Family obligations versus romantic love.

• Main Author: Swee, Juie Yung.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/49734
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper talks about three of Shakespeare's more well-known works - namely, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", exploring the chief theme of these three genre-specific titles, which is the rift between filial obligations to one's parents and the romantic love that always seems to be at odds with these obligations. This paper explores the subtle confusing nuances of Hamlet’s ‘insanity’ that continuously and increasingly baffles not only Ophelia and the others, but also the audience itself, the stereotypes of men and women, as well as what a romantic love ‘should’ be that runs through all three plays, the meaningfulness or lack thereof of the deaths of various characters, especially the lovers themselves, and the differing responses each character offers in the face of a direct conflict between kin and beloved. This paper also seeks to question that what is deemed as ‘true’ love may not be ‘true’ at all, in the sense that it is genuine, as well as what parents owe their children as opposed to what children owe their parents, and how in all three plays, parents have conveniently forgotten their own obligations and duties as parents and take full advantage of what that role grants them in the form of authority over their children.