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Shakespeare's influence on English literature
Shakespeare's influence on English literature
Shakespeare's influence on English literature
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William Shakespeare has undeniably influenced the course of literature, but he has also affected our modern pop culture. Some universal themes he analyzes within his text include, but are not limited to: appearance vs reality, order vs disorder, greed, lust, free will, and love. Because these topics are ones the public can relate to, many of his plays have been adapted into movies and other forms of storytelling to further expose younger viewers to these themes at an age-appropriate level. These movies include: West Side Story (1961) which directly take their plots for Romeo and Juliet (1595-96); the Disney film The Lion King (1994) which is an adaptation of Hamlet (1600); and the popular teen film She’s the Man (2006) which is a modernized
Musicians from various genres have been influenced by the playwright’s text. Within classical music, Russian composer Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” in 1869; Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote “The Tempest: Complete Incidental Music to Shakespeare” in 1926; and German composer Richard Wagner took influence from Measure for Measure for his opera “Das Liebesverbot” in 1834. William Shakespeare has also impacted the musical theatre world, influencing productions such as Kiss Me, Kate (1948) and more recently Something Rotten (2015.) The playwright’s influence can also be traced to pop music, inspiring songs such as “Love Story” by Taylor Swift and even “I Am the Walrus” by The Beatles. (Pop Goes Shakespeare…The Bard in Modern Music.) Once again, Shakespeare’s relatable themes, particularly of love, are popular muses for music artists. According to The Shakespeare and Dance Project, choreographers have also created ballets and other dance works based on, or inspired by, Shakespeare’s plays since the eighteenth century. Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are popular plays adapted into dance due to their interesting love stories and physical connections between characters. Many painters have been influenced from William Shakespeare’s plays and have used their talent to display
One of the most celebrated plays in history, “Romeo and Juliet”, was written by William Shakespeare in the late 16th century. It is a story about two lovers that have to meet in secret because of an ongoing family feud. Tragically, because of their forbidden love Romeo and Juliet take their lives so they can be together. In 1997, a movie was adapted from the play “Romeo and Juliet”, directed by Baz Lurhmann. However, as alike as the movie and the play are, they are also relatively different.
In 1596, William Shakespeare published the tragic tale of two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. The origins of this story are uncertain but Shakespeare’s chief source for his adoption of the story was from “…The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, a poem by Arthur Brooke (1562). He also knew the story from Palace of Pleasure, by William Painter, which appeared in several editions prior to 1580.”(Boyce 563) Shakespeare’s classic tale is about “two young lovers caught in the crossfire of a senseless family feud.”(Shakespeare 3) This feud between the two families ultimately is the cause of the two lovers untimely demise. In 1996, Baz Luhrmann produced a modern film of the classic tragedy entitled William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Adding familiar images and common ideas, Luhrmann brought the classic story to modern times. Though Romeo + Juliet has many differences from the original version from Shakespeare, it supports the original characters, themes, dialogue, and key issues of the classic tale of the star-crossed lovers.
In the play Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare challenges the way Elizabethan society worked. He repeatedly brought up issues throughout the play that displeased him about the way people behaved and acted at the time. Religious issues, such as the treatment of Shylock by the Christians, and his eventual persecution in the court scene of Act IV Scene I, is a major factor to the play. Also, the treatment of women back in Elizabethan times came to question in the play, with the first heroine in a play written by Shakespeare in the play and the Act IV Scene I scenario of Portia dressing as a man to act as a lawyer. Mercy, love and faith also feature in the play.
By using just the right combination of words, or by coming up with just the right image, Shakespeare wrote many passages and entire plays that were so powerful, moving, tragic, comedic, and romantic that many are still being memorized and performed today, almost four centuries later. But the greatness of Shakespeare’s ability lies not so much in the basic themes of his works but in the creativity he used to write these stories of love, power, greed, discrimination, hatred, and tragedy.
William Shakespeare has become one of the most famous and influential writers in English literature and his work has been reenacted and studied all over the world for several centuries. However, we often do not get the chance to admire all of his other plays as the school curriculum in high school only covers his four most famous tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello. Now, as a college student, I am able to appreciate his work more as I have recently seen Shakespeare Midwinter Night’s Dream which is based on Shakespeare’s real play Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, a comedy that portrays the events that surround the marriage of a Duke, the love of four young lovers and a group of amateur actors who must
Many perceive The Lion King, Disney's most successful movie to date, as Disney's only original movie; the only movie not previously a fairy tale from one country or another. This, however, is not the case. While The Lion King seems not to be beased on a fairy tale, it is in fact strongly based on the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Disney writers cleverly conceal the basic character archetypes and simplified storyline in a children's tale of cute lions in Africa. To the seasoned reader, however, Hamlet comes screaming out of the screenplay as obviously as Hamlet performed onstage.
