Appunti Completi

SHAKESPAERE’S LIFE
We know a lot about his external, public life (we have documents from different sources) not so much about his
private life.
He was born in Elizabethan period (1558-1603), most of his career was accomplished during this period.
IMPORTANT: during this period there were constant religious conflicts. This tension is visible in Hamlet.
(Shakespeare was probably a catholic, but we have no sure information.
JOHN SHAKESPEARE was his father. He was a glover, a leatherer, but also a usury and involved in illegal
merchandise of wool (at the time protected by different trade conventions)
Thanks to his illegal activities he became a very rich man, and even the mayor of Stratford Upon Avon.
Tanks to the economical position of his family, William attended the best school in S.U.A. he attended Grammar
School, where they had intensive, immersive learning of Latin, but also of the classics, of rhetoric and
mathematics and maybe even Greeks.
At some point, something happened in J. Shakespeare’s life (maybe linked to his illegal trades or to religion) [SEE
PERIPETHY]: he sells propriety and soon his family becomes significantly poorer.
William must leave school and starts working with his father (mention of his father trade as a glover will be
found in the merchant of Venice).
He met Anne Hathaway when he’s 18 and she gets pregnant before marriage. They ask for a special permit to
get married and 6 months after they have:
- first daughter, Susanne (who William will be very attached to)
-then twins, Judith and Hamnet
When his father falls in disgrace, he’ll find himself with wife and children, no stable/ earning job.
Between 1585-1592 we have what the critic will call the lost years. We have no precise account of what he
might have done.
Various hypothesis suggest he might have worked as a teacher or as a secretary or maybe he travelled.
In 1592 we know for sure he’s in London, and he’s actively working on plays and acting. He’s becoming very
popular and many are jealous of his success, mostly because he’s an “uneducated” outsider.
From 1592-94 theatre close because of the plague: he doesn’t write for theatre/ acts, but he needs money, so
he starts to write poems with the idea of finding a PATREON.
He writes Venus and Adonis and the rape of Lucrece, both of extraordinaire beauty. He dedicates both poems
to Earl of Southampton.
In the sonnets, common is the presence of a poet and a “fair youth”, a young, feminine man. According to some
critics, these two characters might have been Shakespeare and the earl to which the poems were dedicated,
proving a possible relationship between the two.
Also, the figure of a “dark lady” was often present in the poems. This might have been a certain Emilia Bassiano
Lanier, part of Shakespeare theatre group.
The whole of the poems might suggest a love triangle between the two men and this woman.
When the theatres reopen, he takes part to the company of actors “Lord Chamberlain’s Men”.
He goes back to be a very fruitful play writer, almost to an astonishing point: while acting, rehearsing
researching for said plays, and going back and forth from London to s.u.a, he writes two play a year.
Critic suggest he might have written during the night, sometimes in pubs (sometimes even drunk)
He became extremely famous and extremely wealthy:
-he bought a big house in S.U.A for his family (he only bought propriety in London towards the end of his life)
-in invested in the real estate of S.U.A
-he became partial owner of the Globe Theatre (built in 1599)
Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 1

Also, in 1599 his son Hamnet dies at 11 years old for unknown reasons.
We find reference of this event in McBeth, where a son dies without is father being present.
In 1603 James (I of England, VI of Scotland) gets the throne. He adopts Shakespeare’s theatre company. They
are renamed “The Kings’ men”.
Shakespeare’s minor nobility at this point, being in the king’s circle.
***
In 1610 he writes The Tempest, his last play written without a collaborator, also considered is farewell to
London’s scene.
From this year on, he will spend most of his time in Stratford.
1616 he dies for unknown reasons, maybe typhus. He most definitely knew he was going to die soon, since we
have proof of him changing his will a week before his death.

Romeo and Juliet
PLOT: We are in Verona, two families, the Capulets and the Montagues are in perpetual feud between each
other. They don’t even remember the reason why their family started to quarrel, but the hearted is kept alive
by everyone.
The lord and lady of both families have only one child left, Juliet (Capulets) and Romeo (Montagues).
At the beginning of the story we learn that Romeo is in love with a girl (we later will learn her name, Rosaline).
There’s a party in mask at the Capulets mansion, Romeo sneaks in with Benvolio (his cousin).
There he sees Juliet and he falls in love with her immediately.
She’s the only daughter of lord Capulets, and they’re deciding for her to marry Paris, a Capulets man.
Romeo and Juliet’s love are, of course, impossible, them being from rival families.
They reach out for the help of Friar Lawrence, who agrees to marry them in secret and is sure that their union
will break the circle of hate between the families, finally joining them in peace.
On his way to Juliet’s house (after the marriage?) he met Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin and very belligerent man. They
fight, even though Romeo doesn’t want to because now they’re family. Tybalt kills Mercutio: Romeo is blind
with rage and sadness, and results in killing Tybalt. [PERIPETY]
He runs to Friar Lawrence, who plots something to help the couple.

Romeo is guilty of murder, so he must leave Verona in exile to Mantua.
(meanwhile Juliet is being promised to Paris but is already married to Romeo) Juliet will take a poison that will
make her look dead. She will be buried in the Capulets catacomb and there she’ll wait for Romeo.
Romeo will receive a letter to Mantua about this part of the plan, with added instructions on when to come back
in secret to Verona to get Juliet.
For a twist of destiny, Romeo will not receive the letter describing the plan, but will hear about Juliet’s death.
He will break into the catacomb and see there his Juliet, he will kill himself with poison. A minute after he kills
himself, Juliet will wake up from her sleep, see Romeo’s dead and kill herself with his dagger.
The end is good and disastrous at the same time: the couple will be martyrs, the two families will reconcile, but
being the only two heir, Romeo and Juliet’s death will also signify the death of both families.
THE ORIGINS OF THE PLOT are ancient: in the II century of the Christian era, Xenophon of Ephesus told story of
two lovers from rival families that will die (following the same base plot of the Shakespearian play).
Between the XV and XVII centuries, the tale will be re-elaborated by multiple authors, Italians and not.
(two Italians are Salernitano e da Porta), and eventually the English poet Arthur Brooke (a long, prolix
narrative poem called the tragical historie of Romeo and Juliet.
AUDIENCE RESPONSE: When going to the theatre to see the play, the audience of Shakespeare’s time already
knew the plot, and already had a preconception of who were the “right” and “wrong” characters, since they
were educated in believing that a couple that ignores their fathers’ orders and gives themselves to lust and
romantic love was to be condemned.
THE BEGINNING:
Full title: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo And Juliet
the play has a strange beginning: it starts with a chorus (for one person only), a sonnet that serves as a
prologue. It was probably recited by Shakespeare himself
Romeo and Juliet are a play whose central theme is undoubtedly LOVE. It basically defines the way we conceive
love today, love between a young couple.
• In RJ, Shakespeare depicts different conceptions of love, weather is from a sentimental, young
prospective, a very sexual one or even linked to brutality, violence and rape.

• It is very lyrical, all character talk like they’re almost reciting poetry
• At the same time, it’s a very obscene play: it’s the one with the higher number of obscenity (dirty
jokes, puns and reference to sex/rape) than all other Shakespearian plays.
IMPORTANT POINTS:
• LOVE, SEXUALITY AND POWER.
As we said, in RJ we have different depictions of love, of sex and sexuality and we see how those are, in a way or
another, linked with power.
The first scene we have in the play is of the mixed group of Capulets and Montagues that argue and fight in the
street.
-They openly joke/threaten other party of raping their women. -> violent sex to establish superiority
-Romeo is depicted as the Petrarchan lover* -> in Petrarch it was costume to find parallels between wooing a
woman a conquering a city. The woman was the beloved enemy -> a romanticized depiction of violent love
- there’s a back and forth between the nurse, Juliet and lady Capulets. The Nurse will remember the vulgar joke
her late husband used to make, about how Juliet will learn to “fall on her back” when she gets older. That is a
synonym of having sex with a man. -> a shared patriarchal view, that doesn’t’ necessarily considers Juliet’s
desires.
ROMEO’S ATTITUTE TOWARDS LOVE:

Romeo is indirectly depicted at the beginning by lord Capulets as a young man depressed, destroyed by
something unknown, that would leave the house before dawn, and then come back and hiding in his room,
closing himself from society. He shows all the symptoms of adolescent love.
As soon as we meet him, in company of his cousin Mercutio, we learn that he’s too witty, that it’s mostly a
façade. We learn he’s “in love” with some girl, but he’s just in love with love. He’s a poet, a stereotypical
Petrarchan poet. He’s a romantic, he wants to feel strong sensations (passion, rejection, impossible love) and
although he will swear his seriousness to his cousin about loving this girl, he will change his mind.
• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENERATIONS

Throughout the play we see two generations (the parents and the youth) standing in different position, holding
different prospective. The older generation would not accept the couple’s relationship because it goes against
they will: they are from rival families. The fathers would try to force their opinions onto their children, but
they’re standing against something stronger, which is the love of Romeo and Juliet.
(S. will be interested in the theme all his life. He will address the theme in –The Tempest)
PATRIARCHY: a male oriented society were a woman does not have autonomy or freedom over her choices,
life and body.
Throughout the play, different characters (both male and female) will act differently regarding the patriarchal
society in which the story is inserted.
->For example, there’s a conversation with Paris, lord Capulet seems to be quite the modern man, stressing his
desire to let Juliet choose who she wants to love. He does give Paris permission to woo her, but the final choice
is up to her (of his main concern is also Juliet’s age: she’s not even 14).
>he will change later, in act 3 scene 4 he will force his will as a father onto Juliet: he would give her to his
friend, Paris.
->Another example is the nurse, who jokes and reports indelicate sexist jokes that stress the subalternity of
women compared to man. Their role (and Juliet’s as well, is that to become wives and mothers, multiple times
in their life as well.)
->Juliet will gain her freedom. At the end of the play, although with death, she will be free of patriarchal
control.
>The beginning of this transition is when she actively decides, off her own will, to marry Romeo in secret,
then when she’ll try to refuse the marriage with Paris.
• COMEDY/TRAJEDY
Shakespeare was truly masterful in the way he articulated his play. The general rule was to establish since the
beginning of the play weather it was going to be a tragedy or a comedy. The full title of RJ is actually “The Most
Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Nonetheless, S. had the great ability of playing around
with the concepts of comedy and tragedy to manipulate his audience.
He was often accused of writing poorly (Ben Jonson, friend and rival), by inserting funny moments in tragic
scenarios and vice versa; the truth is that he was very much better than the other writers of his time, he was
able to bend the rules to creates suspense and excitement.
for the play of Romeo and Juliet he takes inspiration from the style of:
NEW COMEDY -> that of Plutus, Theresius.

