Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare - Essay Example

He also attempts to reach this purpose with the help of dispraise. He lists the lacks of the summer day, saying that it is "too short", "too hot", "too rough", "sometimes too dingy", but at the end the reader has an impression that a young boy has much in common with the summer day - warm, fair, sunny, lovely and temperate, and all these features are revealed through comparison of a young boy with the summer day. "Thou art more lovely and more temperate" this phrase means that the author considers youth to be more beautiful than the summer day - it is more temperate, while hot summer day may become aggressive or violent.

The last line of the verse - "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" makes a conclusion of the whole text - it means that this poem will live in centuries, praising the youth and renewing it. But a reader is left with a slight impression that the youth's beauty is as fragile as the summer day which always comes to an end. This play by Shakespeare is often staged today but the main theme of the play seems troubling, as it represents anti-Semitic tendencies that were widespread among the audience of Shakespeare's time.

Moreover, the author must have been intended to express such an attitude with the help of the characters depicted in the play. At present the critics still discuss the character of Shylock and argue whether the play must be regarded as anti-Semitic. The plot of the play describes a greedy money-lender, Shylock, a Jew, who tends to take a piece of flesh from his opponent, a character embodying a sincere and generous Christian, Antonio. Another remarkable character is Portia, who controls her lover, Bassanio, and tries to rescue his intimate friend, Antionio, from Shylock's persecution.

Shylock's beloved daughter leaves him with a man also representing anti-Semitic tendencies. At the end of the play Shylock remains with his grief and anger. The main interpretation of the play is that the author intended to set an opposition of Christian virtues represented by positive characters and the corruptibility of the Jews, who are not able to feel mercy or grace. The end of the play, when Shylock rejects his religion and turns to Christianity, must has been seen by the author as the happiest end for his character.

Radford in his movie provided a contemporary interpretation of the plot and the characters of the play. The critics speak about the movie by Radford as the specific retelling of the play by Shakespeare: "the Jew's scheme against Jeremy Irons' Antonio motivated by an outsider's sense of injustice and persecution. Irons, too, has a psychological burden to carry as his merchant's decision to indebt himself to Shylock is a result of his unspoken homosexual lust for Joseph Fiennes' fortune-hunting playboy Bassanio.

" Radford only makes a hint about the nature of relationships that exist between Antonio and his friend Bassanio. The actor, playing Antonio, Ian McKellen, told that the context of gay relations was interesting for him in his work. It is interesting that the melancholy expressed by Antonio seems to be not just a habitual mood, that was fashionable in the times of Shakespeare, but McKellen's interpretation of this character allows other conclusions.At the same time, some