William Shake speare

Othello offers a study of human nature, which is made up principally of two warring elements, love and hatred. Of the three characters in Othello, Desdamona and Iago are the antitheses of each other, with the former stands for love and life force that strives for order, community, growth and light and the latter for hatred and anti-life force that seeks anarchy, revenge, death and darkness. Othello is the combination of the two. In the first part he manages a calm control of himself under law and order, so the love triumphs over hatred. In the latter part, however, when the social conditions in Cyprus are less secure, the Iago spirit starts to undermine the noble values of Othello. Gradually Othello’s noble quality is poisoned by Iago spirit, and yields to evil. The murder of Desdemona acts as the final destruction in Othello himself of all the ordering power of love, trust and bond between human beings. So it is the flaw, the sin that all flesh is heir to that destroys Othello. (1) Humanism

Othello can be regarded as a tragedy of humanism. Othello is a new man of the Renaissance. He is a great warrior, and too noble-minded to suspect those whom he loves. Though he is a black man, he has great moral beauty. He loves Desdemoda so dearly just because he finds he to be the embodiment of integrity, sincerity and loftiness of mind. These qualities , together with her youth and beauty, make her his ideal of a woman, and her love the greatest reward for his long and hard life. Desdemoda and Othello both belong to the future world. Their tragedy shows that noble-minded people may be led astray by evil forces in an evil society and commit horrible mistakes if they cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, and good from evil. (2) Jealousy

Jealousy is also often regarded as one main theme of Othello. Almost all the characters in the play are in some way jealous or are involved in jealousy. Othello, the essentially noble man, who is not “easily jealous”, has been infected by Iago’s jealousy and becomes a prey of jealousy. Evil conquers Othello with jealousy and destroys his nobleness. Subtle variations of torture reduce him to a beast of fury and madness. The love that united man and woman, youth and maturity, black and white in marriage is shattered. So this play is a close study of man’s nature. (3) Racial Prejudice

Othello is also a tragedy of the coloured people in a society of racial prejudice. Though well-known as a soldier and in high position, Othello has been a man living in loneliness, because he is black. The citizens of Venice seem to be treating him as one

of themselves, but to have him marry one of their daughter is quite another matter. Here we can find strong racial prejudice against the black. Iago, in carrying out his evil intrigue, sees this, and in his hint to Othello, he touches persistently on the unnaturalness of Othello’s marriage in the eyes of the white gentlemen. Here lies the social background of Iago’s success in ruining Othello’s happiness

Macbeth The Theme

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most powerful study of evil. The burning question of how evil comes into society and why it has such power over individual characters is right at the heart of this play. It has revealed how outward evil stirs up the wickedness in man and destroys him. What makes Macbeth degenerate is not the prophecies of the three witches but the lust, greed, ambition and selfishness in his own nature.

Macbeth is a tragedy of wild and treacherous ambition, which drives a brave soldier and national hero to degenerate into a bloody murderer and despot right to his doom. It is also a tragedy about the yielding of a great and good man to temptation and the degeneration of his moral nature resulting from his first deed of sin. His ambition drives him to commit his first crime and in order to hide his first crime he has to commit another. So one crime leads to another and he can’t stop at anything until he reaches his doom. Another theme Shakespeare shows in this play is that tyrants and oppressors, strong as they seem, are doomed to failure. Their defeat is determined by the mass of people refusing to support them and rising in arms against them. Macbeth’s personal tragedy has involved all the people of Scotland who are groaning under his yoke and longing for liberation. When the opposing forces march forward, people eagerly join them in fighting against the tyranny. In the closing scene, Macbeth’s isolation becomes complete.

King lear

The Theme

King Lear is not only a tragedy of an individual, but also a tragedy of a society, with wide significance and profound impact. It depicts a great social upheaval. The miseries of Lear disclose the essence of a corrupt society, in which each is ready to prey on the other. No images are more frequently met with in the play than the images of animals and beasts. This is a reflection of the jungle law of the age of primitive accumulation.

This play also shows Shakespeare’s affirmation of national unity and royal responsibility. The root of Lear’s tragedy lies in his irresponsibly dividing up his

kingdom owing to his folly and his mistaking flattery for true love. The playwright here seems to point out that the king, however great he might be, should be responsible to the people. If he can’t, history will punish him.

Shakespeare, in this play, puts forward the image of Hamlet as a humanist of the Renaissance. He has an unbounded love for the world, nature and man; he loves good, hates evil, and is free from medieval prejudices and superstitions; he shows a contempt for rank and wealth; he is a man of genius, highly accomplished and educated; he is a scholar, soldier, and statesman. His image reflects the versatility of the man of the Renaissance. His weakness is his melancholy, but in spite of his melancholy and delay in action, Hamlet still retains his active energy. His learning, wisdom, noble nature, limitation and tragedy are all representative of the humanists at the turn of the 16th and the 17th centuries.