Structure: - a young couple that falls in love
- An arbitrary impediment (imposed by society) presents itself: one in the couple is too poor, or
not in a good social position.
- The play focuses on how to solve the impediment
- Usually someone interferes to help solve the situation and/or
- There’s a final twist that solve the situation: the poor guy is not actually poor; the peasant girl is a
princess that was kidnapped
- End: there’s no longer impediment. The couple can marry, society is reconciled.
• LANGUAGE
S. was deeply interest in what we now call linguistic and language philosophy. he was already familiar with the
concepts in linguistic and philosophy of language, like those formalized by Saussure in the 19th cent.
(significance and significant).
He played a lot with the multiple meaning of words, with homophones, with puns and play in words.
-He was also interested in speech act: the power, given to language*, to proclaim something, to transform
reality (an ex of speech act is proclaiming two people a married couple)
LETTERS:
Both in the sense of single, alphabetical letters, language in general but also as the physical letter, a missive of
some sort.
They are often of crucial importance for the developing of the plot:
-in 1 act, Capulet gives a letter with a list of guests to invite to his party: the servant cannot read, but he met
Romeo, who learns about the party in the first place and then (convicted by Mercutio) goes to said party where
he met Juliet.
-in 5 act, part of Friar Lawrence plan is to send a letter to Romeo to inform him on the plan: the letter never gets
there (peripety) and it’s crucial to the end of the play.
-
POWER OF WORDS
Together with the cruciality of names, many words in the play have power, a physical power of affecting reality.
We have _ important examples.
1. -After Romeo kills Tybalt, the sentence given to him is of exile, of banishment (3.1 / 3.2).
Juliet stresses how the word banished has the same meaning of dead, the word itself has the power of slaying
everything dear to her.
-The same feeling is shared by Romeo, who says, referring to the Prince, “he turned the black word death to
banished”.
EVERY CHARACTER HAS HIS OWN WAY OF TALKING

- the rustic way of the nurse (with her sexual innuendos that well describe her vision of woman’s condition in
the word
-the dream like, frantic and philosophical speeches of Mercutio, that often serve as premonition
->the progress of Juliet: at the beginning she’s very compliant, then at the end she refuses her family power over
her and is able to use language in a deceptive manner: she knows how to still sound compliant, but still hides
her true intents.

When her mother discusses the prospect of marrying Paris she’s not really interested. She’s too young. When the
nurse makes sexual innuendos, she understands them but is too shy to want to her them. Her progress begins
when she meets Romeo and falls for him. When the relationship starts, she shows maturity in wanting to hide it,
and plots against her family but in behalf of her freedom. Even accepting the dangerous accord of taking the
potion to fake sleep, especially after she’s put under pressure by her father shows power and maturity.
-Romeo often speaks like a Petrarchan poet, using figures of speech, witty comments.
-Use of:
OPPOSITIONS: throughout the play there’s a constant use of opposite words and meanings, and sometimes one
become the other, or they mix regarding a certain situation of confusion or ambivalence
Light / dark
Death / life; wombs/tombs
Love/Hate
Early/Late (also linked with time)
-OXIMORONS: the juxtaposition of two opposite terms (a noun and an adjective, two adjectives etc) as a lyrical
expedient.
Ex: fatal (deadly) loins (“uterus” the place where life begins)
-HOMOPHONES: words with different meaning and spelling, but with same pronunciation.
Very common example is the triangle
AY (yes) I (1^ person singular) and eye (the organ of vision).
*a theatrical piece is meant to be heard, not read: the choice of spelling, thus the meaning, is sometimes up for
interpretation, since it might be used interchangeably in different written edition of the play
*also, the way spelling works in modern English was still new for old English, so there might be some differences
in intention.
-COMMON IMAGERY
1. The two lovers often refer to each other using
- angelical terms,
-or terms that compare one or the other to a deity
-a superior creature in hierarchical terms: my lord, my lady
-or a source of light: Juliet’s eyes are the firmament, Romeo is a star, Juliet is a sun
2.birds (linked to opposition light/dark)

-crows and swans: Mercutio compare Romeo’s perception of Rosaline beauty, when inserted in a wider context
to that of a crow, instead of a swan.
-white crow: after hearing the news of the murder, Juliet refers to Romeo as a white crow, i.e. something beautiful
and pure only in appearance.
-the nightingale and the lark: after the wedding night, the two are concerned by the morning coming. The sound
of a bird in the distance might be a nightingale (a bird that sings at night), thus meaning that it’s not yet time for
Romeo to leave, or a Lark (sings before and at dawn) meaning the morning has arrived and Romeo must depart.
3.knives/daggers
Juliet often threatens to kill herself with a dagger (in despair) or used in general to refer to a violent death, a
worrisome destiny she might go towards. Coincidentally that’s how she’s going to die. The object is a metaphor
for the male sexual organ, the act, a caricature of the sexual act.
4.stars
Used both by the lovers to describe themselves, as sources of light, or also to refer to the theme of destiny.

• HUMAN DESTINY AND IDENTITY
Another interesting theme often found in S. play production (RJ included) is the question regarding human
destiny: what creates or leads destiny? Is it God, the providence; is it faith, is it the stars?
Also, how is human identity forged, finalized? It tackles the (still modern) question of nature and nurture.
THE ISSUE OF NAMES:

Names are quite important in the play. The two families have different names (surnames) and that holds a series
of social obligation: they are enemy, each side must fight with the other.
• Names represent a double identity of the person:
-a private aspect, identity -> that of how you identify yourself, you use your name to establish your identity.
-a public aspect -> your name is how other see you as well, how they refer to you
• The paradox of abandoning names

1. In the scene of the balcony, Juliet has a philosophical soliloquy on the nature of names.
Romeo’s name is what makes him her enemy, being Romeo a Montague. She “hates” (she’s forced to by society)
the public aspect of his name. She loves the private aspects of Romeo, aside from his name, the qualities that
make Romeo, Romeo (a rose will still smell as sweet).
She then decides on the uselessness of name, and yet she asks him who he is, when she hears the mysterious
voice underneath her balcony (the only way to do it is by calling him by name)
2. after the slaughter of Mercutio and Tybalt, the nurse goes back to Juliet and hesitate in giving her the news.
She doesn’t put a subject in her sentences: is it Tybalt or Romeo that is dead? Name is crucial here, even just to
understand in what sense the event is crucial (is it Romeo dead or a killer? Is her cousin dead, or a killer?)
Commonly found in S. production is the theme of PERIPETHY -> a sudden change of situation, generally from a
good, positive one, to a connected series of negative ones.
Ex-> Romeo met Tybalt and fought with him. From there on, R and J situation worsted dramatically.
Ex2-> in S. life, the sudden worsening of his family economical condition will prevent him from having a
successful life: he could’ve become a jury, a mayor like his father.
• TIME
As for his interest / formal knowledge of language and linguistic, S. was already aware of the multiple nature of
time. The differentiation formalized by Bergson is something we already find in S. production.
We can point out 3 types of time (the first two by Bergson):
-LINEAR, CRONOLOGICAL TIME: that of the clock, of the calendar
>Throughout the play, this will matter mostly to the characters outside the couple. They will measure time in a
scientific way, organizing events, planning ceremonies, wedding.
Ex: Capulet and Paris will schedule the wedding between the latter and young Juliet by going through days of
the week.
-SUBJECTIVE TIME: or psychological time. We feel time going faster when we enjoy something, slower when we
are bored or under stimulated.
>This is mostly the one experienced by the couple, by lovers. Various are the moments where
the two express a subjective prospective of time “minutes will be hours, hours days”).
Shakespeare also adds a third definition of time

-AESTHETIC TIME: or stage time, the time of the drama itself. In RJ, the events of a week are condensed in a
two-hour stage.
The cruciality of time and space at the end of the book

We have seen how, towards the end of the play, everything is being set in chronological and calendar time : the
wedding between Juliet and Paris is being scheduled for a certain day, the poison given to Juliet by Friar
Lawrence will work for only two days (forty and two hours).
Time is part of the public space of society and we have learn how everything concerning the couple has value
for his private time (subjective time, the matter of names), so everything is against them: what still look like a
play that might have a positive, comedic ending, in the last act unfolds itself as a series of misunderstanding and
unfortunate events.
• INTERPRETATION
The ending of Romeo and Juliet can be interpreted in different ways.
We can interpret is as a Tragedy, since it ends with the death of the two lovers, but many underline the fact that
the same ending might hold a deeper meaning: Romeo and Juliet’s love, especially because it ended at the
point of maximum intensity, becomes immortal.
Shakespeare’s very interested in the idea of immortality of art. Just like in Ode to a Grecian Urn by Keats, the
two lovers are immortalized thanks to the creation of the two golden statues.

The Merchant of Venice
Written around 1597
It has a comedic end, but it’s filled with tragic moments (just like Romeo and Juliet, in reverse)
The plot has two main sources of inspiration:
-IL PECORONE, by Giovanni Fiorentino

There are still questions on whether or not Shakespeare was actually able to read Italian. We know he
read/wrote in French, but we have no sure information about Italian.
He might have travelled to Italy, or otherwise learned about the language/the novel via his patron, the Earl of
Southampton. We know he had a preceptor in Italian called John Florio
-THE JEW OF MALTA, by Marlow

Based on the true story of the Portuguese Jew, Rodrigo Lopez, executed around Shakespeare’s time for
suspected treason.
In the novel, he appears as the Machiavellian character.
PLOT AND CHARACTERS:
ANTONIO is the first character we meet in the play, the actual merchant of Venice.
The fact the he appears first is unusual compared to other Shakespearian plays, since usually the first character
is introduced by someone else.
On the contrary, Portia is introduced in an indirect manner: that is, since Portia is a main
protagonist. We are just tricked by Shakespeare, into thinking that he’s not using one of his techniques.
He’s a generally a nice person, generous and kind but also melancholic (we don’t yet know why he’s sad) and
antisemitic.
BASANIO treats himself well, spends a lot, but has very few moneys: he’s extremely in debt.
In order to extinguish this debt, he decides to marry a very rich woman, PORTIA.
At the time, this wasn’t necessarily a scandalous decision, but also

it also becoming more common to intend marriage as something
that happens for love, not much for interest. Shakespeare is
believed to be one of the makers of this shift in mindset
PORTIA is a rich woman with many suitors. She lives in BELMONT (not the name of a city, probably a mansion)
She’s another example of strong womanly figure written by Shakespeare. To further underline this strength of
character, we know that her father is dead: she doesn’t have a direct patriarchal figure to abide to.
Still, his indirect power still withstands. Although he’s dead, he has left a test that each of Portia’s suitors must
try in order to win her out, called the casket test.
• Each suitor will have to pick between three caskets: a golden one, a silver one and a leaden one.
in the tory we’ll have 3 suitors:

-the prince of Morocco (one of the 3 black characters Shakespeare will create, one of which is Othello)
-the king of Aragon
-Basanio
During the play, the audience will learn which one is the winning casket, but in the play’s universe, the secret
was kept at all time: all the other suitors had to promise not to tell which one the picked.
Basanio wins, picking the lead casket: he can now marry Portia, who is quite fond of Basanio and sincerely
concerned about his economic difficulties.
SHYLOCK- he’s a Jew, he hates Christians, but also suffered persecution. (SEE SPEECHES)
He’s a usury, whose job is being suppressed by people like Antonio, who agrees to lend money to his friends at
no interest.
PLOT: A young Venetian, Bassanio, needs a loan of three thousand ducats so that he can woo Portia, a wealthy
Venetian heiress. He approaches his friend Antonio, a merchant. Antonio is short of money because all his
wealth is invested in his fleet, which is currently at sea. He goes to a Jewish money lender, Shylock, who hates
Antonio because of Antonio’s anti-Semitic behavior towards him.
Shylock nevertheless agrees to make the short-term loan, but, in a moment of dark humor, he makes a
condition – the loan must be repaid in three months or Shylock will exact a pound of flesh from Antonio.
Antonio agrees, confident that his ships will return in time.
Because of the terms of Portia’s father’s will, all suitors must choose from among three caskets, one of which
contains a portrait of her. If he chooses that he may marry Portia, but if doesn’t he must vow never to marry or
court another woman. The Princes of Morocco and Aragon fail the test and are rejected.
As Bassanio prepares to travel to Belmont for the test, his friend LORENZO elopes with Shylock’s daughter,
JESSICA. (THIS IS A SIDE STORY THAT SHAKESPEARE ADDS TO THE MAIN ONE). it’s interesting to analyze this
relationship from different pov
The actantial model changes if we see it from the pov of the “common Christian”, thus against Shylock: Lorenzo
can be seen as a model since he turned someone into Christian. Also, relatively positive couple since they
deprived shylock from “stolen” wealth (usury).
If we see it from shylock p.o.v. he’s a victim of injustice and had to endure terrible moral sufferings: his
daughter betrayed him and their religion; she stole from him and we know that she’s sold her mother’s RING
without any concern for her father’s feelings.
Bassanio chooses the lead casket, which contains her picture, and Portia happily agrees to marry him
immediately.
Meanwhile, two of Antonio’s ships have been wrecked and Antonio’s creditors are pressuring him for
repayment. Word comes to Bassanio about Antonio’s predicament, and he hurries back to Venice, leaving Portia
behind. Portia follows him, accompanied by her maid, Nerissa. They are disguised as a male lawyer and his
clerk. When Bassanio arrives the date for the repayment to Shylock has passed and Shylock is demanding his
pound of flesh. Even when Bassanio offers much more than the amount in repayment, Shylock, now infuriated
by the loss of his daughter, is intent on seeking revenge on the Christians. The Duke refuses to intervene.
Portia arrives in her disguise to defend Antonio. Given the authority of judgment by the Duke, Portia decides
that Shylock can have the pound of flesh if he doesn’t draw blood, as it is against the law to shed a Christian’s
blood. Since it is obvious that to draw a pound of flesh would kill Antonio, Shylock is denied his suit. Moreover,
for conspiring to murder a Venetian citizen, Portia orders that he should forfeit all his wealth. Half is to go to
Venice, and half to Antonio.
Antonio gives his half back to Shylock on the condition that Shylock bequeath it to his disinherited daughter,
Jessica. Shylock must also convert to Christianity. A broken Shylock accepts. News arrives that Antonio’s
remaining ships have returned safely. Except for Shylock, all celebrate a happy ending to the affair.
IMPORTANT THEMES & CRITICS
• THE MEANING OF THE SETTINGS

Double mentality + character development
The two cities where the events develop represent two different value systems.
BELMONT ->place of traditional values: the worth of something is set by the people (value as in sentimental
value) place of giving. They abide to the laws of mercy, of sacrifice, of love.
• Before arriving to Belmont, Bassanio’s intention only laid on economic gain: he wanted to marry a rich
woman to clear his debts, but when he gets there, Portia educates him on her actual worth and Bassanio

learns that the true value of a man lays in his character, in his heart, in the love he can feel for another
person. So, he changes, he acquires the belmontian values.
VENICE-> The commercial city par excellence. Early modern capitalism, like London in Shakespeare’s time,
where the value of things is determined by the market. Place of getting.
• The same thing happened to Portia: by using the belmontian mentality (mercy) she obtained nothing.
when she attends the process in disguise, she must put herself into the Venice mentality, made of
economical values. Here’s how she’s able to find a good enough cavil for Antonio to be set free from the
bond: by challenging Shylock to extract exactly one pound of flesh, but with no blood
The play itself is structured as a constant jump from one place to the other.
• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHARACTERS

❖ CHARACTERS’ COMPLEXITY: (the following analysis counts as a universal commentary of Shakespeare’s
plays)
All characters are multilayered and not absolute: each character will not be 100% good or bad. It’s a matter of
REALISM.
Ex: Antonio or Portia, both generally positive characters, genuine, good. Still, they are both racist and
antisemitic
Ex2: Macbeth is generally evil, but he’s a very sensitive person: he is a poet, and feels the evil growling
inside, relates to his own emotions.
Antonio and Bassanio: according to some critic, we can refer to the relationship between the two characters in
different ways.
Some underline the homoerotic nature of it (one possible explanation, although never made explicit by
Shakespeare).
To further explain this position, we refer to the difference between friendship and amity, as intended in 17th
cent. “Amity” is to be intended as a strong friendship, between two man, resembling a strong platonic love.
The strength of the feeling was often cause of confusion: how to differentiate those feeling from those of
romantic love for a woman.
The love they share is linked to sacrifice: 4.1
• Possible autobiographic link: we can refer to the relationship in ambiguous terms, between Shakespeare
and his patron, the earl of Southampton. Also, in the sonnets (Venus and Adonis; The rape of Lucreces),
there’s reference to a woman, the dark lady, thus the chance of a love triangle.
Antonio e Shylock: although Antonio is described as a good man (generous, kind with Bassanio etc.) he is
openly antisemitic. When the two men go to Shylock to ask him a sum of money, Shylock gives them a speech,
underlining how Antonio often spoke badly about him and his trade.
Shylock hates Antonio for 2 reasons:
1. HE’S A CHRISTIAN; He’s mean to him and towards his religion (he called him dog)
2. He lends out money gratis, lowering the rate of usance of Venice.
We are put into shylock prospective, of a man that has suffered humiliation because of his nature (of Jew, of
usurer) and asks him if it’s right that he behaved like that and now he has the courage to go there and ask him
money.
Antonio answers Shylocks’ rightful accusations very meanly: “I am as like to call thee so again”. He also asks
him not to lend him money as a friend, but as an enemy, and that if he does not respect the terms (3 thousands
in 3 months) he can expect a penalty.
Shylock decides to plot against them as a revenge: he hides his true intents, proposing a contract with no “doit
of usance” (interessi economici) but, if he breaks the terms, he can expect a of pound of his flesh. [MORE IN:
LANGUAGE]

• PATRIARCHY
act 1, scene 2 Portia, talking to Nerissa (maid).
She refers to the orders his father has left, before dying, to find her a husband. She underlines how she feels
affected by his decision, that prevents her from choosing who she wants and refusing who she doesn’t.
We see here a different take on the power of patriarchy, compared to that of Romeo and Juliet.
Juliet’s father firstly considers her desires (telling Paris to woo her, but to wait for her response) but later he
forces her into the marriage.
Portia’s father “controls” her life, even though he’s dead, but we find out later that he was a virtuous man, that
at the point of dying he might have had an illumination regarding the rightful way to find a husband for his
daughter, someone that would made her happy .
So, he’s not interested in the economic interest of the possible suitor and neither is Portia.
• LANGUAGE
Multiple meanings of words
Just like in Romeo and Juliet, we find a series of recurring words, which hold multiple meaning.
In the merchant of Venice:
-VALUE, DEAR, WORTH

With both this term, we can refer to the economic value, the economic worth of an object;
The sentimental value, the sentimental worth of a person.
Something can be dear as in “expensive”, or dear as in “of great affective value”
[Often, characters from the world of Venice (where economy is paramount) will use the two meaning
interchangeably]
Portia also uses economic imagery, but she uses them as metaphors (basically in a nice way. In the
“worth=feeling” manner)
-BOUND:
As in legato, physiologically (BOND), physically (chained up)
As in impegnato (you’re bound to return me money)
-KIND:
relative (family);
gentile
acting according to one’s nature
-GENTLE
Kind
Non-Jewish (bible reference; letter to the Gentiles, non-Jews)
-BOND
-be bound sacrificed
• -STAND FOR: in the sense of “what you believe in” -> has different connotation according to which character
speaks [SEE DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW IN “THE MEANING OF THE SETTINGS
Double mentality + character development]
Used by both Shylock and Portia in different moment [check: speeches]

IMPORTANT SPEECHES
Speeches
Shylock
Act 1, 3:
Shylock
Portia 4.1
NUMBERS
Act 1.3
Constant repetition of the number three, constant reference to quantities, numeric worth
Three months, three thousand ducats, three caskets, three times the loan12
• MUSIC & TEMPEST

Being Shakespeare himself a very musical person, music holds an important role in his plays: music is used as a
metaphor for unity, for property, purity, something that brings people together. It’s often remarqued that
people who enjoy music are bearer of positive characters. On the contrary, people that do not like music are
evil at heart -> Shylock tells explicitly that he does not like music (he tells Jessica to close the windows during
the Carnival in order not to hear he bagpipes)
The diametrical opposite of music, is, in Shakespeare’s universe, the Tempest. Heavy winds and rains are linked
to a troubled state of mind: the tempest is something that brings people apart.
Common imagery
RING: the ring has multiple meaning:

-a vulgar way of the time to refer to the female sexual organ (that is the sense with which Bassanio will close
the play.
-a symbol to human relationship: not necessarily linked to the monetary value of the object (see the multiple
meaning of value and worth). ->Both Portia and Nerissa will give a ring to their spouse.
->Shylock will show sorrow in knowing that his daughter has sold his dead wife
promise ring for a monkey. This shows how even a character generally portrayed as evil (see interpretations)
and only interested in money can feel genuine love.
• USURY
in Shakespeare’s time, usury was prohibited for Christian, since to acquire money by “selling” money goes
against the doctrine.
It was, on the contrary, allowed for Jews (since they only followed the old testament).
In a period of growing capitalistic economy, borrowing money to invest them was of absolute necessity. At the
same time, getting rich by providing liquids to thirds, in return of a percentage, represented a quick way to get
rich.
Shylock is the Jewish usury in the book.

He will force a comma in the contract (when he will agree to lend money to Bassanio) where Antonio (the
grandeur) will have to give him one pound of his flesh, if Bassanio is not able to return the money within 3
months.
• Possible autobiographic link: Shakespeare’s father was a usury who became (most.def. illegally) very
rich. William does not hold an obvious negative attitude towards usury. On the contrary, he’s quite
sympathetic.

• RELIGION AND RACE
Christian law vs Judaic law: the first based on MERCY, the second from VENGANCE
4.1 Portia’s speech: she tries to convince Shylock into being merciful (being this the mentality of Belmont).
She says that mercy is above power, being mercy closely linked to god, to a Christian god, while power is a thing
of man.
Antisemitism: In Shakespeare’s time, there were no Jews in England, at least officially: they pretended to be
protestant while professing their believes in secret.
Shylock is the Jewish character in the play. He hates Christians but he’s also victim of antisemitic behaviors.
In act 1.3, we have the first speech he gives throughout the play, that puts us into his prospective.
When Bassanio goes to Shylock to ask him for money, he offers Antonio as a guarantee
for the loan. Shylock remembers the many times Antonio has mistreated him, calling him
names and judging his trade. *
Racism:
Portia in act 1.2. when the maid tells her the prince of Morocco is coming to try the test, she says she would not
like a black man as a husband (if he has […] the complexion of the devil)
She also shows her antisemitism towards Shylock during the process. First, in her initial speech, she urges
Shylock to be merciful, but that doesn’t work. Later, it looks like she wants to hurt shylock (after finding the
cavil and having saved Antonio s life. That’s IPOCRITICAL.
• INTERPRETATION
Just like RJ, the merchant of Venice can be read in different ways, depending on the reader(s).
It was conceived as a Comedy (with added moments of drama and tragedy, as was costume for Shakespeare), --
-so we can read it as the comedy of Antonio, Bassanio and Portia.
-as the tragedy of Shylock
process
-as the triumph of Christianity over Judaism: this reading was very common in Nazi Germany.

Macbeth
• It’s set in Scotland, with mostly Scottish characters, even though we have scenes set in England, and some
English characters.
• Published in the Folio in 1623.