...e tragic celebration of young, forbidden love told by William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, has been tailored for many motion picture adaptations. The most famous of these adaptations are Franco Zeffirelli’s version and Baz Lurhmann’s film produced in 1996. These two films applied Shakespeare’s most well-known work as a basis for their motion pictures. Both films had similarities, but the differences were much more apparent. Ever since William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been debuted, it has and forever will be an artistic influence for playwrights, directors, and other artists.
Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, is a tragic love story about two young lovers who are forced to be estranged as a result of their feuding families. The play is about their struggle to contravene fate and create a future together. As such, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood would try and emulate Shakespeare’s masterpiece. This had been done before in many films. Prominent among them were, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 “Romeo and Juliet” and Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.” Both films stay true to the themes of Shakespeare’s original play. However, the modernised Luhrmann film not only maintains the essence of Shakespeare’s writings, Luhrmann makes it relevant to a teenage audience. This is done through the renewal of props and costumes, the reconstruction of the prologue and the upgrading of the setting, whilst preserving the original Shakespearean language. Out of the two, it is Luhrmann who targets Romeo & Juliet to a younger audience to a much larger extent than Zeffirelli.
Baz Lurhmann’s creation of the film Romeo and Juliet has shown that today’s audience can still understand and appreciate William Shakespeare. Typically, when a modern audience think of Shakespeare, they immediately think it will be boring, yet Lurhmann successfully rejuvenates Romeo and Juliet. In his film production he uses a number of different cinematic techniques, costumes and a formidably enjoyable soundtrack; yet changes not one word from Shakespeare’s original play, thus making it appeal to a modern audience.
“The most filmed of all plays, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, with its universal themes… remains uniquely adaptable for any time period,” (Botnick, 2002). Directors Franco Zeffirelli (1968) and Baz Luhrman (1996) provide examples of the plays adaption to suit the teenage generation of their time. Identifying the key elements of each version: the directors intentions, time/place, pace, symbols, language and human context is one way to clearly show how each director clearly reaches their target audience. Overall however Luhrman’s adaptation would be more effective for capturing the teenage audience.
The movie “Shakespeare in Love” shows the business process of theater, along with Shakespeare’s struggles in his career and love life. Shakespeare in Love is a fictional account of the life that inspired the play Romeo and Juliet. Throughout the movie there are scenes, which you can relate to modern times comical irony devious behavior manipulation and how everything does not matter in the case of love. The story is perfect and ties together all the parts of the actual play and what may have really happened to the life of Shakespeare. The writers produced an imaginative romantic comedy in the style of Shakespeare that is very believable. They bring the viewer along for a fictitious account of what may have motivated Shakespeare to write one of the greatest plays of all times. This film captures the coarseness and bawdiness of the period as well as its soaring poetry. It places Shakespeare’s world in a modern context and makes it accessible, without diminishing the impact of his words.
the law he brought back for the sake of lust. Angelo is an immoral and
Shakespeare has created stories that are so powerful, emotional, comedic, tragic and romantic that they are still continuously remembered and studied in the modern era. Though the essence of his talents does not lie in the simple themes behind his plays, but more so in
Tim Blake Nelson’s O takes Shakespeare’s Othello and shifts the action from 16th-century Venice and Cyprus to a very current day Charleston, South Carolina. The issue with updating a film adaptation of Shakespeare to present-day is that often, the essence of Shakespeare is lost. Some modernized film versions of his works utilize the original text, like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. But O chooses to update everything about the play, leading viewers to wonder whether or not it fully captures Shakespeare’s mastery of character, dialogue and intense thematic elements. Tim Blake Nelson’s O is, to some extent, a successful film adaptation in that the nature and spirit of Othello are still the basis of the film.
In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the art of music appears in the opening of the speech as the unhappy and lovesick Orsino tells his musicians, “If music be the food of love, play on” (I.i.1) In the speech that follows, Orsino asks the musicians to give him so much musical love i.e. food that will “surfeit” and cease to yearn for love any longer. Shakespeare uses music in opening line of play and at the end by Feste singing his song. It reveals that Shakespeare has presented on stage a romantic comedy which is not detached from our everyday reality. Thus songs are used by Shakespeare with surfeiting desire not only for the purpose of entertaining the audience but also closely linked to the play’s theme.