After reading Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf,” one probably notices the main character in this novel, Harry Haller, is in a constant internal battle, where there is a “continual and deadly enmity” (41-42) between two natures, one where he claims to possess and the other to be divided by “a human and a wolfish one” (41). Although one can gain many insights from reading Steppenwolf, I believe Haller seeks to conform to the bourgeois in every aspect of his life. However, he belatedly realizes how he actually despises the bourgeois for its complacency and conformity. He comes upon this conclusion when he meets several people who are willing to help him form this conclusion by way of preparing him to experience the “Magic Theater.” I also believe that the Magic Theater is an important learning ground for teaching one to laugh, including Haller.
The Magic Theater, which I believe to be “a world of pictures, not realities,” (178) is a reflection of Haller’s own mind. I also believe that when Haller enters the Magic Theater he is completely separated from reality because the elixir allows Haller to see what his own soul seeks; thus, the Magic Theater serves as an important learning ground for Haller, for it helps him to “see everything through the eyes of Harry and the old spectacles of the Steppenwolf” (176), which is meant to help him see his true self, as he sometimes failed to see before.
In addition, the Magic Theater shows Harry his “past life had been false and full of stupid unhappiness” (199). These regrets and mistakes in his past help him to gain understanding of life so that “he can rearrange these pieces of a previous self in what order he pleases,” (192). Therefore, the Magic Theater also serves, as the chess player pointed out, to show Haller that life’s obstacles and decisions are “all the hundred thousand pieces of life’s game” (217) that’s in his pocket. For this reason Haller will be able to control his own life, to not make the same mistakes again. Rather, he will be able to relive every moment in life again as it is meant to be live.
As Haller simultaneously learns how to laugh in the Magic Theater, he is intrigued by the events that take place within the Magic Theater. In one instance, within the Magic
The audience is an important factor to determine the success of a spectacle. It is known that there is no spectacle without audience. The musical theater presentations are known for their number of people, which according to the Broadway League (n.d.), the 2013 season reached attendance of 11.57 million. However, the number of spectators has been decreased in comparison with the peak of popularity for musicals in the last century. The first reason for that is that the spectators of musical theater presentations were a more specific group such as wealthy and intellectual people that used to go to this type of presentation, and this pattern has been consistent until now, as it can be seen in the price of a Broadway spectacle that is very expensive. Second, the spectators have to go where the spectacles are set up, which makes the live presenta...
Marciano, Lisa "The Serious Comedy of Twelfth Night: Dark Didacticism in Illyria." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 56.1 (2003): 3-19. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 6 Nov. 2009.
Beaumont's failed comedy, 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle', is a unique play that seeks to satirise and burlesque the theatrical and social domain. Crucial to this satire is the collision of two concurrent plots that vie for the audience’s attention. These collisions allow the audience to see opposing ideologies in contrast through the dramatic effect of the breakdown in the boundaries of theatre. It is arguable that this play encourages one to question hierarchy and tradition through exploration of ideology, disputed genres, and Rafe's potential rebellion.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comedy that has been interpreted in different ways, enabling one to receive multiple experiences of the same story. Due to the content and themes of the play, it can be creatively challenging to producers and their casting strategies. Instead of being a hindrance, I find the ability for one to experiment exciting as people try to discover strategies that best represent entertainment for the audience, as well as the best ways to interpret Shakespeare’s work.
...by and enchantment. In real life, most of us are Helens hoping that this trance will last forever, except we do not have the magic to prolong the love or the fake realities we create. Shakespeare reveals how absurd it is to live on these unrealities by throwing in Titania’s realization of her love for Bottom. Titania’s love reveals that we are not all doomed to this life of living on the edge of hope, that we can be truly elated with our real world. Aside from this criticism Shakespeare’s contrast between appearance and reality shows us how ignoring reality and accepting unrealities can sometimes prove to be the better pathway to take in life, as Theseus and the rest of the audience of Pyramus and Thisbe display for us. Shakespeare is telling us to live our lives more like Titania and less like Helen so that we can be completely content with reality.