• We are not certain on the actual year of writing. We do know it was performed in 1611
We can date it approximately through some historical key events present in the play.
Elizabeth I died in 1603 and her successor was James (6th of Scotland and 1st of England.
Shakespeare and his theatre crew, firstly called The Lord Chamberlain’s Man, is now called The King’s
man: Shakespeare becomes linked to the royals, now of Scottish origins.
Prior to James I, English attitude towards Scotland wasn’t necessarily positive. Same attitude was current in
theatre representations: now things must change, since the king is Scottish.
King James requested Shakespeare to add the character of Banquo, who he believed to be his ancestor.
For his historical research, Shakespeare uses the Holinshed's Chronicles. In the chronicles, Banquo is referred to
as a villain, but in order to abide to a necessary propaganda (fake news) he reinvented it as a positive character.
• It’s Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy: there’s reason to believe that some parts went missing throughout
time.
• PLOT AND CHARACTERS
PLOT: The play is about Macbeth, a man we know being an excellent warrior, part King Duncan’s army.
Coming back from a battle, Macbeth and Banquo met three witches.
They tell them a prophecy:
• Macbeth will become king of Scotland, while Banquo will be the father of other kings.
Macbeth sends a letter to his wife, Lady Macbeth, asking for insights on the matter: she gets serious about the
prophecy and suggests King Duncan must be killed.
Macbeth is not really convinced, but Lady Macbeth puts him under pressure so Macbeth must yield.
From now on we assist to a spiral of moral deterioration: one murder will not be enough to accomplish his
destiny, he will have to kill his friend Banquo as well.
Macduff, another character, will go to England asking the King of England for help, to try to stop Macbeth.
Macbeth will murder Macduff entire family while the man is away.
Just like in the Tempest, Shakespeare might have added this particular scene, of a
man away during the death of his family as a link to his private life: he himself
was absent during the death of his son.
Macbeth goes back to the witches, that give him additional prophecies:
• he will be king until the forest will reach the castle
• he will be killed by a man not born from a woman.
For this both reasons, Macbeth thinks himself safe, as both the prophecies sound impossible.
The English army will go to Scotland to defeat him, and they will sneak into the realm by cutting trees and
hiding behind them while walking towards the castle. At the end, Macbeth will be killed by Banquo, a man born
by c-section (so not technically born from a woman).
Lady Macbeth will commit suicide.

IMPORTANT THEMES & CRITICS
• NATURE
RELATIONSHIP MAN/NATURE
Nature has a double essence:

• Like the Romantics intended: motherly, benevolent, even as a moral instructor (Wordsworth) (every
man is born good, but becomes evil when he detaches himself from nature)
• Like Hobbs intended (homo homini lupus): all men have predatory instincts, the entire society is
constructed on man that destroys man.
WHAT IS NATURAL AND WHAT IS UNNATURAL
SLEEP AND FOOD: sleeping and eating are referred to as the pillars of human life: (2.1) the “chief nourisher in
life’s feast” and “nature’s second course”.
After accomplishing the plan, Macbeth speaks with his wife in a state of semi-shock: the act is traumatic, and he
reflects on the moral implication of his act (see: kings). In the moment of the crime, he says to have heard a
voice prophesizing him that he will no longer sleep. (see: prophecies)
-MURDER: (1.3 Mb to Lady: “Against the use of nature?”)

-SUICIDE
KINGS:
According to the vision of the time, the King was rightfully chosen by God himself, as a delegate of his reign. For
this reason, the reign, the earth governed by the king was sacred, part of Nature (as in “God’s creation”).
Consequentially, the king himself is part of nature: killing a king is unnatural in the higher sense of the
term.
harming the king, in this play, has more than one moral implication:
-Macbeth will kill a man (which is evil di per se)
-he will kill him while being his guest: this will affect an unwritten social rule (dating back to the Greek culture)
which underlines the importance of the relationship guest/host.
-he has killed him during his sleep: when he was defenseless, a coward act
- (as said) he will harm nature itself.
LIFE AND AFTERLIFE

Another issue presented in the play, which is also linked to Pico’s philosophy, is the weight daily actions have
when it comes to the afterlife.
After coming to terms with the various efforts he must endure in order to take the throne, and after affecting
nature in the most terrible way (i.e. murder, murder of a king), Macbeth expresses his thoughts in 2 occasions:
1. Doesn’t care
2. At first (2.2) he reflects on the immediate moral implications: he has now committed a crime so
dreadful that he fells immediately cut off from religious life: “but therefore could I not pronounce
“Amen”? […] “amen” stuck in my throat”
THE CASTLE
(link to “duality & reality/appearance)

In 1.6, the king and is followers go to Macbeth castle. Here, the king himself shows liberality in complimenting
his hosts (honored hostess; love; God; thank) and their home (pleasant; sweetly; gentile) and we are presented
with the positive omen of a martlet: a bird that usually nests (=nature growing) on the side of churches, thus
making him a sign of a peaceful place, where there’s love and tranquility.
Later, in 2.3, after the murder is been committed, the scene is filled with tension and suspense: a series of
mysterious knocks in the middle of the night are heard, while the couple is still commenting on the dreadful

act, indicating the arrival of someone. A tempest pouring down can be heard as well: the scene is changed,
Macbeth’s castle is referred to as “Hell”, the murder is soon to be discovered.
• MILK-WHITE BLOOD-RED
Also linked to the duality of nature, the common imagery of milk and blood are present in the play. Next to
those two liquids, the respecting colors (white and red) are linked to the same imagery.
(Also, red and white are, like in Romeo and Juliet, a possible link to the war of the roses, a well-known event in
Shakespeare’s time.)
• TIME
METEREOLOGICAL TIME
Thunders and tempest: *see music and tempest, Merchant of Venice
In Macbeth thunders are often present during ominous scenes:

- when the three witches appear
-the night of the king’s murder
• HUMAN DESTINY
HUMAN DESTINY & THE METAPHORE OF THE SEED
Just like in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare shows interest towards what makes the destiny of the human being.
At the end of 1,3 , when Macbeth realize that the prophecy is doing its course (he already was thane of Glamis
and now is also thane of Cawdor) he questions himself: is he going to have and active role in his destiny
(killing the king) or is he going to have a passive role “chance might crown me without my stir"
PROFECIES & CURSES:

The three witches: they are described as curious looking creatures, old and mysterious, and (later) even
androgynous (bearded) .
Throughout history, different directors have opted for different takes on the three witches look (more
traditional, hallowee-ny looking, more supernatural looking etc).
The first time we heard about Macbeth is by the trio.
1. When they meet Banquo and Macbeth, they give them “prophecies” :
-they greet Macbeth with 3 titles, one he already owns: Thane of Glamis (he already is) , Thane of
Cawdor and then “Macbeth that shalt be king thereafter”
-they say that Banquo will be “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. Not so happy, yet much happier. Thou
shalt get kings, though thou be none” : so he will be the father of kings, while not being one.
2. Macbeth returns to the witches, after having killed both the King and Banquo: he’s becoming
increasingly more paranoid.
Macbeth: he himself provides a series of thoughts that can be considered prophetic:
1. “methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!” […] Glamis hath murthered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more!”: (2.3) right after killing the King, Macbeth goes to his
wife and tells her about this “curse”. We’ll see how this lack of sleep, and later sleepwalking (from the
part of Lady Macbeth) and hallucinations (Macbeth) will be a common theme from this moment on
that “will make us mad”.
2. “the near in blood, the nearer bloody” (2.3); “blood will have blood” (3.4) : in this case, Macbeth recognise
the fact that what he (or better, his wife) imagined being a lone act, will only spiral into more and more
killings. After killing the king, he will kill the two guards, then (indirectly) Banquo, all of Macduff’s
family…

OMENS and BIRDS
Martlet: good omen. Signify tranquillity in a house
Raven:
Chicken and Dam: Banquo’s family
• HUMAN NATURE & IDENTITY

HUMAN POTENTIALITY – PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA
Pico Della Mirandola presents a double philosophy in order to explain human society:
God created the world as a place with a fixed hierarchy: the heavens above, plants, animals, and hell are all fixed.
The only thing that he made mobile is humanity:
humans have the potentiality to behave rightfully, thus getting closer to Angels, or wrongly, thus reaching hell.
THE THEME OF “DO”
The verb Do (in all his tenses: do, done, did + the assonance with deed) is commonly found throughout the play.
-By one of the witches is used to suggest evil intents and machinations: “I’ll do, and I’ll do, and I’ll do”, she says.
The repetition creates a sense of fear in the spectator, because all the ominous plans of the witch are unnamed
and are left to the imagination.
-Macbeth and his wife also use the term a lot in their conversations: it is a matter of what to do in order to
achieve their plans. Macbeth will have to do what needs to be done (mostly murders) to become and secure his
position as king.
-the plan(s) is also called the deed¸ and we underline the conscious assonance.
THE ISSUE OF NAMES:

There are names, titles, identities that can be acquired either
- from birth (royalty) (ex 2.4 Macduff referring to the king’s heir “he’s already named”)
- by election: by someone powerful, or a community; (ex 1.2 “and with his former title greet Macbeth” the king
rightfully gives him the title of Thane of Cawdor)
-or taken with violence.
just like in Romeo and Juliet, in Macbeth there’s a common issue regarding names. Macbeth wants to acquire a
name, the title of kings, in ways that are not legitimate.
Just like in the other play, the manipulating of names (which represent the status quo and the way people
perceive us, our identity) is unsuccessful: Romeo cannot refuse his name, just like Macbeth cannot force others
to abide to his usurpation; in fact, he will not be called “king” by the people, but “tyrant”.
Sometimes, names can be wrongly given: this introduces us to the theme of realty and appearances.
The king, when he arrives to the Castle, greets his hosts with gentile words, especially Lady Macbeth: in this
case we see how the titles the king gives are not necessarily truthful to reality.
• GENDER ISSUES
“UNSEX ME HERE”: in 1.5, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from her husband, explaining the prophecies he
received from the three witches.
We see here a first clear picture of Lady Macbeth’s character: she sure, determined, and already knows what to
do, the “nearest way” for her husband to secure the prophecy (i.e. killing the king).
She herself puts a division between her character and her husband’s: “yet do I fear thy nature: it is too full
o’th’milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way”. She knows her husband is too much of a proper person
to even fathom the idea of killing a man.
While Macbeth is still unsure on weather to play an active or passive role in the matter, Lady Macbeth has the
first as an imperative attitude.
Her active role will be that of persuading Macbeth into doing the deed “I may pour my spirits in thine ear”.

