English Literature

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN William Shakespeare   (1564-1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. His surviving works, including some   collaborations , consist of about 38   plays , 154   sonnets , two long   narrative poems , two epitaphs on a man named John Combe, one epitaph on Elias James, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare   is perhaps most famous for his tragedies. Most of his tragedies were written in a seven-year period between 1601 and 1608. These include his four major tragedies   Hamlet , Othello ,   King Lear   and   Macbeth , along with   Antony & Cleopatra ,   Coriolanus ,   Cymbeline ,   Julius Caesar , all of w...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN Christopher Marlowe ( 1564�1593) was an English dramatist , poet and   translator   of the   Elizabethan era . Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan   tragedian   of his day who belonged to the group of university-educated practitioners of literature known collectively as the �University Wits�. He greatly influenced   William Shakespeare , who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. He is famous for his dramas- Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, Jew of Malta and Edward II. Marlowe�s tragedy is significant due to its newness, renaissance influence, Machiavellian morality, powerful and passionate expressions, element of tragic inner conflict, overreaching   protagonists , popular literary style, high seriousness, bombastic language and blank verse. Swinburne remarks: �Before him,...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN In Greek drama of the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. the chorus was an essential feature and the convention came from the drama of those ancient days. But then the chorus consisted of homogenous, non-individualized group of performers who commented with a collective voice on the dramatic action.   It numbered twelve or fifteen members in   tragedies   and twenty-four members in comedies , and performed using several techniques, including singing, dancing, narrating, and acting. The Elizabethan playwrights, instead of following the Greek convention, borrowed the prologue of the Chorus more from the old Miracles and Mysteries. So in the dramas of this age a chorus became just an actor who used to speak the prologue or announce the incidents that were going to happen in the beginning of an act or at the close of the play. Sometimes they also made moralizing comments. In �Doctor Faustus� we...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN We are certain about one thing that human heart is the abode of both God and the Devil or Heaven and the Hell.                    The mind is its own place, and in itself,                         Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.           But there is the idea of the conventional physical hell also, mainly propounded by myths and mythologies. It is a limitless and terribly dark place where burns the liquid fire eternally for torturing the damned souls of despicable sinners. And then there is the spiritual hell created by the mind of man within himself and the source of suffering of this hell is the consciousness of impending doom and damnation a...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN          Conflict is the essence and the soul of tragedy and it is born out of some motivating cause. This conflict may be on two planes, physical and spiritual plane. Hence there may be external conflict and internal conflict. The conflict generally occurs between the forces of two rival groups. The hero belongs to one of these groups and the conflict often takes the form of a battle, a conspiracy or the like. But the hero's heart and soul is the great battlefield for the internal or spiritual conflict. Two opposite thoughts, desires, emotions, loyalties, or affiliations may contend against each other in human soul giving rise to the most acute spiritual conflict.             Marlow's contribution to English drama was great and manifold. And one of his greatest is the introduction of the internal or spiritual conflict in t...