English Controlled Assessment

English Controlled Assessment

Task Title: How are love and/or hate presented in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and a range of poetry you have studied?

In this controlled assessment I will be discussing and analysing deeply the themes of love and hate within Shakespeare’s poem ‘Caesar’ and a range of Robert Browning’s poetry such as, Soliloquy of The Spanish Cloister, Porphyria’s Lover and A Woman’s Last Word’. I will analyse how the themes of love and hate are linked between the two authors and what devices are used to present the themes.

Shakespeare uses personification and symbolism within Act 2 Scene 1 to present the imagery of the theme hate. This is shown in the quotation where Brutus says:

‘And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg…And kill him in the shell’

By Shakespeare using Brutus to say the word ‘Serpents egg’ it signifies personification as he describes Caesar as an animal of such and in this specific case a ‘serpent’. Through Brutus describing Caesar as a ‘serpent’ it gives us an indication that there is a sense of symbolism due to the description of Caesar. I think this because a serpent is thought to be a biblical meaning of Betrayal which is depicted from the bible story of Adam and Eve, when the serpent persuaded Eve to eat the apple even after when God told Adam and Eve not to eat that apple. The Serpent is thought to be a malicious animal that is very sinister and would attack you behind your back with ought you to even realise, or even now the term mostly used to indicate a serpent/snake is ‘Snake in the grass’ which connotes a deceitful or treacherous person. However, the biblical meaning of the serpent is most likely to be why Shakespeare used it to describe Caesar because back in the late 16th Century (when Shakespeare was born) religion was not just taken seriously but it informed every aspect of life and the way people perceived it.

Moreover, if we analyse the quotation in-depth we see that Shakespeare did not only use personification and symbolism to present the theme of hate but he also uses powerful verbs to create imagery to the audience. This is shown in the quote:

‘And kill him in the shell’

We can draw from this that when Shakespeare uses the verb ‘kill’ the implication is that it indicates a harsh sense of hate towards Caesar. This is because the connotations of ‘kill’ is ending a living being’s life. But we can also see that Shakespeare says ‘in the shell’, by using this term it providers us an imagery of a cold-blooded murder. I believe this because when something is killed in its ‘shell’ its purpose is to ‘kill’ it before it reaches its full potential and the fact that ‘eggs can be spoiled’. To include this connotation within the context, what Shakespeare tries to imply through Brutus is that he wants to kill Caesar before it’s too late and before Caesar reaches his final stage.

I think that this part of the play links to Robert Browning’s poetry named ‘‘The Laboratory-Ancien Regime’ because both authors have used the similar technique of using verbs to create an imagery of the theme hate.

Robert Browning’s poem ‘The Laboratory-Ancien Regime’ is a poem that presents the theme of love and hate, but mostly hate is circulated around the poem. Robert Browning achieves this theme of hate throughout the poem by using verbs in order to create an imagery for the reader, it is shown in paragraph 10 (X), line 2. The quotation that shows this is when the Narrator says:

‘Let death be felt and the proof remain: Brand, burn up, bite into its grace— He is sure to remember her dying face ‘

By Robert Browning using the narrator to state harsh verbs such as ‘Brand, burn up, bite into its grace’ it presents the reader with a vivid imagery of hate. The harsh verbs of ‘Brand, burn up and bite’ suggest to us that she wants this painful, terrible death to burn and scar and chew on this woman’s face, to destroy all her “grace.” Not only because she wants to hurt her, but because she wants her former lover to remember his new girlfriend’s agonised “dying face.” The connotations of the verbs are clear – they bring a sense of evilness and hate and you would expect a quite cold-hearted person to exclaim these things. These verbs used, create a vivid imagery of hate and pure evil to the audience because they connote very harsh meanings of death, and when she states to ‘bite into its grace’ it means that she wants the girlfriend’s elegance to be ravaged and poisoned. However, some may argue the fact that there is love and hate shown but there is unrequited love shown towards the narrator. This is because the narrator wants pain to be felt to her former lover by creating a poison to kill his new girlfriend, although she still loves him there is less love shown towards the narrator. We can see that the narrator wants her former lover to feel pain as she indicates in the quote:

‘Let death be felt and proof remain’

Within this quotation we can come to a conclusion that Robert Browning’s main theme exploited is hate. I believe this, as not only does Robert Browning use a collection of verbs to display the theme of hate, similar to what Shakespeare used in Caesar but Browning also uses hyperbole in order to emphasise the characteristics of the narrator. It is shown when the narrator says ‘Let death be felt’ towards her former lover, but we as the audience know that it is exaggerated because death cannot be felt towards her former lover but she intends to use it so that the audience are caught between which character is suffering.