Soon after she receive a message that indicates the visit of the king that same night.
There, faced with the hurry of the event she has just planned, lady Macbeth invokes the evil spirits of the
night to reach her and unsex her.
We explain this specific demand by analysing what the actual plan is: to kill a man, to kill a host, to kill a king.
Those are increasingly bad actions, a breech in nature. So, she needs to un-nature herself.
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife sees not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”
In this dense speech we analyse different points:

• she asks the evil of the night to make her blood thick, so that no remorse can visit her
• also, to take away the breast’s milk from her
we have already established the dichotomy between blood and milk and this will be central in this
passage: those two represent two opposite sides of nature; blood=savage, milk=maternal. Thickening the
fist and eliminating the latter is a way to destroy what’s humanly good in her and amplify what’s evil.
• she asks the darkness to also shield her so that her actions will remain unnoticed by the heavens, the great
benevolent power that could have stopped her from deciding to be evil.
Also, later, Macbeth asks the darkness the same thing: to veil him from the horrible
things he is about to do.
We’ll see later how even Lady Macbeth will fail in her attempt to eliminate her
nature. Just like in R&J, changing names, breaching into the human nature, human
identity is something impossible to do, an idea that is destined to fail.
Right after the murder, she will express guilt: the knocks are heard, and she answers
“wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!”
She will suggest that “a little water clears us of this deed! How easy is it then!” (referring to
MB, to blood) but when she’s seen sleepwalking by the doctor and his attendant, she will
repeat (5.1) “what? will these hands ne’er be clean? […] here’s the smell of the blood still:
all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”: her womanhood cannot be
destroyed.
SARTORIAL IMAGES
HISTORICAL LINK: sumptuary legislation:
it was a sort of dress code law that was in use eve in shakesperian time: a new social class of rich parvenue were threatening the old
upper class. They were able to afford pieces of cloathing and materials and for this reason the social differentiation was becoming
almost impossible. For this reason, upper classes pushed for a law that regulated what cloathing (what identity) a person could
wear, according to their social status

Just like names, clothes are a mark of identity: in 1,3 “why do you dress me in borrowed robes?” is the question
Macbeth asks when he is titled Thane of Cawdor (the official one is still alive, that’s why he questions the
election: there’s already someone bearing that identity).
“Now he feels his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief”

WAR POETS
MATHEW ARNOLD
DOVER BEACH
the poem was composed in 1851, but the beginning date does not coincide with the finishing date: he had
revised and modified the poem in different occasions,
the occasion for which the poem was composed is most definitely the poet’s honey moon. Whit his newly
wed wife he spent sometimes in the Strait of Dover: an area of the English coastline that faces France (it is
possible to see it in the close distance).
The White Cliffs of Dover are an English emblem: during WW1 they were the first thing many French soldiers
would see while reaching England; the enormous cliffs seemed a metaphor for the English’s strength.
The poem can be considered a “nocturne”: just like a piece of music, it describes a night-time scene, generally in
a not-so-happy tone: “tonight” (I).
Mathew Arnold knew a lot about European culture and art: this emerges from the clear connections or thematic
similarity with the works of Keats or Leopardi.
From Leopardi in particular, similar is his take on pessimism.
We follow the evolution of the image of the sea:

1. Calm
2. A medium of eternal sadness
3. A medium of human misery
4. Sea of faith
5. /
We can analyze the poem stanza by stanza.
FIRST STANZA:
The poet is possibly looking out a window, admiring the view.
It is a positive vision, a tranquil one
• Positive adjectives: sea, calm; the moon lies fair; light; the tranquil bay; sweet is the night air!
Hypertextual link: Quite clear is the connection with Keats’ in the last line
of the stanza, echoing the “Tender is the night” in “Ode to a Nightingale”.
The only dubious image in the first stanza is the light that gleams and is gone. The intermittent light, a positive
omen that disappears from the poet’s sight can be considered as a first taste of stress that will accompany,
increasingly, the rest of the poem.
SECOND STANZA:
The mood suddenly changes:
• Suggest by the use of the world only (which can be paraphrased to “the only problem was that...” or “if it
wasn’t’ for … then all would stay a peaceful sight”), followed by a cesura at the beginning of the second
stanza.
The scene we are presented with is that of the monotonous sound of the ocean reaching the pebble beach.
• The rhythm, the punctuation and the language create that feeling also:
Begin, and cease, and then again begin
with tremulous cadence slow
• Another interesting feature of the stanza is the use of the image “grating roar” to describe the sounds of
the clacking pebbles: it is not the immediate, coherent sound this event should produce, but it’s the
poet’s mind, affected by a raging feeling of sadness melancholy that makes it such.
• it is the monotonous sound that thus brings the eternal note of sadness in.
THIRD STANZA:
The stanza begins with a more erudite thought, as if the poet is leaving the tangible reality for a moment, away
from the window, in order to offer us an external example for what he’s feeling now: “find also in the northern
sea”
To do so, he
Interpretation:
A signal of a transition within society: Arnold’s vision is inspired by a critical analysis
• of his time:
-industrialization
-new sciences take over the role religion has always had on society
->the evolutionary theories (Arnold had already come in contact with the theory of Darwin Senior, also an
evolutionist)
• of every era: it’s universal

The same feeling, the same melancholy and misery towards change can be seen throughout all the history of
mankind.
Hypertextual link: here lies his connection with Leopardi and his
pessimism
FORTH STANZA
The image changes again, now the sea acquires a new positive connotation (more abstract than those in the fist
stanza i.e. calm, tranquil) that of the Sea of Faith (note capital letters)
The theme of Faith can have multiple connotations and explanations:

• DIRECT MEANING: being written in Arnolds’ times, he would’ve referred most definitely to
Christianity, and its unifying role as one of the most common religion of the western world.
• BROADER MEANING: as we said before, Arnold is stressing the transition happening in his era, in
rather negative terms: religions, traditional values are dead
➔ was once […] but now
• EVEN BROADER SENSE: not only religions are no longer worthy, but every belief is deemed useless.
In this stanza, the poet underlines how in the past humankind was blessed by faith (in every sense we can
interpret it), it gave sense to life
➔ Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. =positive language
(p. = was hugged all around by the sea, like a belt)
But now the sea (the faith) is withdrawing, retreating, from earth (humanity) leaving it unprotected, naked like
on a desert, rocky shore.
➔ But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear =negative language, with a hint of sublime
And naked shingles of the world
FIFTH STANZA
The last stanza is quite dense in content from a linguistic and thematic point of view:
1. it offers the poet’s idea on how to face this problem proactively

2. a reflection on reality and appearance
3. (BEYOND THE TEXT) raises question on the utility, on the role of love
The stanza begins with an invocation to a second character, probably his wife (love) to be faithful, to create
connection with one another, 1. TO CREATE A NEW INTERPERSONAL VALUES -
➔ Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! -----
2.(DICOTOMY REALITY/APPEARANCE)
Because the reality they are experiencing, that appears calm, and tranquil in the first stanza,
➔ for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Language:
Lie = Double meaning:
-presents itself as.
-“mentire”
is the exact opposite, is a place of loss and misery, of melancholy and uncertainty?
➔ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
1.If humanity does not react to this loss of certainties by stressing the importance of love and interpersonal
relationship(like it’s doing a.t.m.), then it will be no way or re-joining, of bettering society and possibly
rebuilding it.
➔ Where ignorant armies clash by night.
3. An indirect question that arises from the poem, now that we have established the core importance of love, is
“why love has to have such a high purpose?”.
Isn’t love something that humans feel, and it’s supposed to be a disinterested feeling per se, more than a tool to
rebuild something? Isn’t love generally for love itself? Is the poet suggesting that “one must love so the world
will look a better place; human interaction will serve the purpose of securing that veil of dream-like land (semi-
cit.)”
Also, there’s a contradiction when the author says
➔ Ah, love
And then goes on saying that in this world
➔ Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.
THE LAST LINES SHOW A LEVEL OF DESPERATION IN THE POET’S MIND THAT IS HARD NOT TO
PERCIEVE: IN MODERN LIFE EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS AND An ARBITRARY
THE PARADOX OF WW1

In WW1 we assist to an unprecedented acceleration of technology, mostly due to bellic reasons
• Chlorine gas was used by both party and was an extremely dangerous weapon: it burned the lungs of
those who were caught to the explosion and damaged the health of those who went near it.
For its danger and ___ (it was impossible to foresee if the wind would change thus hurting the
throwers), it was abolished in WW2.
• Fire-throwers were another terrible invention
• New means of bellic locomotion (tanks)
-WW1 had a significant higher rate of deaths: millions of people died, even in single battles there’s death counts
of 600.000 deaths (Battle of Gallipoli, Turkey).
-another element that not only have increased the number of deaths in those years but might have even
shortened the conflict was the Spanish flu. the influenza killed between 50 to 100 million people.
[it was so called not because it generated in Spain (it was most definitely France of USA) but because there has
been a wide press coverage in the Spanish media (Spain was not participating in the conflict: war-time
censorship did not interested it.).]

An interesting factor that we underline is the paradox that surrounded the whole situation: WW1 was fought
like a MODERN WAR, with modern equipment, but sparked as the consequence of 19TH CENTURY
POLITICS.
19th century politics was held in place by a series of alliances between countries:
The English empire (colonies too) – France – Russia
The German empire – Austria-Hungary
This balance was relatively instable: it only took the assassination of Ferdinand of Sarajevo to set all ablaze
Also, the most asserted way of organizing the battle was by creating trenches (trenches warfare) which
consisted in digging long tunnel-holes in the ground, and carefully battling the other party in order to win
terrain. It was a very time-consuming and health-damaging condition: soldiers basically lived in mud for weeks
at the time, with the constant anxiety of an attack, cold and humidity and the high-deaths rates surrounding
them.
RUPERT BROOKE
Rupert Brooke was an English young man, quite famous in his times. He was very good looking (Keats said he
was “the best-looking man in Europe”), had a long string of lovers (he was bisexual) and had received a great
education.
This said, there’s account of him being not so mentally stable (he had various episode of violence against
women, for which he was persecuted) and had a rather romantic opinion of war.
He lost his brother in the battle of Gallipoli, but he himself never arrived in the trenches: he died on his way to
battle, bitten by a mosquito. Never having experienced war, his idea of it is quite biased: he referred to it as a
purging event, that would have cleansed the world from its disgustingness, something that would have restored
the strength of body. he basically glorified war.
Winston Churchill knew him, and after his death popularized his poems, making them part of the British
propaganda.
We analyse his pomes for this reason: to have an example of how certain people (mostly young) thought of war,
in exaggerated, embellished and romantic ways.
PEACE
PRO WAR
(notice how the title already is paradoxical. Is war peaceful??)
FIRST STANZA
The first thing that the poet does in the poem is thanking whoever was responsible for the starting of a war, a
great event that has woken the youth of the country up from their sleep and strengthened their senses to make
them ready for the event.
➔ Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,
And caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping!
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

The event of the war is seen as something cleansing, clean, purifying : the image proposed by Brooke is very far
from reality. Trenches, illness, cold, death and trauma what was what waited the soldiers.
➔ To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
The youth of the country (him too) are happy to be able to leave for war and purge the world from all that is
negative.
➔ Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary;
Who is going to be left out from this group of courageous soldiers?

All of those who lack honour (a really 19th century word)
➔ Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move
And all of those who have their heart obfuscated by the little feelings and simple passions
➔ And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
SECOND STANZA
In the second part of the poem, it’s underlined again how the period before the war was dreadful and
something to better it was needed (war)
➔ Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Naught broken save this body
Also it is stressed how the event of the battle is something the body can easily bear, that there’s no pain, no
illness that a little sleep can’t cure: that is said prom the p.o.v. of a young, exalted man that has never fought
before.
➔ Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Along the lines of this last expression, the poet underlines that on the contrary, the event of the war will only
put joy in the soldier’s heart
➔ […] lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,
And that no matter what, the worst thing to lose is life, that the agony only lasts but seconds.
➔ But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
THE SOLDIER
PRO WAR
This one is a very patriotic poem, although quite hyperbolic.
The poet imagines being killed in battle. Wherever his body would be buried, there it will become English
ground. Him, being a strong English soldier will almost “sweat” Englishness and enrich the soil.
➔ In that rich earth a richer dust concealed
he would almost become part of the entire ecosystem
➔ Earth, dust, air, rivers
To the level of ascending to a higher universe, becoming an eternal mind and blessing the world with the parts
of his Englishness,
➔ Her ((England)) sight and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
and laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness
in hearts at peace
even imagining an English heaven

