English Literature

In order to satisfy the popular taste of the contemporary audience for melodramatic presentation of materials on the stage, Shakespeare presents a popular spectacle on the stage in the form of Banquo�s ghost in Macbeth, which subsequently has come to generate numerous debates, readings and, of course, presentation on both the stage and the celluloid. Whether the ghost of Banquo is subjective or objective is variously debated, and the best way to judging this is to appreciate the scene from the chair of an audience at the theatre, not from the easy chair of a reader at home. On the stage the ghost is visible only to Macbeth and the audience, both of whom understand the cruelty involved in the act of murder, while the other characters are supposed to be unaware of its presence. In this perhaps it becomes possible to understand that Banquo�s ghost plays an important and integral role in the development of the tragic action of the play and in bringing about the nemesis of Macbeth. The Banq...

In the �sleep walking scene� (Act V, scene i) of Macbeth, Shakespeare presents on the stage the terrible theme of how the entire personality of a human being is eaten up by the sense of guilt arising out of the murder of a saint-like innocent king. In Lady Macbeth the sense is so strong and deeply rooted in the unconscious that it ultimately brings about psychological disorder in her personality. But this does not simply focus on the guilty conscience of one character, rather it lays bare the entire tragic process in its extremity: how evil repays. Modern readers find the scene interesting because of the dramatist�s psychological treatment of the consequence of guilt, but the for the contemporary audience the importance of the scene must have had something to do with the divine �vengeance� for the violation of the divine order, in which the king on earth, as E. M. W. Tillyard says, represented the king in heaven. The murder of the king must have been shocking to the Elizabethan ethos...

To His Coy Mistress Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long Loves Day. Thou by the Indian Ganges side Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood: And you should if you please refuse Till the Conversion of the Jews . My vegetable Love should grow Vaster than Empires and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze. Two hundred to adore each Breast, But thirty thousand to the rest. An Age at least to every part, And the last Age should show your Heart. For Lady you deserve this State, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I alwaies hear Times winged Chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lye Desarts of vast Eternity. Thy Beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound My echoing Song: then Worms shall try That long preserv'd Virginity: An...