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Drama in Quarantine:Exploring the Traumatic Impact of Plague on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Article

Last updated: 24 Dec 2024

Subjects

-

Tags

بحوث اللغات والآداب

Abstract

The contemplative reader of literature realizes that natural and social calamities, which inflict colossal sufferings on human beings, are best portrayed within its major genres. Examples of such calamities are wars, natural disasters and infectious diseases. In light of these critical circumstances, men of letters in general and playwrights in particular have not stood idly by. Rather, they found themselves more fervent to dramatize such calamities in their writings. William Shakespeare is the best to cite here. To everyone's surprise, Shakespeare composed most of his masterpieces during the quarantine period initiated by the "Plague" or “Black Death," which first struck England in the fourteenth century. Examples of Shakespeare's plague plays are Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, besides many others. In one way or another, such plays bear some allusions to the traumatic anxieties and fears caused by the plague experience at that time. The present study is conducted to explore the traumatic impact of the Plague on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It seems that almost every aspect in the fictitious world of Romeo and Juliet has been touched by the plague, both literally and symbolically. Throughout Romeo and Juliet, the reader could encounter only two scenes that explicitly mention or dramatize the plague. However, Shakespeare proves to be a skillful master in blinding the plague and quarantine themes into several symbolic and figurative motifs. Shakespeare could achieve this through employing a symbolic language saturated with traumatic plague allusions to account for the tragic endings of his characters.

DOI

10.21608/jfabsu.2024.294536.1341

Keywords

Plague, Black Death, quarantine, Traumatic, symbolic

Authors

First Name

Magdy

Last Name

Gomaa Sayed

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Egypt

Email

gomaamagdy85@gmail.com

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

8

Article Issue

71

Related Issue

47821

Issue Date

2024-06-01

Receive Date

2024-06-02

Publish Date

2024-06-01

Page Start

33

Page End

66

Print ISSN

2090-9012

Online ISSN

2090-9829

Link

https://jfabsu.journals.ekb.eg/article_372301.html

Detail API

https://jfabsu.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=372301

Order

19

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

1,009

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة کلية الآداب . جامعة بني سويف

Publication Link

https://jfabsu.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Drama in Quarantine:Exploring the Traumatic Impact of Plague on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Details

Type

Article

Created At

24 Dec 2024