JOHN McCRAE
IN FLANDERS FIELDS
PRO WAR
The poem was surely written after McCrae witnessed the burying of one of his soldier friends.
From the poem’s title we get a location, that of the Flanders, in Belgium, where many lost their lives during
WW1, with time, the poem and the poppy became a symbol of remembrance.
1 STANZA
The first stanza offers a peaceful description of a situation. We are in a cemetery, but the natural marks (the
flowers, the sky, the larks) offer an idyllic image. Nonetheless some words used set the tone.
-We have rows and rows of with crosses: the number is unknown, too many probably.
-the second detail is the use of “our place”: we will find out who the voice of the poem belongs to, and it’s the
dead. They are speaking from underneath the crosses.
-another character present on the scene is the larks. They are morning birds, they are still “bravely” singing in a
place where, not far, war can still be heard. As said in the last line, their singing can barely be heard over the
sound of guns.
2 STANZA
The voices present themselves “the dead”. as we have seen in the first stanza the poet imagines them still being
aware of their surroundings. Now, they are remembering what was before they died. It puts into prospective
not only the mortality of human life but also the futility of war. Now they are alive, now they are not. And
they had lives – made of human contacts and affections, but now they are dead.
3 STANZA
If it wasn’t for this last stanza, we could easily consider this poem as one meant to condemn war. But on the
contrary, the dead here are not sadly accepting a fate that they would rather not be the fate of others, but they
want revenge, otherwise “we shall not sleep”.
McCrae uses the image of the torch, a symbol of ideals that must be kept awake (famous the renaissance
painting for the French revolution).
WILFRED OWEN
He started writing when he was 17
At around 18 years of age Owen became an unpaid lay assistant to a Church of England vicar in Oxfordshire. He
assisted with the care of the poor and sick in the parish. It was during this time that he lost faith in the church
to support people in need.
In 1915 he returned to England to enlist in the army and was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment. He
fought starting from 1917. After a series of difficult battles, he was discharged with PTSD (Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder).
Anthem for Doomed Youth was written in 1917 while Owen was at Craiglockhart. A handwritten draft of the
poem survives on which Owen has written, “With Sassoon’s amendments”. The title of the poem was Sassoon’s
suggestion.
He was killed in 1918. The news got to his parents on armistice day, 11 November.
ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

ANTI WAR
TITLE: the poem’s title can give us multiple information on the author’s point of view:
-The word ANTHEM has a double meaning:
• in the national anthem sense – its quite ironical in this sense, since he’s going to go against the
jingoistic propaganda of the war period’s poetry.
• or in the religious anthem sense, a song sang by a choir during service – he will question the usefulness
of religious practices, especially in regards of the death of soldiers.
-The poem is directed to a DOOMED (YOUTH): we already know that they are helpless, that the fact that they
are going to war means that, in a way or another (death, trauma) they are going to lose.
-YOUTH: the fact that we know that it’s young people that are doomed makes it even mote terrible. It stressed the
idea of war being futile.
SONNET: the choice of using a sonnet (whose form is usually preferred for love poetry) is also ironic.
1 STANZA
(8 lines)
Both stanzas open with a rhetoric question. The first one is quite disturbing, since it compares the troops of
soldiers to a cattle (group of animals, like cows): this comparison, again, helps the poet to move away from the
mainstream idea of the soldiers seen as a heroic group.
For those who are dying in war there will not be any funeral, any tranquillity or formality. They will not hear the
bells, they will not be able to even hear their own prayers, since the war noises will overpower them.
Will there be any use in a funeral? Why is there a need to die? The funeral, being their death so futile, with all the
traditions (flowers, choirs, prayers bells, candles) is a mockery. And they will not even have it because all they
can experience is still the sound of war, and the buglers playing funeral songs (it’s a traditional lone player that play at military
funerals.)
It’s important to underline aspects in order to understand the poem:

1. the poet questions the importance, the usefulness of funeral traditions like bells and choirs and flowers
in a situation such as the death of soldiers, which are referred as “mockeries” (this also underlines the fact
that those acts are not even performed since the burying of a soldier is something that happened multiple
times a day).
2. PERSONIFICATIONS, ALLITTERATIONS AND ONOMATOPEAS (linked to p. 3)
3. SOUNDS: in the first stanza the poet answers his question by saying that no, the sound of choirs and bells
is not heard, and on the contrary is only the monstrous anger of the guns and the stuttering rifles rapid
rattle and the shrill, demented choir of wailing shells and bugles calling. They create a terrible parody of
a funeral
What he does, is using the same word (choir, shires) to instead describe sounds and events linked to war.
2 STANZA
(6 lines)
The second stanza also opens with a rhetoric question : now we are going to focus on the families point of view.
The funeral that is taking place does not have the usual decorations and rituals (which, as we saw in the 1
stanza, are replaced by the close by war). The last image is that of the bugles playing. And now we are there
with the families. Again, the unimportance of rituals is underlined: the poet stressed the fact that are not the
physical objects (flowers and candles) that truly show the sorrow of loss, but the faces of children, more youth,
that will accompany the far away death of more soldiers.
Another tradition, the drawing-down of blinds in every house, to show mourning and sorrow, will not be seen
my soldiers, dead and still alive. For them, only slow sunsets will dim the light.
FUTILITY
ANTI WAR
The poem contains an event probably lived by the poet, a soldier that fought in France during WWI.
The scene depicted is that of -presumably- a group of soldiers that are trying to revive a dead soldier by putting
him under the sun. the death of the young soldier is probably not due to any wound, or any violent attack other
than that of cold. (we are in the early morning and it has snowed). In the first stanza the poet creates almost a

soothing image, calm, serene. The sun has positive connotation and the imagery is linked with home-like
comfort. In the second stanza all changes: the sun does not work: It’s fatuous, futile, as the title says.
1 STANZA
The first stanza opens with a command, an organizing voice, to “move him into the sun” . the sun always had the
power, the innate ability to wake this boy at home “at home […] fields unsown” (not yet grown, he’s dead before
he could even grow up properly) and even there in France (aka were they are battling, the western front, away
from England). But not anymore.
The poet is still hopeful: “if anything might rouse him now, the kind old sun will know” (note the use of the word
“rouse” , a type of bugles call)
2 STANZA
If the fist stanza had that halo of calmness and hopefulness, now the tone is completely changing: the poet
becomes gradually more puzzled and almost angry at the sun for not “working”. Especially considering that
- “it weakens the seeds” : makes life possible on earth
- “woke, once, the clays of a cold star” : earth itself was born thanks to the sun’s heath.
Will continue later with more examples
Then he seems to ask himself, or maybe questions the body in front of him: are his arms and legs (“so dear-
achieved”) or his body in general, which is still warm (in the sense of “not dead since a long time” ) too hard to
move?
It’s here that the tone of the poem hardens, and we note it from the way the rhetoric question is posed “was it
for this the…”.
-the clay has a new characteristic, now taken from the biblical tradition of the Genesis, where Adam is being
created by god’s hand starting from mud, clay.
The poet asks if it was for war, for sufferance, for destruction, that the sun had done all that work, or god on his
behalf.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST

ANTI WAR
The poem was written in 1917, at 24.

This poem is a good example of his writing, crude, almost morbid but one hundred percent true to the reality of
war. It is stronger than Futility. It is a sort of anti-Wordsworth recollection in tranquillity.
The scene we are presented with is that of a group of soldiers, presented as a miserable, tired and traumatised
bunch. Suddenly, a cry is heard chemicals are being thrown on their direction. A haste to cover up, but a man is
not quick enough. The point of view shifts from a generalized overview of the situation to a more personal,
intimate of the poet. The dying man is looking at him, a dark green fog in enveloping all of them, and the man is
suffocating, drowning.
Then the poet is directing his voice directly to the reader: “if in some smothering dreams, you too could pace” .
what they are living is a nightmare. The poet wants the reader, especially those who have the idea that “dulce
et decorum est pro patria mori” that dying in war is neither sweet nor proper.
The pace quickens, they grab the dying man and he sees him chocking on his on blood, “bitter as the cud” (LINK
TO: Anthem for doomed youth; the cud is the rechewed food of animals like cows. In Anthem, the soldiers are
referred to as to “cattle”, nothing more than animals for the slaughter).
He refers to “my friend” and we can consider him to be Jessie Pope, a pro-war journalist and poet, who wrote
children’s stories and propaganda in order to create, as many other did, a polished and glorious image of war to
lead young man into enlisting for the trenches.
The poet here is adamant: those, like Pope, who depict war as something great, must stop telling the children
“the old lie” that it isn’t sweet nor proper to die for your country.

SIEGFRED SASSOON
Details such as rotting corpses, mangled limbs, filth, cowardice and suicide are all trademarks of his work at
this time, and this philosophy of 'no truth unfitting' had a significant effect on the movement
towards Modernist poetry.
Born in a Jewish family. Went to the western front in France, met other war poets became friends with Owen.
He helped him with his poetry (clear signs in Anthem)
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES

ANTI WAR
1 STANZA
The first stanza begins with a very straightforward image, both in diction and in syntax. The image we have is
that of a “simple soldier boy” the poet knew: simple in the sense of “any other” , or “not so educated” or
“inexperienced, because young” .
The boy is described as a happy, cheerful person, that whistle in the early morning, has no problem and lives
life in “empty joy” in the sense of a simple joy give by nature, not so much by an event in particular.
2 STANZA
But now we move in “winter trenches”: if it wasn’t for the explicit title, we would be curious about where this
account was going. Now we are away from that juvenile tranquillity and taken into the trenches.
We are given details from sensory point of view:

The trenches are cold (feel) , he’s surrounded by crumps (sounds of bombs; onomatopoeia) and lice (feel ; bad
sanitary conditions) and lack of rum (taste, or lack thereof; they don’t have food or drinks nor even something
to help them through the cold or the fear).0020
And it’s here that, suddenly, we are told that in one of those trenches, he had “put a bullet trough his brain” the
account is crude, simple, terrible coming from a character we knew being joyful and careless.
And we also know that “no one spoke of him again”.

this could have multiple reasons: the death of a soldier is such an everyday thing that he wasn’t special, or that
the soldiers had more pressing things to mind to or, more possible that the suicide of a soldier could be
considered mutiny, or an act of cowardice from the prospective of those at home (we can give this explanation
since the remark at the end of the poem is for those who have a conception of war that is far away from reality,
too romanticized).
3 STANZA
This stanza is openly directed, from the poet, to the crowds at home, “you smug faced crowds with kindling eyes”
(kindling is a verb used to describe the lighting of a fire of a gun) “who cheer when soldier lads march by” : those
people are at the same time victims and perpetrators of jingoistic ideas common at the time. They all have a
heroic image of war (LINK TO: anthem for doomed youth). They would be the first to judge negatively the boy
who killed himself.
The command of the poet? To “sneak home and pray you’ll never know the hell where youth and laughter go”.

DOES IT MATTER?
ANTI WAR
The poem is made up of three stanzas, the rhythm equal in all three. Each stanza starts with a rhetoric question.
The whole poem questions the reader in a sarcastic way.
The poem offers a never seen before prospective over war: that of veterans that come home after war, mostly
with some deficiency (blindness, missing limbs, traumatic memories). Sassoon himself was a veteran who
suffered from trauma after war.
The poem emphasizes superficial kindness shown towards veterans. If before the were seen as a heroic
figure, those who went to war in the first place because of that image of the “great war” are now home but in
poor conditions.
The poet asks if “it matters” if one has lost his legs, or if is blind. It reflects society’s thoughts, that ex-soldiers
can go back to their lives as civilians in a nonchalant way.
W.B. YEATS
SALING TO BYZANTIUM
He published it when he was 63 – a major theme in the poem was the aging of the body. he recognizes himself
as a bright mind in a decaying body. the transcending from the natural world, not fit anymore for the elderlies,
to a timeless place where he could become spiritually immortal is the subject of Sailing to Byzantium.
Yeats constructs his poem around one major opposition: the mortal world of the flesh versus the golden world
of eternal art. Yeats juxtaposes a natural, mortal world driven by the cycle of life and death, with an impersonal,
immortal world of art
1 STANZA
The first stanza begins with a negative “this is no country for old men”. Keats is probably referring to Ireland, a
country just become independent from England. Keats was a very active Irish nationalist poet and it is not
difficult to find pro-Irish content in his poetry, but , at the same time, he might be referring to the whole world
with the name “country”, since he’s going to make this “travel” to Byzantium , a place in a country di per se, but
intended more as a psychological, metaphysical realm.
His reason for wanting to leave the natural word is that it is controlled by eternal, cyclical forces of life and
death. The youth does not mind it, until they are young , because they are “caught in that sensual music” and
they ignore the possibility of reaching a world made of art, and great intellectual power.
➔ hypertextual link: Keats ode to a Grecian urn:

the artistic value of the urn, depicting humans in movements and yet frozen in time, is
timeless. It is a paradox because the characters will never achieve their fulfilment (catch
a nymph, play the flute).
➔ ode to a nightingale: it is an opposition of the bird in Keats’s poem. That in the 1 stanza
are mortal birds those dying generations. For Keats “thou were not born for death”.
2 STANZA
In the second stanza we have the direct matter: an old man is basically nothing useful anymore in the heartily
cycle. he cannot participate in the sensual songs. He can only keep up with the movement if his soul keeps on
singing, keeps on being active. So were to go? Byzantium, were the body is useless and the soul has the chance
to study the “the monuments of its own magnificence” (subj = the soul).
For this reason he has sailed.

