Name………………………………………….Surname…………………………..class……………….Date……………………..A Play by Shakespeare: general featuresA) Write a suitable title for each paragraph1.Shakespeare does not take his characters from one social class only. Heading the list there is almost always a man of royal or aristocratic blood, a king , a prince, a duke, a statesmen or a nobleman. Hierarchy forms the background of every play. From the king or Duke the list descends to nurses, rustics and servants. Another important feature is the importance of family ties: father and children, mother and children, brothers and sisters. These relationships often occur in contrasting form, suggesting conflicts between the older and younger generation. Finally there are symmetrical correspondences :three lords and three ladies, the heads of two hostile families and their households, two lovers, two princes, two brothers.2.At the beginning or during a scene, the reader finds stage directions. Most of these were added by the editors, especially in the 18th century. Actually, it is the text to provide information about the atmosphere and feeling of a scene, about the way in which characters enter the stage and leave it. These directions and descriptions are often give indirectly, hidden in a question or a metaphor. So Shakespeare adds for the active cooperation of the reader in making the play come alive in his imagination.3.Shakespeare enables the reader to see the action both on the stage and in the distance by making him aware of memories, visions, presentiments and associations which reach even into the sphere of supernatural and cosmic powers. In this way the play is given an unusual dimension of height and depth and the consciousness of a character is extended beyond everyday reality into a universal perspective .4.Shakespeare does give great significance to the division between the acts, sometimes this division was imposed later. As a matter of fact, in the Elizabethan theatre there was no curtain fall between the acts and the plays were performed without an interval. As a rule, in a shakesperean play a scene is over when all the characters have left the stage.Soliloquies, asides, introductory passages spoken by prologue or chorus, funeral orations and death-bed speeches are only some of the conventions used by Shakespeare that were natural on a stage where the contact between actors and audience was very close.5.Shakespeare used different levels of speech and action to portray his characters from different angles, close up and at a distance. A Character may suddenly switch from everyday prose to solemnverse, the plot presents an alternation between symbolic and realistic action. There is sometimes the insertion of allegorical scenes, songs, music, and dances, magical transformations.6. Shakespeare’s language is characterized by a multiplicity of linguistic levels,by a wide variety of rethorical figures, similes, and metaphors, obscure and archaic words, mythological allusions, new words formations, puns, assonance and alliteration. Also the variety in the verse structure is impressive: Shakespeare re-shaped the regular blank verse line, increasingly using irregular lines from one play to the next.7.The progress of a play is usually linked to the gradual clarification of things which are left mysterious at he beginning. Themes are hinted at, but their real meaning becomes apparent much later. Opinions and assumptions are formed, and though they seem unimportant at the time, they turn out to be decisive after several scenes. There is also frequent contrast between scenes with many characters and scenes with few , in public and in private, now full of action, now devoted to reflection. Shakespeare sometimes leaves some questions open and deliberately leaves us in the dark, so that we continue to ponder over the answer to the puzzle after the play is over.B) Answer the questionsTo which social class do Shakespeare’s characters mainly belong?How are the characters usually related?Which dimension is each play given?What style did Shakespeare employ in his comedies and tragedies?What is Shakespearean language characterized by?To what is the progress of a play usually linked?C) Write the plot of “the Twelfth Night” by Shakespeare (120-180 words).