Shakespeare, William - The Dramatist

-Shakespeare the Dramatist-

-A Shakespearean Play: General Features-

First of all, his plays could have a variety of interpretations; then, his language is so compact and full of meaning, flexible and expressive.

-Characters-

Shakespeare doesn’t take his characters from only one social class; usually there’s a man of royal or aristocratic blood (like a king, a prince, a duke or a nobleman).
But there are also characters from the lower classes, but mainly the emphasis is on the aristocracy.
The background of every play is formed by a hierarchy of the characters, from the king to the servants.
Another important feature is the importance of family ties: father and children, mother and children, brothers and sisters; these relationships could be peaceful, but also conflictual.

-The Structure-

Shakespeare doesn’t give much importance to the division between the acts and in every Shakespeare play a scene is over when all the characters have left the stage.

Conventions used by Shakespeare were: soliloquies, asides (digressioni), introductory passages spoken by prologue or chorus, funeral orations and death-bed speeches.

-Imagery-

Shakespeare’s language is characterized by a multiplicity of linguistic levels, by a wide variety of rhetorical figures: similes and metaphors, obscure and archaic words, puns, assonance and alliteration.