3 STANZA
The third stanza elevates the subject and explains how this ascend will happened. In Byzantium he will meet
sages, that through the fires of God will liberate him from his body, “sick with desire and fastened to a dying
animal it knows not what it [the powers of the soul] is.
The symbol used to describe this ascending is that of the gyre. Like a vortex his soul will detach from his body
and become part of another vortex, that of eternity.
The matter of eternity is approached in a complex way, that questions the whole value of the poem. It is
described as “the artifice of eternity” while the tern can have the meaning of “related to art” it can also mean
“false, artificial”. so to reach eternity is not something possible.
4 STANZA q
The question is whether or not this creates a problem for the author. In the last stanza, his desire is to have his
soul relocated into something artificial. Artificiality not only has the characteristic of being precious, and gold
(the mosaics) is something to strive for but is also eternal. To become attached to an inanimate object, a
precious one that has value in his artistic form
➔ again linked to ode to a Grecian urn
would be a way for the poet to become art, and to be the perfect spectator of things past present and future.
NOTE HOW THE PASSING OF TIME IS SEEN FROM THE DIFFERENT PROSPECTIVE OF STANZA 1 AND 4.
1 = He is participating in the cycle of life
4= he’s a spectator
Conclusion – discussion
What are the consequences of exiting nature ang reaching the world of art? You lose something!
PARALLEL W-ITH ROMEO AND JULIET: at the end of the play the two families build 2 golden statue of the two
lovers embracing. They will be eternal, such as their love, but it is also a relative accomplishment: their love has
never seen the end because it never even progressed. They died before growing old together.
SYMBOLS
GYRE: he first used the image of the moon phases but Then settled for the symbol of the gyres. Most of the time
they are intersecting gyres, depicted as pyramids.
BIRDS: the bird images stand for transcendence, immortality, and the spirit.
BYSANTIUM : the city nowadays called Istanbul (B -> Constantinople -> Istanbul). Yeats wrote that Byzantium
represents for him a world of artistic energy and timelessness, a place of highly developed intellectual and
artistic cultures. It represents a perfect union of aesthetic and spiritual energies; Yeats wrote, “I think that
in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life
were one.”
T.S. ELIOT
1888-1965
He was an expatriate, he was “adopted” by England.
Was a critic (of sociology, literature and theology), an editor and a playwriter.
He took philosophy at Harvard and completed the course in three years instead of four. He continued his
studies in France at the Sorbonne, under Bergson (studied linguistics). He came in contact with the French
symbolists.
He then became interested in eastern philosophy, Indian in particular. He studied Sanskrit
he wrote his thesis on Bradley (British idealistic philosopher) but was never able to receive his PhD due to the
WWI.

He met Ezra Pound, whom he considered “il miglior fabbro”. Pound edited the Waste Land, published in 1924.
The waste land had a radical effect.
He married twice, the first time was almost disastrous: some critics believe it was probably a good excuse for
him to merry an English woman in order to remain in England. The relationship was never easy: she had
suffered from health problems (tuberculosis, heavy menstruations with lead to mood swings). But she was
flamboyant , smoke in public and spoke her mind. She fell for Eliot and he fell for her. But her mood swings led
to paranoia.
He filed a separation and she went to an asylum where she died.

He married later with a secretary that handled his work.
1917 He wrote Prufrock and other observations

Poems in 1919 where he broke with tradition : no longer a Georgian kind of poetry, melodic, but a more
modern.
He did not fight in war since he was American, but wrote poems about city life, squalor and modernity.
WE CONSIDER HIM THE FIRST REAL MODERNIST ENGLISH POET.
LA FIGLIA CHE PIANGE – O quam te memorem virgo
THE TITLE: according to historians, the first part of the title was chosen by Eliot after a friend urged him to go
see a painting, a tablet, during his visit to a museum in Northern Italy. Eliot never found the stele, so the title
and the story itself is about the interpretation, the thought that Eliot had about this unseen work. The subtitle
also fits in, both with this idea and the concept of the poem: “how should I remember [call]you, Maiden” is
taken from the Aeneid (Iliad) , where Enea is referring to Venus, disguised as a huntress.
This exercise fits in with the idea Eliot had of poetry: that it’s not about expressing emotions or personality,
but to escape from them. But still, only those who are in touch with the former two, know what it means
to escape from them.
The poem is divided into 3 stanza of different length. The structure is not cohesive, there are alexandrines that
change the rhythm and lead the reader to the climatic moment in the poem.
1 STANZA
In the fist stanza what we underline the most is the type of verbs and in the tense used: the verbs are mostly
imperatives and the tense is in the present form.
The voice will instruct the woman to do things, to move, to pose. He’s like a fastidious aesthete, a movie
director, who wants to create this perfect image of this woman.
The woman is a potential work of art, she is of aesthetic purpose, HER SUFFERING IS CRUCIAL TO
THE PICTURE.
2 STANZA
In this second stanza a thing to note is the voice. There’s an alternation of “I” and “he”.
In the first three lines of the second stanza, the voice is still directing the scene, and we have an idea why the
poem wanted her to pose in “pained surprise”. In order to create the piece of art, “so I would have had him
leave” thus having her “stand and grieve”.
We can assume that “I” and “he” coincide, but it’s a complicated way of the authors to look the events from afar,
then coming back to himself and to the scene. The poet/aesthete that directs and then the poet/lover. MODERN
TECNIQUE

Note the connection with this doubleness the author explores through
pronouns in this poem and in Prufrock, where we have the “you and I”
which can (also) be interpreted as I, character and I narrator.
In line 13 we have the “I should find – some way” he is still trying to think as an artist, but then the thought
evolves. He’s not only trying to find a way to produce this still nature of suffering, but he’s now coming back in
his own emotion : he should find a way to create a perfect parting, something “simple and faithless as a smile
and a shake of hands”.
Note the constant repetition that we find in this stanza: every line is connected (through repetition or
enjambement) to another line.
So I would x 3
As the x 2 + as a smile
I should find – some way x 2
3 STANZA
Now we change tense: past, the tense of memory.

The woman does one last pose the poet/aesthete not the poet/lover has instructed her. “she turned away”.
Which is something “him “was supposed to do. And now we have a “but”: even though there’s been a
separation, the voice is remembering the woman “many days and many hours: her hair over her arms and her
arms full of flowers”
➔ Symbol: the woman with flowers

The image of a woman bearing flowers is something we also see in the Waste Land.
The hyacinths are flowers that due to their phallic shape represent fertility. The woman
in the waste land, bearing flowers and with her (although androgyny can also be
suspected) hair wet with life-giving rain is a dense symbol for fertility. But in the waste
land, the interlocutor is left paralyzed by this offer.
In this sense, the woman in the 1 stanza is allowed by the poet to fling them (the
flowers) to the ground”. to express her rejection for a sexual/child-desiring encounter
with the man leaving her (maybe because he is also paralyzed), but if in the 3 stanza, the
poet imagines “how they should have been together!” she again has “arms full of flowers” .
He’s somehow regretting to have made the man (himself) leave, and the woman suffer. He says, “I should have
lost a gesture and a pose”: this has a double sense “lost” in the sense of “avoided” or lost in the sense of “missed”
. if the man hasn’t had left, he, poet/aesthete, would have missed the scene of the woman crying.
this ambiguity in choice, this double possibility “sometimes these cogitations still amaze the troubled midnight
and the noon’s repose” keep him awake at night (where the terrible yet sincere thoughts appear) and the early
morning (when the more logic thoughts awaken) .
THE LOVE SONG OF ALFRED PRUFROCK
The poem was composed around 1910/1911but wasn’t published until 1915
Ezra Pound helped the publication of the poem, together with other productions. He was
fascinated with the poignant modernity of Eliot’s poetry: they rhythm, almost conversational,
the rhythm scheme never obvious, the link to classic literature but with a modern twist, the
representation of the true modern man.
Variation on the classic dramatic monologue (= soliloquies in play)

but it doesn’t necessarily have an interlocutor of a listener: Eliot focuses on the character interior prospective,
which can be multiple (the you and I)
Love for symbolism: he takes from them the imagery (the attention to unflattering details) but he doesn’t make
Prufrock an artist or a poet, although moody and an isolated thinker in society, but common man, unaware of
his poetic ability
TITLE: it is said the theme is going to revolve around a confession of love, which in fact never happens it’s a
misnomer. And then we are given the name of the speaking character.
Eliot wanted to invoke a man that was “prude” and with a “frock”. The original title was “Prufrock amongst
Women”
Also, curious, the juxtaposition between the romantic matter (or supposed) and the name, very stiff and serious
sounding, not much the name of a man singing love songs.
SUBTITLE: it is taken from Dante’s Inferno. Dante talks with Guido da Montefeltro, a false advisor (he thinks
Dante’s a soul. He was contended by saint Francis and a demon. Guido reveals his identity and history to Dante
because not only he believes Dante’s a soul, but because he’s sure no one comes out of hell.
interesting the link with Dante (we will have one with Shakespeare as well): Prufrock is a modern Guido,
trapped in a hellish and confused reality that with his dramatic monologue gives away his most
embarrassing fears to an invisible public. (the connection w/ Hamlet is explained by Prufrock himself.)
1-36
After the quote from the Inferno, we are presented, in the first 12 lines with the description of a city. Prufrock is
taking us with him, or maybe he’s taking himself (the personality of the character is fragmented, or has a
double connotation, “real” and “metaphysical, psychological”). we know the time of the day in which the event
starts, the “evening spread out against the sky” (personification)
➔ TIME: Eliot followed various lesson in France held by Bergson. The issue of time is
crucial for Bergson and we see such issue is also inserted by Eliot in his poem.
in this case, he uses a way of explaining time used by Bergson himself: time is
something that has a duration, that evolves.it can be analysed instant by instant, but has
a moving nature di per se.
we will see how the entirety of the poem is in the present tense: Prufrock is
trapped in the present, cannot make a choice, cannot evolve. He’s completely
enveloped in “hundreds of indecisions”
although not as extensively as in the waste land we have a description of modern city: a labyrinth of squalor
“one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells – streets that follows like a tedious argument”
those same streets, a labyrinth of confusion still lead him to questions, and some that are overwhelming. We can
imagine them being solely related to a romantic interest (in particular if we imagine the “you” as an
interlocutor), but he may be talking with himself, with his conscience? Do not focus on _more_ overwhelming
questions, but let’s go and do the thing, aka “the love song”.
Where? In the room were women come and go talking about Michelangelo
➔ This line is most definitely a semi quote from a French symbolist, Lafourgue. Eliot had a
deep appreciation for the symbolistic movement, who he believed was an adequate
consequence on a modern word prospective.
➔ Rhythm: a sing-song rhythm almost trivialized the moment.
➔ Prufrock among the women: the original title of the poem would fit betterin this
moment. The women are possibly talking:
-of ridiculous things
-of the David, the epitome of masculinity, which is something that Prufrock lacks. We’ll
see how his balding and skinny appearances are a problem for him and for his intent.
The description of the city continues, and we have the symbol of a yellow fog appears. It’s a8 lines long
personification of a cat that moves through the city’s night sky (the progression from evening to night). The