Theatres and How We Had Fun." Little, Brown, and Company. (Boston, Toronto, London); 1991. P. 139, 144.
Actors were expected to memorize hundreds of lines at a time. While one play could be performing, actors would be practicing lines for their next show. Play writers also began to make roles for the actors in the theatrical pieces. The theaters that actors performed in were roofless so that the sun could be used as lighting. Theatrical shows were held in the afternoon because it provided the best amount of light for the show. When the people gathered into the theater, the different classes of people were separated by where they could afford to sit and watch the show. The lower classmen were situated on the bare earth where it was dirty and smelly because it was never cleaned. The owners’ of the theaters found it less expensive if they did not keep high maintenance of their establishments. Higher classmen sat under a roof and for a penny more, they could buy cushions for their seats.
In William Shakespeare’s book, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, magic is a powerful and useful tool for the characters that have the capability to use it. Some of the characters abuse the power of magic, while others are more responsible in how they use it. Oberon is one the characters that abuses the power of magic. Oberon’s magic has an immense impact on the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. More specifically, Oberon’s magic affects his own life, the lives of other characters, and all the characters in the story experience his magic differently. We will see that even the person who has power to use the magic can become surprised by it. Magic, the ultimate supernatural power, is often unpredictable and inexplicable.
It makes sense to me to see in this Shakespeare's sense of his own art--both what it can achieve and what it cannot. The theatre--that magical world of poetry, song, illusion, pleasing and threatening apparitions--can, like Prospero's magic, educate us into a better sense of ourselves, into a final acceptance of the world, a state in which we forgive and forget in the interests of the greater human community. The theatre, that is, can reconcile us to the joys of the human community so that we do not destroy our families in a search for righting past evils in a spirit of personal revenge or as crude assertions of our own egos. It can, in a very real sense, help us fully to understand the central Christian commitment to charity, to loving our neighbour as ourselves. The magic here brings about a total reconciliation of all levels of society from sophisticated rulers to semi-human brutes, momentarily holding off Machiavellian deceit, drunken foolishness, and animalistic rebellion--each person, no matter how he has lived, has a place in the magic circle at the end. And no one is asking any awkward questions.
One of its aspects is satire; it criticizes the absurdity of lives lived unaware and unconscious of ultimate reality and the deadness and mechanical senselessness of half-conscious lives. Its goal is to make people aware of "man's precarious and mysterious position in the universe. It is not concerned with ideological considerations or heroic deeds but with a man’s "descent into the depths of his personality, his dreams, fantasies and nightmare .The Theatre of the Absurd is a theatre of situation asagainst a theatre of events in sequence. It does not employ psychology, subtlety of characterization and plot in the conventional sense.
The Alchemist is only one of many plays that influenced the way that we viewed Elizabethan society. It showed us that in the worst of times, no one was safe from treachery and deceit. The theater was one of the main forms of entertainment and anyone could enjoy plays such as this. It also shows that Shakespeare was not the only great playwright of this time. The Elizabethan period was a great time in our world’s history, and the theater was it’s greatest moment.
Kernodle, George R. "The Theater Of Exaltation: Modern Tragedy And Poetic Drama." Kernodle, George R. Invitation to the Theatre. New Yory: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967. 217-223.
Wilson, E., & Goldfarb, A. (2008). Theater: the lively art (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill.
The clown contributes towards the humourous entertainment of this play through his numerous puns and jokes. He is a source of laughter, not because we are humoured by his "foolery"; for he proves to be no fool at all; but rather because he amuses us with his brilliant wit. Having mastered the art of jesting, Feste is sensitive of his profession, always aware of the circumstances he is in and the appropriateness of this folly.
"My way is to conjure you" says Rosalind (V.iv.208) in the epilogue, and as (s)he has conjured her fellow characters throughout the play, so has she conjured the audience. But as the audience is fully aware this is "only a play," and Rosalind only a character on stage. The perpetual reminders of the Act as opposed to the Real Thing can readily be seen - in cooperation with the epilogue - to express the playwright's warning against accepting as real the illusion he has created, in the twentieth century we would call it