Many of his plays are so remarkable, not necessarily because of the complex issues they raise, but rather the ideals they "challenge-. Shakespeare's tragedies are notorious for starting with one or more noble figures that go against the dominant social meaning systems only to have them eventually fall into submission to these ideals and beliefs. ... When Emelia is tending to her in Act IV scene iii, Desdemona asks Emelia if "thou in conscience think/ that there be women do abuse their husbands/ In such gross kind?... Yet as though she were following in the footsteps of her husband, in t...

• Word Count: 1558
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Overstepping her husband's role, she sends Edmund and her servant to rally troops for battle. When her husband, the Duke of Albany, shows his disapproval and outrage at her actions, she shows no fault or guilt. ... Pulling the beard of Gloucester, an extreme insult, she and her husband capture and tie him down, plucking out the elder's eye as punishment. Upon her request, his second eye is gouged and stomped on, before a servant tries to intervene, wounding husband Cornwall. ... Acting unlike any ideal Shakespearean females should, both Goneril and Regan show that the gender of a vil...

• Word Count: 1537
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Edmund provokes the sisters' desire for Edmund and his potential as a husband. ... Realpolitik is understood as politics or national policy governed by principals of power, expansion, and expediency rather than by ideals or ethics. ... Edmund seems to articulate superior ideals and ethics of why bastard children, although a favorite of the father, still receive denial of their rightful title. ... Edmund expressed the desired ideals readily, yet he truly does not have those ideals within his heart. ... Edmund, in his lust for power, personifies Machiavelli's ideal Prince through his l...

• Word Count: 1654
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Edmund provokes the sisters' desire for Edmund and his potential as a husband. ... Realpolitik is understood as politics or national policy governed by principals of power, expansion, and expediency rather than by ideals or ethics. ... Edmund seems to articulate superior ideals and ethics of why bastard children, although a favorite of the father, still receive denial of their rightful title. ... Edmund expressed the desired ideals readily, yet he truly does not have those ideals within his heart. ... Edmund, in his lust for power, personifies Machiavelli's ideal Prince through his l...

• Word Count: 1653
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The Elizabethan's paradigm of the 'ideal woman' consisted of several criteria that molded them to fit into their patriarchal society. ... A woman's virginity, which implies her chastity, is promise that her husband's paternity will never be questioned". ... Had he lost, it is improbable that he would have consented to being claimed as a husband by Hippolyta, perhaps suggesting that matrimony is obtainable exclusively when the one defeated in battle is a woman. 
...

• Word Count: 2000
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Refusing to be dishonest like them, she attempts to explain the truth in her words to Lear; "Why have my sisters husbands, if they say They love you all?" ... Shakespeare had a profound moral sense - pity terror ideal sorrow joy; had an instinctive sense of human behaviour, and mortality, instinctive ability to feel pathos in human suffering Lear, bearing the status of King, is a man of great power but he foolishly surrenders all he has to his daughters, as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him. ...

• Word Count: 1361
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School