Concluding this point, I believe that Robert Browning’s intriguing poem ‘The Laboratory-Ancien Regime’ links massively with Shakespeare play of ‘Caesar’ because both authors use the same similar language devices to emphasise the theme of hate.

Shakespeare uses Cassius as a base in order to convey hate towards Caesar as way to ensure that the audience are aware of their unrequited love. Moreover, Shakespeare uses personification and descriptive language within the play. This is shown within Act 1 Scene 2 where Cassius talks about his past memories with Caesar and when ‘Caesar cried’:

‘Help me, or I sink!… His coward lips did from their colour fly’

This quotation was said by Cassius explaining to Brutus why Caesar is no god, indicates to us that there is unrequited love shown towards Caesar and we can analyse that Cassius and Caesar once were friends as shown in the quotation ‘Help me, or I sink’. We can guess that they were once friends because only them two went swimming and when Caesar plunged in first, we assume that he was drowning in the water and needed some assistance from his ‘loyal’ friend Cassius. Although Cassius helped Caesar out of the water, he then explains to Brutus how ‘His coward lips did from their colour fly’. Within this quotation we can see that Shakespeare has used personification as a language device to imply the theme of hate towards Caesar because what the quote suggests in the context is that Caesar’s lips were fading out of colour and turning blue.

Additionally, by Cassius using the term ‘Coward’ we can deduce that his opinion on Caesar has changed immensely and the hate towards him is massively shown. This is because the connotations of a ‘coward’ is someone who does not have the courage to face any danger or obstacle. This is useful to my argument as throughout the play Caesar is seemed to be a god like figure, someone who is immortal and a prophet to the gods, but from this quotation we can realise that Caesar is clearly a coward and is a human like the rest of Rome.

Furthermore, analysing the speech in-depth we realise that Cassius describes Caesar:

‘As a sick girl’

This clear description of Caesar completes the theme of hate which runs through the act, and the unrequited love displayed. This is because the clear imagery presented by Shakespeare through Cassius allows that audience to come to a halt that Cassius has lost all his respect and love for Caesar and that hate has taken over his feelings towards him. When describing him as a ‘sick girl’ it creates an imagery of a vulnerable king laying in the hands of Cassius and on top of that, the effect of describing Caesar as a ‘girl’ we assume that he is weak and when insulating a male with the opposite gender it indicates he is seen not as tough enough due to the gender stereotypes.

I believe that Shakespeare’s play of ‘Caesar’ links to Robert Browning’s poem of the ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’ because there is unrequited love shown there aswell and the language devices are similar to create the imagery of hate.

The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister written by Robert Browning is one of the few ways where both love and hate are presented in the poem. Although, there is the constant theme of hate through the poem, i also think that there is some unrequited love shown, similar to Shakespeare’s play ‘Caesar’. Browning reveals the themes of hate and unrequited love through the use of personification and symbolism. This is displayed in the first stanza on-line number three to four when the narrator exclaims:

‘If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you!’

In this quotation we see that the narrators hate towards ‘Brother Lawrence’ is pretty clear because Browning has used personification to enhance the meaning of hate and we see that giving the emotion ‘hate’ a human action e.g. ‘killed’ has created a clear imagery of hate towards the audience. We know that they were once friends because they were both monks and as we know monks are very spiritual and loving but we now see that from this quotation hate is brewing towards Brother Lawrence. The quotation within the context explains to us that the narrators hate has grown so much that if hate could kill a man his hate would kill brother Lawrence. What surprised me is how the love that contrasted between the narrator and Brother Lawrence changed so drastically and how the hate grew onto the narrator like an infection. Furthermore, down the poem on stanza two we see some symbolism brought out by Browning in the quotation of:

‘Whats the greek name for Swine’s Snout?’

By looking at this quotation we see a sense of symbolism is unravelled because Browning has used the narrator to describe Brother Lawrence as a ‘Swine’ (in other contexts a pig) to covey the hate. We know there is hate portrayed because a ‘swine’ is known to be a filthy animal and when Brother Lawrence is described as this the audience realises to what extremities the narrators details are towards Brother Lawrence.

The similarities between Robert Browning’s poem of the ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’ and Shakespeare’s play of ‘Caesar’ are very alike as they had both presented the themes of hate and unrequited love through the narrators and used identical literacy devices such as personification.

Coming to a close, I think that although there has been a major time gap between Browning and Shakespeare the two authors use a very similar way to convey the themes of hate and love through the writings of poems and plays. Both authors have went into depth in order to explore the great extremes of these two emotions and the language they have use has had a large impact on the audience in a way where some sort of imagery is portrayed. Although, they both came from completely different eras and the themes of love and hate were both perceived differently due to the morality they lived by, the two authors used language and literary devices to push the boundaries of the concepts of love and hate taking us into a sphere of challenging our assumptions about these themes.