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Shakespeare

Throughout history, it has been witnessed many times that artists do not usually make their mark on the world during their own generation. Like any other artist, authors have been known to only achieve their desired success and fame after they have died. However, defying this pattern, William Shakespeare, became very popular during his own lifetime, and continued to achieve greater recognition thereafter. Today his poems and plays are considered classic masterpieces, however, despite his popularity during his time, most of his plays were considered to be "vulgar entertainment by his educated contemporaries." Since he was about the age of 24, Shakespeare had gained fame as an actor and a playwright, and a couple years later, as a poet of relatively erotic poems (www.Encarta.com). He has written over 120 sonnets, but Shakespeare's modern reputation is mainly associated with his 38 plays, each in which he either wrote, modified, or collaborated on. Some of his most famous plays include the tragedies of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello. Shakespeare's success with his literature is mainly due to one factor. He consistently used the same successful format for all of his works. This format was based on "a rising", "a climax", and "a downfall". While his plays were undeniably unique, because of their identical formats, they are also found to be similar in many ways. One could see this in the way that William Shakespeare shows the downfalls of his main characters in the tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth.
In the tragedy play of Hamlet the death of a character becomes a frequent event. Even though many people lose their lives as a result of their own self-centered wrong doing, there are others whose death are a result of manipulation from the royalty. This is the case of Polonius' family. The real tragedy of Hamlet is not that of Hamlet or his family but of Polonius' family because their deaths were not the consequence of sinful actions of their own but rather by...