William Shakespeare in the play, Macbeth, asserts that man can easily succumb to evil. Shakespeare supports his assertions by illustrating the conflicting nature of man through the images of light and dark. The author's purpose is to show a weakness in man so that the audiences sees the inner battle that every man must face between good and evil and how it interacts with their goals and aspirations. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses imagery of light and dark to establish this unseen battle within and helps set the suspending tone for the play. For human kind in the light the soul is good and clean, in the dark, evil conspires against good and shows the soul dark and unclean.
Shakespeare’s ability to illustrate the battle between good and evil is arguably one of his best skills as a writer. Incorporating the art of the morality play, he shows the battle of these two forces for a man’s soul. But the beauty of his writing comes to light in how he shows this process. In both Macbeth and Othello, Shakespeare portrays evil as corrupting, while the source of evil differs. The religious preferences and philosophy of the English Renaissance affected Shakespeare’s writing.
The Morality Play is an allegory in dramatic form. It is a dramatization of the battle between the forces of good and evil in the human soul. The play is an exteriorization of the hidden sacred struggle. In it, virtues and vices appear as characters. Marlowe is well-known for his blank verse as he used in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and made it different.
The fact that Hamlet’s best trait is also his downfall makes him a great example of a tragic hero. More specifically, what makes Hamlet even more of a tragic hero is that his actions and tragic flaw is not his fault. He has been put in a situation that is quite unusual, but when Claudius names him heir to the throne it starts Hamlet’s spiral into tragedy. Being part of the royal family makes him prone to negative and stressful situations. For Hamlet, the power of language and words are the key to both the driving action of the play as well.
The remorse of the other brother, the Cardinal who can no longer pray , is a parallel to that of Claudius in Hamlet. Every such comparison would merely show up Webster's extreme inferiority, were it not that he substitutes for the psychology at which Shakespeare principally aims, a search for the pathos inherent in situations and even the material effects. It is this search which is proper to melodrama. Webster has a strange power of evoking shudders. His means are
His desire for revenge increases. Unmindful of the misery he is causing his daughter, he sets her lover Mathias against Lodowick, the governor’s son. Abigail is loved by both Mathias and Lodowick and barabas takes this opportunity to start a fight between them. On knowing barabas’s plan, his daughter desserts herself from her father and rejoins the nunnery. Not realizing it is he himself who has been alse and unkind, he accuses Abigail of unkindness, for her adoption of Christianity has disgraced him.
He resents Othello and Cassio so much he seeks reasons to support his indignation and lust for vengeance. Iago revealed another reason for his hatred of both Othello is because he suspected that both men had sexual relations with his wife Emilia. “I hate the Moor, And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets” (Othello 1.3.14). Iago jealousy surpasses competitiveness and transcends to sexual jealousy. Believing that both men seduced his wife is another reason to continue his ruthless scheme against the two.
Don John, the villainous half-brother of Don Pedro, provides the perfect example of this when he hatches a plot to “misuse the Prince, to vex Claudio, to undo Hero, and to kill Leonato” (2.2.27-28). He does so, driven by jealous discontent and the vow to “make all use of it,” (1.3.36). At first it appears that his slander of Hero has ruined everyone’s plans and left the girl so “death is the fairest cover for her shame” (4.1.114). Yet the pattern of the play suggests that this kind of deception is ultimately fruitless; all of the characters who engage in it are found out, quickly caught, or foiled in their attempts to escape the consequences. Thus, it could even be argued that this sort of deception only hurts those who perpetrate it, in the
In the end proctor says “ let rebecca nurse go like a saint; for me it is fraud” and “it is evil and I do it.” (miller 138) This quote furthermore proves that he knows he is responsible for where he is at and for his actions. Based on this information proctor meets all the characteristics of a tragic hero and therefore is one. Proctor does have goodness in him, but he tends to keep it hidden. He has some superiority because if he didn’t he would not be so feared. His tragic flaw that he suffers from is being lustful and he even admits it.
Desdemona’s father states that he should kill her for her disloyalty from getting married without his permission. The secret marriage deeply wounds her father to the point that he has the right to kill her. She is sacrificing her life for her love of Othello; the implications of this show how deep the love of the two love birds runs. Even though her betrayal is unforgivable, her father decides that her death would be undesirable blood on his hands, therefore, Desdemona’s act of secrecy taints her image with a seed of doubt. By gaining Othello’s love, Desdemona loses the love of her father and ruins her credibility in his eyes, which causes him to cast her out and exile her from their home.