fog/cat moves down (from the chimneys, drips down drains and then curls up near a door. Like Prufrock
doesn’t dare to get in.)
23 we go back again to Prufrock, that must go in the room with the women.
“and indeed, there will be time”
➔ Semi-quote of “The Coy Mistress” by Marvell.
In his poem, the voice is acknowledging the passing of time, his getting old, and wants to
speed up the courtship with a woman.
On the contrary, here Prufrock does not want to speed time up, he wants to take time, to
engulf even more in the present.
➔ A possible pun: in deed > for the things I have to do, there will be time
We can imagine him waiting outside, making up excuses for himself.
From this moment on we are presented with wat is like to be in P. ‘s mind. His social anxiety is obvious
and yet enlightened:
Man must prepare a face, to make up a strong identity for themselves. All must do it; society is an agreed
pantomime.
Followed up by a series of Bible quote (about creation)
But the most important thing is that, for Prufrock, for his present, there’s still time “for hundreds indecisions –
visions and revisions” . he can still postpone the “moment of crisis”.
(adding “before the taking of toast and tea” trivializes and makes ridiculous his fears and anxieties.)
(refrain of the Michelangelo’s women)
From line 37 the social paralysis of Prufrock is analysed: the women present in the room, and one, are
there, and while he descends the stairs
(the rising/descending movements of the fog/him)
Someone might notice his balding spot, or the way he is dressed, or his body in general.
The interesting thing is that there’s no actual voice that mortifies him: it’s all in his head.
The pressing questions the askes are if he “dares”: dares to do anything at all, in fear that it might disturb the
universe ” . he’s almost paranoid about making choices, and even if he does make them, they are up for
countless revisions.
49 he already knows (know is a word repeated) the feeling: being in a room full of people that wear a mask, he
himself wearing a mask and all the mundane tasks that happens over the course of “evenings, morning,
afternoons”
55 he knows the people, the way the exchange formulated phrases and he, in this setting is so cross, so socially
awkward and so enveloped in his own insecurity that he feels like an insect pinned on the wall (maybe by the
pin he wears on his cravatte) .
We see at the end of these two stanzas, where he asks himself “how should I presume”
➔ Presume: double sense: imagine, anticipate; do something without permission or
justification
The latter meaning is the one that would denote a boldness he does not have or dare to
have either.
We go back to the room. 52-90 it’s room full of women. We note the attention to single details.
➔ In here we note the inspiration taken from French symbolists, who gave importance to
single, not necessarily flattering details.
In a silly stupor he says that the arms that he looks at (he does not look at a woman’s face: too bold. His gaze is
low, to an arm wrapped around a shawl)
And he asks himself how to do it, how to confess, how to express his feelings when he feels so under scrutiny.
He feels completely out of place, especially for a man that thinks so much. What should he talk about? Of
all his contorted thoughts, should he talk about “lonely man leaning out of windows”
➔ If we consider the room as metaphor for the self, to lean out of a window is to explore
outside of the self: but we are talking of lonely man in shirt sleeves. The image is quite
depressing. A string of Prufrocks.
Crab?
From line 80 we move from the afternoon (line 50) to the evening again.
He asks himself again if he’s going to be able to “force the moment to his crisis” int the sense of finally making his
confession.
Prufrock is completely negative, even in the description of self: he tells us what he is no: he’s not john the
Baptist, even though he feels like his bald head is being served on a platter
➔ Salome, stepdaughter of Herod Antipas asks for the head of the HERMIT John.
He’s not a prophet. He does not have any importance, and neither do his problems.
Linked to this image of death, he imagines the eternal footman, Death, there to hold his clothes, laughing.
➔ This could be again a reference to The coy mistress: (Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying
near;) the man is trying to have sex with his mistress because he’s worried of death -
approaching. He feels the same thing, but then he excuses himself: and in short, I was
afraid.
Not only he’s consumed by doubt but also by the possibility of being rejected: if one should say “this is not it at
all this is not what I mean at all” .
After telling us he’s not a prophet, now he tells us he’s not even Hamlet: the link with the Shakespearian hero is
easy to understand. He too was an eternally indecisive man, to be or not to be, to kill Claudius? Etc but at the
end he manages, he’s still a hero. Prufrock is more an “attendant lord” or better “the fool”.
➔ he even says “Am an attendant lord” he doesn’t even put the pronoun.
128 the litany of “I grow old” then a short list of thigs that he shall? Do in order to fool death, to feel younger, a
more fashionable sight for the ladies.
Part his hair, wear flannel
trousers roll up the bottom of his trousers (fashion bohemian style).

Des he even dares to eat a peach.
➔ This of the peach seems a completely ridiculous concern, much like his fear of
“disturb[in] the universe”.
On a deeper sense, the peach can be related to the female genitalia, or in general with
female fertility. As we can note in the wasteland, Eliot loved the use of symbols, also
related to the natural world (hyacinths for instance), so it’s plausible to assume.
Also, the central anxiety in Prufrock’s mind are Women, or better, how to behave
around them, how to make himself desirable for them, but with very little ability.
The last lines of the poem refer to a whole different location. We have moved from the city street and the yellow
fog, to porcelains and marmalade and tea and shawls to this beach. With his white trousers he would stroll on
the beach and there see mermaids.
➔ They women, the most lush and dangerous example of women in the mythology and
they are “singing each to each” , again, he’s paralyzed by the idea of being scrutinized, of
being left out by women’s discourses that might be talking ill about him, like the ones in
the room “how his hair is growing thin!” .
➔ Not only that, ma the image he proposes is of them combing their hair! Even more
mean! And they are weaving seaweeds with their hair.
The last line “till human voices wake us, and we drown”: that of the beach was an imaginary space he had built
for himself while still being at the party. The beach was not at happy place anyway, his major insecurities
(women, women together , women in a higher sexual position than him, women combing long flocks of hair)
were right in front of him, but then the voices from the reality wake him up from that fantasy, and it’s not
better. He drowns. The vertical movement is over.

Possibili collegamenti:
i vari modi in cui viene vista la questione dell’identità nelle opere di Shakespeare:
-in Macbeth:
lady Macbeth cerca di defeminizzarsi, rifiutando il suo lato materno e femminile, ma fallisce quando vede il
re, un uomo anziano e dice “sarebbe stato più semplice [ucciderlo] se non fosse stato così simile a mio
padre”
-in Romeo and Juliet : la questione dei nomi. Nomi= identità. anche qui viene provata un’impossibilità nell’andare
contro natura.
-in the Merchant Of Venice : essere di Venezia o di Belmont. Quando i personaggi si spostano mutano di identità.
Portia si traveste, cambia di identità.
Tra The Dead e La figlia che piange:
1. similitudine tra il modo di approcciarsi di Gabriel nei confronti della moglie. In La figlia, la voce narrante
vuole far “posare” la donna in modi diversi, è una sorta di esteta fastidioso che vuole creare un’immagine
perfetta della donna. Allo stesso modo, Gabriel ha un’idea di sua moglie pre-impostata, di lei che non ha
vissuto al d’infuori del loro matrimonio. Immagina che il suo desiderio di intimità e i suoi sentimenti per la
moglie siano automaticamente contraccambiati da lei.
2. In entrambi i testi c’è l’immagine di una donna che discende/ è in posa sulle scale. Sia Gabriel che la voce in
La figlia osservano questa visione.
Tra The love song of Alfred Prufrock e The Dead :
1. Similitudine tra I carattere dei due personaggi di Gabriel e Prufrock. Entrambi sono degli uomini moderni che
si sentono un po’ in difficoltà all’interno di situazioni sociali.
Gabriel e Prufrock devono entrambi fare qualcosa (G. un discorso; P. una dichiarazione d’amore. Entrambi
hanno dubbi: Gabriel non sa come il suo pubblico reagirà al suo discorso, ricco di citazioni autorevoli.
Prufrock è costantemente insicuro su come approcciare il discorso. Per entrambi ci sono le “hundreds of
indecisions and revisions”.
2. Entrambi hanno un rapporto incerto con le donne: l’intero poema di Prufrock si basa su questa sua
incapacità di avvicinarsi ad una donna, le osserva da lontano, i loro abiti, le loro braccia, ma è paralizzato da
un ipotetico rifiuto.
Gabriel fa un complimento ad una domestica appena arriva a casa della zia, e questa la rifiuta in malo modo,
perché trova i suoi commenti sconvenienti. Da qui in poi avrà dubbi su tutto. La sua mancanza di empatia nei
confronti del sesso femminile è al centro dell’epifania finale: lui dava per scontato l’affetto della moglie,
mentre invece lei è un essere umano complesso, con una vita e delle esperienze passate.

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SHAKESPAERE’S LIFE

-he became partial owner of the Globe Theatre (built in 1599)

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 1

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 2

He runs to Friar Lawrence, who plots something to help the couple.

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 3

ROMEO’S ATTITUTE TOWARDS LOVE:

• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENERATIONS

NEW COMEDY -> that of Plutus, Theresius.

EVERY CHARACTER HAS HIS OWN WAY OF TALKING

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 5

2.birds (linked to opposition light/dark)

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 6

THE ISSUE OF NAMES:

• The paradox of abandoning names

-LINEAR, CRONOLOGICAL TIME: that of the clock, of the calendar

Shakespeare also adds a third definition of time

The cruciality of time and space at the end of the book

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 7

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 8

The plot has two main sources of inspiration:

-IL PECORONE, by Giovanni Fiorentino

-THE JEW OF MALTA, by Marlow

PLOT AND CHARACTERS:

At the time, this wasn’t necessarily a scandalous decision, but also

in the tory we’ll have 3 suitors:

IMPORTANT THEMES & CRITICS

• THE MEANING OF THE SETTINGS

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 10

• RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHARACTERS

The love they share is linked to sacrifice: 4.1

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 11

In the merchant of Venice:

-VALUE, DEAR, WORTH

Used by both Shylock and Portia in different moment [check: speeches]

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 12

• MUSIC & TEMPEST

RING: the ring has multiple meaning:

Shylock is the Jewish usury in the book.

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 13

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 14

• Published in the Folio in 1623.

• PLOT AND CHARACTERS

They tell them a prophecy:

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 15

Nature has a double essence:

WHAT IS NATURAL AND WHAT IS UNNATURAL

-MURDER: (1.3 Mb to Lady: “Against the use of nature?”)

LIFE AND AFTERLIFE

(link to “duality & reality/appearance)

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 16

In Macbeth thunders are often present during ominous scenes:

PROFECIES & CURSES:

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 17

Chicken and Dam: Banquo’s family

• HUMAN NATURE & IDENTITY

THE THEME OF “DO”

THE ISSUE OF NAMES:

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 18

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

In this dense speech we analyse different points:

HISTORICAL LINK: sumptuary legislation:

Lupoli Claudia 2018 pag. 19