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Good and evil constantly test the individual, which we are today probably more aware of than 400 years ago. "Man is neither angel nor beast," French philosopher Blaise Pascal once said. And he was right. Despite this there was a tendency in (literary) history, and there still is, that "evil" women were personifications of the Devil, seductresses that lured men into sin, sirens that lead them the wrong way, witches that "poured their spirits in their ear". With this diploma thesis I am trying to see beyond the established boundaries of gender and trying to figure it out, whether Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan are truly evil, as they are described by most of the literary critics, or they are simply victims of their own ambition, circumstances, (female) gender and society, in which they live or rather in which William Shakespeare brought them to life and made them immortal.
Focuses on Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The winter's tale. UkBU.
The concepts of good and evil, which can be understood and defined differently, are two broad and sapid concepts because of its diverse interpretations. The two abstract notions have been discussed throughout the centuries since the human existence and continue to be a dispute today. However, the meaning of good and evil was especially interesting in the middle Ages and Renaissance that will be introduced in the first part of this thesis. It will present the different origins of good and evil and examine how variously these concepts were perceived in the middle Ages and Renaissance. It should be pointed out that there was a great contrast in defining of good and evil in both centuries. Additionally, the second part of the thesis will explore the problems of those concepts in terms of King Lear and Macbeth. It will deal with the problems of goodness of Cordelia and Banquo, evilness of Edmund and Lady Macbeth and badness of Lear and Macbeth. It will also identify how the characters turn to good, bad or evil side, whether they become creator or victims of evil, and finally reveal who of them can be called good, bad or evil person. Finally, the third part of the thesis will present the interpretation of the final scenes where both tragedies end with the coronation of the new king. It will explore the conflict of both forces and reveal what kind of force can actually win the struggle between good and evil in both plays. It will also deal with the problem of ambivalent depiction of the characters and examine the question of what is actually good and evil and how to define it in Shakespeare ́s plays. So, the aim of the thesis is to explore the problems of the concepts of good and evil in terms of the tragedies King Lear and Macbeth and to identify to what extent the characters can be seen as good and evil.
Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Marfield Prize For fans of Book of Ages and American Eve, this “lively, illuminating new biography” (The Boston Globe) of 19th-century queer actress Charlotte Cushman portrays a “brisk, beautifully crafted life” (Stacy Schiff, bestselling author of The Witches and Cleopatra) that riveted New York City and made headlines across America. All her life, Charlotte Cushman refused to submit to others’ expectations. Raised in Boston at the time of the transcendentalists, a series of disasters cleared the way for her life on the stage—a path she eagerly took, rejecting marriage and creating a life of adventure, playing the role of the hero in and out of the theater as she traveled to New Orleans and New York City, and eventually to London and back to build a successful career. Her Hamlet, Romeo, Lady Macbeth, and Nancy Sykes from Oliver Twist became canon, impressing Louisa May Alcott, who later based a character on her in Jo’s Boys, and Walt Whitman, who raved about “the towering grandeur of her genius” in his columns for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. She acted alongside Edwin and John Wilkes Booth—supposedly giving the latter a scar on his neck that was later used to identify him as President Lincoln’s assassin—and visited frequently with the Great Emancipator himself, who was a devoted Shakespeare fan and admirer of Cushman’s work. Her wife immortalized her in the angel at the top of Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain; worldwide, she was “a lady universally acknowledged as the greatest living tragic actress.” Behind the scenes, she was equally radical, making an independent income, supporting her family, creating one of the first bohemian artists’ colonies abroad, and living publicly as a queer woman. And yet, her name has since faded into the shadows. Now, her story comes to brilliant life with Tana Wojczuk’s Lady Romeo, an exhilarating and enlightening biography of the 19th-century trailblazer. With new research and rarely seen letters and documents, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of 1800s New York City and featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries who changed the cultural landscape of America forever. The story of an astonishing and uniquely American life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable forgotten figures in our history and restores her to center stage, where she belongs.
