyta. He arranges a 4 day celebration. A problem arises when

Egeus brings to court his daughter, Hermia and 2 boys, Demetrius and Lysander. Egeus wants

Hermia to marry Demetrius but she is in love with Lysander. Egeus does not permit their love

and doesn’t want them to get married and thus wants his own daughter to die. The Duke of

Athens gives Hermia until his own wedding to choose her option. Hermia and Lysander plan to

escape Athens and get married in the middle of the night. They tell their plan to Helena who was

engaged to Demetrius and still really loves him. She figures this was her time to regain their love

and tells Demetrius of their secrete plan. Thus, Demetrius follows Hermia and Lysander into the
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woods and following Demetrius is Helena. Simultaneously, fairies are in this woods. Oberon, the

fairy king, and Titania, his queen, are traveling from Linda to Athens to bless the wedding of

Theseus and Hippolyta. As well as entertainers that are practicing a play they have created for

the Duke and his soon to be ditches that will be performed at the wedding. Oberon wants to

make a knight of a handsome Indian orince to join the Fairy knighthood. He orders his servant,

Puck, to find a magical flower that makes a person fall in love with the first person they see. He

wants to put the juice of the flower on the eyelids of Titania as well as recently observed

Demetrius because the faires are watching the Greek people in the woods and notice the

mistreatment of Helena by Demetrius. Yet Puck confuses Demetrius with Lysander and puts the

juice on the eyelids on Lysander. Upon waking up, Lysander first lays eyes on Helena making

him fall in love with her at first sight. Puck notices his mistake and puts the juice on Demetrius

now making both males madly in love with Helena leaving Hermia lonely. In acts of angry, she

challenges Helena to a duel. But before they can fight, Lysander and Demtrius fight over Helena.

As the battle was heating up, puck leads both men in different directions by mimicking their

voices getting them lost in the forest. Next, Titania awakens from her sleep and she too was

given the love juice. The first person she fell in love with is an entertainer that were practicing

for the play for the Duke. Knowing Puck had a messed up, he changes the head of the entertainer

to a head of a donkey. She is madly in love with the donkey headed actor but Puck was able to

break that curse. Puck had then reapply the love potion on Lysander to then fall in in love

Hermia as well as putting the potion on Demetrius to fall in love with Helena. Finally the lovers

are supposed to love the right significant other. They have a group marriage in the woods led by

the Fairies. After they watch a rehearsal of the play that the actors are going to perform for the

Duke and then fall asleep. Puck then places a charm over their newly marriage and then they
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magically disappear. At the end of the Play, Puck asks the audience for forgiveness for his

actions on messing with the emotion of love and tells the audience to think of the play as just a

crazy dream.

In A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Shakespeare represents how love is a crazy, and

touchy emotion to mess around with. It bring deceit and uncontrollable power when used

wrongly. Love makes you do things that drive a person to do wrong. In this case Hermia has a

choice between following her love or doing what she is being told to do. She ultimately is driven

to do what is emotionally driving her to do. She leaves the safety of her home and village to go

off to marry a boy she is madly in love with. Yet what she doesn’t know, is that the boy she is

being asked to marry loves her. The unreciprocated love is what causes the conflict and the plot

of the play:

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so.

He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, So I,

admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose

to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is

winged Cupid painted blind

The quote above expresses what Helena feels about the unexplainable characteristics of love.

She notices that love isn’t always a for sure thing. Emotions change and if one isn’t careful, they

can get themselves hurt over emotions. Helena is sad that she can’t get love back from her

beloved Demetrious, she is coming to realize the complexity of the erratic nature of love. It

doesn’t matter what your physical characteristics are or how proper you are, love allows one to

foresee the flaws one has because they have gone mad for one. Shakespeare is talking about his

perspective of law and how one feels when a connection is real between two significant others.
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Yet another lesson he is trying to teach us about how love will prevail if it is true love. Maybe

that is why the ending of the play was everyone finding their way to the people they are meant to

love so the audience can move past complications a love to see the essence of the attribute. hence

why the ending was just a dream.

Reference Page

 Cook, Alex. “What is Ophelia's Purpose in "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare.” Quora,

Grammarly, 16 Dec. 2016, www.quora.com/What-is-Ophelias-purpose-in-Hamlet-by-

William-Shakespeare..

 Shakespeare, William. “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” No Fear Shakespeare , Port City

International University ,

www.portcity.edu.bd/ELibrary/ENG/amidsummernightsdream.pdf.

 “William Shakespeare Biography.” Encycolpedia of World Biography, 2018,

www.notablebiographies.com/Sc-St/Shakespeare-William.html.