Was Shakespeare a good dramatist?

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Was Shakespeare a good dramatist?

There are a lot of similarities involved with all plays, they tend to concentrate on the problems and actualities of everyday living, when external factors may be unpredictable. Shakespeare had many problems to conquer when he wrote his plays, and one major one, was the fact that many, many playwrights can and could write dramas that follow the same patterns and feature the problems of everyday life. So there had to be something special about Shakespeare's plays, that set him aside from other playwrights. The utmost important factor that affected Shakespeare's popularity was that his plays presented a fuller, more complex sense of the nature of experience than all other writers. He does this by cleverly using the language that he uses; his writing is so full of meaning every word is used with emotion. This is generally the reason why Shakespeare is so hard to understand, for in every speech, he is not just making the actors speak, he is making them matter. With every speech comes a problem or revelation, this makes the plays difficult to comprehend, for they always raise more issues than any single reader can ever fully understand. Shakespeare's plays all tackle issues of life, that at one point have had to be faced by someone, or are everyday problems that can occur on any occasion, to anyone.

The play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, is a very good example of the structure of a dramatist's play. We see that in general dramatist's plays fall into certain stages. The first stage is where we are introduced to the characters, and there is a slight mystery about these characters, because for now, we know little of them. However, very soon, perhaps as soon as the first scene, we are presented with the central theme, the problem then slowly unfolds. The play becomes even more elaborate at this stage, as the characters face the seemingly difficult dilemmas of the plot. We can see this pattern reflecting in Romeo and Juliet, where first we are introduced to the two families - the Capulets and the Montagues. Arguments commence sporadically between the two families, but nothing of apparent importance. It is understood at this point that the two families are rivals. However it is at this point that Romeo (a Montague) and Juliet (a Capulet) meet for the first time, and fall in love with each other. It is apparent that a very serious problem has arisen at this point. Shakespeare is playing with the characters' emotions, and extremely cleverly and knowledgeably interprets what Romeo and Juliet would have been feeling.

This takes us to the next stage of a dramatists' play, the resolution stage; this is the scenes of the play in which everything is resolved, there are no rules to this and the matter can be resolved in whichever way the playwright feels appropriate. In Romeo and Juliet, we find the death of the two characters the only way that Shakespeare can make the ending effective and to show just how much Romeo and Juliet felt for each other, and how it was true love. Within this essay I shall endeavor to pinpoint these stages in Romeo and Juliet to the best effect so that I can see what factors of this play make Shakespeare such a good dramatist.

Shakespeare had to face many problems when he was writing his plays, he had to attract the majority of the population with his works, and therefore had to write his plays to suit everyone. His plays were written in a very complicated language, which meant that even though the richer, slightly more upper-class ladies and gentlemen would have been able to understand the language that he used in his plays, many, many of the poorer and uneducated viewers who would also come and see his plays could not understand the dialogue used. He, of course, had the job also of keeping his audience interested in the play. I feel that one of the ways in which he did this, was by adding various lines of humour, and so that the audience was listening out for jokes and clever use of language that were included in the script.

Shakespeare first sets the scene in act 1, scene 1. The stage directions that he uses are not as accurate as the stage directions that are used today in modern plays. Although he has written clear instructions, they are not detailed, which shows us that he very much wanted the actors to feel the part, and let them move around the stage where they felt appropriate; instead of being told where to stand. Shakespeare uses his stage directions only where they are really necessary, describing the type of place the characters are at that moment in time. (In the first scene he tells us that Sampson and Gregory should be in a public place.) The instructions are very vague, but not so vague that we do not understand what he wants to get out of this play.

The introduction is included in this same scene, Act 1, Scene 1. Sampson and Gregory who are Montagues, converse with each other, boasting over what they would do if they saw a Capulet at that moment.
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'On my word we'll not carry coals' This is Sampson speaking, by saying 'carrying coals' he means that they will not be insulted, Gregory replies to this by saying

'No, for then we would be colliers' Gregory is joking with Sampson, because colliers, literally means coal carriers.

'I mean, and we be in choler, we'll draw' choler means anger, so Sampson is saying that if they are angry, they will draw their swords. The talk between the two Capulets goes on for some time, with Gregory always slightly belittling Sampson, but not so much ...

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