Pre-University Paper from the year 2016 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1, , language: English, abstract: The following study focuses on the characters of "Macbeth", Lady Macbeth, King Duncan and the Witches or Weïrd Sisters. The main focus being why they are still discussed today. What makes the conflicted characters of "Macbeth" and Lady Macbeth so interesting? What do the witches represent? Is King Duncan a weak or generous King? At the time Macbeth was enjoyed by rich and poor and still is appreciated today, but why? If you type “William Shakespeare” into Google you will receive over 64 million results. And, although very little is known about his personal life the plays and poems he wrote have survived over four centuries and Shakespeare’s works are the second most quoted after the Bible. This research paper will be focusing on “one of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular and globally influential plays”: the tragedy "Macbeth". The play was probably written around 1606. The play focuses on a Thane called Macbeth who is driven by witches and by his wife into the murder of King Duncan in order to take the throne for himself. Since 1606 Macbeth has been performed uncountable times in theatres and screened several times, the most recent one being "Macbeth" (UK, 2015) with Justin Kurzel directing and Michael Fassbender starring as Macbeth. Shakespeare’s plays are still addressed in schools around the world.
Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1.7, University of Bonn, language: English, abstract: This term paper will focus on Kurzel’s adaptation, more precisely it will focus on one of Shakespeare’s most controversial characters: Lady Macbeth. Reading Shakespeare offers the reader the opportunity to interpret Lady Macbeth in different ways. While some adaptations present Lady Macbeth as an evil woman who has a masculine side, others present her more as a potent person and give her an empowering touch, there are also people who might see her as a victim of her devotion to her husband. Focusing on the female gender, this paper will analyse and compare how Lady Macbeth is presented and illustrated in Shakespeare’s original play and in Kurzel’s Adaptation. First, the paper is going to give a general overview on ‘Feminist Theory’ by introducing key terms that are significant for the analysis. Then it will give a short overview of the characteristics of an ideal Elizabethan woman. The main part will focus on two scenes in which Lady Macbeth is actively present. After deconstructing the selected Lady Macbeth scenes, in the source text and in the adaptation, it will compare them to each other. Therefore, the main part of this paper will analyse the character of Lady Macbeth by focusing on the female gender and comparing how she is represented in the book and in the movie. It will pay attention to the historical context, speech, gestures and mimics, but also on costumes and setting. William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, who wrote his poems and plays during the Renaissance. He is known for his various works of literature. “Sonnet 18”, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are only a few examples of his famous works. His unique plays are dealing with different topics, showing wide knowledge of human behavior, expressed through a vast range of characters. Shakespeare’s works are still read and taught not only in school and university but also play a role in our daily lives; his topics are still relevant today. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have been adapted into more than 420 films and TV-Movie versions. Macbeth was filmed 37 times. The most recent Macbeth adaptation is from 2015 by Justin Kurzel.
Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Shakespeare’s Tragedies – Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, language: English, abstract: Renaissance tragedy does to a large extent deal with common political, religious and social questions of the time. In most cases, authors use tragedy as the place to question and even criticize those issues, and thus use it as a political space. In Jacobean England, society was profoundly hierarchical with the king on top of the state, and the father or husband as head of the family. “[W]omen were clearly socially subordinate, and the preponderance of discourse on the gender hierarchy was misogynistic” . Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s late tragedies, written in 1606, and presented at the Globe Theatre later that year. In Shakespeare’s plays sex and gender are crucial for defining human identity and political power. In the course of this essay, I will first take a closer look at gender ideology in the English Renaissance and in Renaissance tragedy and see how society justified the social subordination of women, and what kind of behaviour was considered appropriate for women. As Macbeth is a play that hugely builds on gender stereotyping, I will afterwards work out the play’s definition of masculinity and femininity in the medieval social context the tragedy is set in, and subsequently analyse the characters of the three witches and king Duncan regarding their hermaphroditism and androgynity, and see whether the blurring of fixed gender roles might be interpreted as an indication that gender politics in Macbeth are unusual for the medieval Scottish context. The main part of this essay will be dedicated to the Macbeths, two strongly individualized characters. I will examine the characters of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth first, take a look at how their ambition leads to their downfall and afterwards discuss whether it is possible to talk about an inversion of the traditional gender roles since especially Lady Macbeth oversteps the boundaries of appropriate female behaviour and is, at least in the beginning, the more powerful character of the two spouses.