The Representation of 'Young' People in the Social and Family Contexts Created by Shakespeare in "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet" (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Münster (Englisches Seminar), course: Shakespeare and Tragedy, language: English, abstract: Without any doubt, Shakespeare can be called one of the greatest observers of all
times. In his plays, the reader is confronted with characters from all sorts of social,
cultural and religious backgrounds. Among the most well-known characters, we find
kings, (their) queens and princes (like Hamlet), Jews (in "The Merchant of Venice"),
black people (Othello), and Roman soldiers, not to mention all those who did not
give a play its title. Looking at professions, Shakespeare employs characters from all
social levels - be they grave-diggers, jesters, killers or noblemen.
Within the plays, those characters seldom stand alone. They appear in groups, in the
context of their friends and families. A character is thus provided with a wife or
husband, a mother and father, maybe a step-parent, grand-parents, sisters, brothers,
girl- or boyfriends and mates. As a family does not consist of only one age group,
Shakespeare has to focus on several generations of characters, waving a complex net
of relations and interactions.
In this paper, I would like to look at the representation of 'young' people in two of
Shakespeare's tragedies, "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet". The term 'young' will be
reflected upon in my second chapter, as will be upon the term 'tragedy'. As a future
teacher, the presentation of youth is an interesting topic for me, and looking at young
people interact (and interact with older characters) in Shakespeare will be something
worth doing: in focussing on youth, the cliché of tragedy often dealing with 'old'
people will be broken. This paper is meant to show that Shakespeare did not write in
a single-dimensional way, but his plays offer a broad observation of any age group.
After giving a short synopsis of the two tragedies in chapter three, I will, in chapter
four, present the tragedies' characters in their respective context and in relation to
each other and comment on their behaviour and attitudes.
In my conclusion, I will concentrate on the characters in their relation to the genre of
tragedy - reflecting on life, love, destiny, youth, and death.