Author Archives: nelson.martinez

I couldn’t help but notice that Shakespear must have been influenced by Niccolo Machiavelli and The Prince or else he must have had his own hand in at courtiership.

The Prince mentions that the only way to truely hear what people think about you is never directly. A subject will never openly tell thier liege how they feel about certain things.

This being said Henry V took a peek into Machiavelli’s play book and he was disguised when he talked to his men. When he was revealed the soldier said that he would have never said any of the things he said if the King was not there. That was the exact reason why Henry V had to do this. There was no circumventing it and there is nothing like hearing things for yourself.

One scene in this play that I found joyful was the scene with the drunk porter that decides to play the porter of hell. He does this after the big celebration and after Macbeth had killed the King.
When he hears knocking at the gate he begins to play his little game and allows different people in. Shakespeare did something with this scene without even doing it. A line that he could have used was something like
“A highly praised lord that rose up in rank,
With delusions of grandeur picks his blade
And kills his king in the night with distain
If you didn’t regret it then, you will
Satan has a spot on his rack for you”
he didn’t need to say it to inply it and I think it was an amazing thing he did there.

In the Final scene of Winter’s Tale. Hermione is a stone statue. For me this relates to the idea of time that is a reuccuring throughout the play. A statue like a painting is a moment caught in time and unable to move. The Idea of it moving is a living part of the play that shows that something in life are not set in stone like a statue but things do change and things do get better with work.
When she comes back it creates a complete picture of a happy ending. I found that it was very moving and a very uplifting message that Shakespeare was getting across in his play to his audience. Even though there was tragedy in the begining, the ending made it feel like a disney movie where the characters overcame all of thier obstacles.

Shakespeare’s homage to Homer and even Chaucer could be related to today’s Hollywood (even though Shakespeare doesn’t sell out). He took a very famous work of literature and adapted it into a screen play. He took creative license and created and original story line through a classic story.
One of the aspects of the original that I missed during the adaptation was the gods of Olympus. During the Iliad they were a very strong influencing force throughout the epic poem. It would have been nice to see how Shakespeare would have adapted the gods into his play.
It was nice to see Shakespeare’s version of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. During Act 5 iii, when Hector was departing to war this scene mirrors Book 22 of the Iliad. In the Iliad he was being persuaded by his parents. The scene is very emotional and very intense. In the play Hector is being asked by many people and it is not as intense.
There were things that I would have liked to have seen in the play from the original but that being said I still enjoyed it.