Thursday, July 18, 2013

What is significant in the opening scene of one of William Shakespeare's plays?It is for an assigment.

I have modified your question slightly because it is
impossible to discuss the opening scenes of six Shakespeare plays in the limited space
available. The most striking effect in the opening of any of Shakespeare's plays can be
found in Macbeth. Three witches, deservedly called the Weird
Sisters, appear with thunder and lightning in the background. They talk to each others
in a strange language and quickly exit. Shakespeare's theater was a noisy and sometimes
unruly place. He tried to capture the audience's attention quickly so as to silence the
conversations and other crowd noise and enable his performers to be heard. In
Hamlet he has a guard shout, "Halt! Who goes there?" This suggests
that something violent may be about to happen and should capture the audience's
attention, especially that of the noisiest group who were always those assembled in the
pit directly in front of the stage. Understanding Shakespeare's plays often requires
understanding the problems involved in staging them.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...