This play also exposes a corrupted court. Shakespeare condemns the hypocrisy, treachery and general corruption at the royal court by revealing the power-seeking, the hidden motives, the courteous superficialities that veil lust and guilt. The Character of Hamlet

Without knowledge of his character, Hamlet’s story would hardly be intelligible. Hamlet is neither a frail and weak-minded youth nor a hair-splitting book-worm. He is one of the several idealists created by Shakespeare as an embodiment of the playwright’s own ideal.

In this play, he has been transfigured into a multifaceted Renaissance idealist, made to face a world of evil and having to learn to deal with it before he is ready. All of his feigning insanity and his momentary but true madness, and his impulsive action-these all stem from the thinking mind of a Renaissance humanist as he picks up wisdom and fast matures to act properly. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is no longer the mere agent of revenge and violence. He also sees and hopes to eliminate the innumerable social evils besetting and enfettering human beings. He attempts in a rather vague way to set right the “time” that is “out of joint”.

As a humanist, a man who is free from medieval prejudices and superstitions, Hamlet cherishes a profound reverence for man and a firm belief in man’s infinite capabilities: “What a piece of work is man; how noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!” Such a delight in nature and man is characteristic of the humanists of the Renaissance.

The keynote of Hamlet’s character is melancholy, and there can be no Hamlet without melancholy. And it is also his melancholy that led to the formation of his contradictory sides of his character. He is brave as well as timid, careful as well as careless, kind as well as cruel. But his melancholy is not the negative, hair-splitting and fruitless

kind. It is rather the result of the catastrophe he has met, his penetrating habit of mind and his inexperience in life. He keenly feels that he is not born at the right time, and that the reality is so sinister and overwhelming that it is probably not worthwhile fighting it out any more. All these have contributed to Hamlet’s profound melancholy and his delay in revenge.

He is also highly accomplished and educated a man of far-reaching perception and sparking wit. He is a closer observer of men and manners. He easily sees through people. His quick perception drives him to penetrate below the surface of things and question what others take for granted. So he is forever unmasking his world. Through a series of incidences happened around him, he discovers how wicked and unjust the world he lives in is. His observation of his world is summed up in a bitter sentence:”Denmark is a prison.”

Hamlet is a hero of the Renaissance. His learning, wisdom, noble nature, limitation and tragedy are all representative of the humanists at the turn of the 16th and the 17th centuries.

An impoverished young Venetian, Bassanio, is making preparations to gain in marriage the hand of Portia, a rich and beautiful heiress of Belmont . He asks his friend Antonio, a merchant of Venice , to lend him the money necessary for the voyage to Belmont , but Antonio's money is all invested in ships at sea. To help Bassanio, he has to borrow money from Shylock, the Jewish usurer. Shylock, who has been insulted by Antonio and other Christians, agrees to lend the money. But Antonio will sign a bond, providing that, if the money is not repaid in time, he will forfeit a pound of flesh.

Bassanio goes to Belmont and is accepted by Portia in marriage. But news comes that Antonio's ships have all been lost, he is penniless and will have to pay the pound of flesh. The case is brought before the court, and Antonio is in danger. A young doctor of law arrives at the court at this critical moment. He first appeals to Shylock for mercy, but the Jew insists on taking the pound of flesh, so that the doctor lets him have it, but warns Shylock that he may take his pound of flesh, but there is no mention of blood in the bond; if he sheds a single drop of a Christian's blood, he will be held guilty of breaking the bond, and his lands and goods will be confiscated by the state according to the law of Venice. Seeing himself thus cornered, Shylock has no choice but to obey the verdict of the court. The young doctor of law who saves the life of Antonio is no other than Portia in disguise! The play ends with jubilant celebration of the happy union of several pairs of lovers.

Through the contradicts between Antonio and Shylock, the play shows the conflict between friendship, love and greed, cruelty. Shakespeare, as a humanist of the time, praises the friendship between Antonio and Bassanio, the love between Bassanio and Portia, idealizes Portia as a heroine of beauty, wit and loyalty, and exposes Shylock's greed and cruelty. Many people today tend to regard the play as a satire of the Christians' hypocrisy and love, their cunning ways of pursuing worldliness and their unreasoning prejudice against Jews.

Portia, the heroine of this comedy, is the most ideal woman character ever created by Shakespeare. She is the daughter of Renaissance who loves deeply and genuinely only for her lover’s good quality and for love’s sake. She is beautiful, prudent, cultured, courteous, courageous, determined and very clever. She is brave enough to rise to an emergency and clever and cultured enough to save her

husband’s friend from the evil plot of the most cunning and wicked Jew Shylock with the wise interpretation of the bond, which would otherwise kill Antonio. She embodies all the elements of humanism, that is, love for this world and happiness existing in human life. She gets happiness from true love and true friendship and is ready to defend them with her wit. To a great extent, she is even cleverer and more capable than all the male characters in the play.? And more important, she is very independent. After hearing Antonio’s misfortune, she rises to the emergency instead of crying for men’s help. She knows her ability and does better than all the men in this play. In addition, she is very optimistic. She keeps optimistic even in the face of the most powerful enemy, because she is very confident of her intellect and ability. Through this heroine, Shakespeare expresses his belief in humanism and his confidence of the victory of the rising bourgeoisie.