Many of Shakespeare's plays contain the structural and symbolic elements of mythology. The legacy of mythological conventions, which will be explored in this essay, creates a ritual effect and leads to Nietzsche's observation of "an overwhelming feeling of unity leading back to the heart of nature." This essay does not claim that Shakespeare consciously applied mythical elements to his works, but that Shakespeare's works demonstrate a strong level of familiarity with ancient myths and folklore. This level of knowledge is perhaps so deeply rooted as part of the universal imagination that there is no need to discuss whether the mythical elements of the works were consciously applied or not. The aim here is to identify strong mythological tensions in order to place Shakespeare in a broader historical and human context and to speculate on the effects achieved by the inclusion of these elements. Through a consideration of Frazer's canonical anthropological text, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1890), first, this essay will argue that the effect of Shakespeare's mythological aspects is such that they communicate in a universal symbolic language. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Although Michael Levenson stated that "Vague terms continue to mean", it is better for the purposes clarified here what is meant by the term "myth"'. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “myth” as “a traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, etiology, or justification for something such as the ancient history of a society, a religious belief or a ritual, or a natural phenomenon." This is an appropriate definition for elements of Shakespeare that can be called "mythological" because parallels can be observed between them and those that occur in societies throughout history and the ritual practices of those societies. . Sir James Frazer, in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, writes that "even the savage cannot fail to perceive how intimately his life is linked to the life of nature, and how the very processes which freeze the stream and denude it the land of vegetation threaten it with extinction. At a certain stage of development men seem to have imagined that the means of averting the threatened threat were in their hands and that they could accelerate or retard the course of the seasons by magical art. In The Tempest, Prospero is the archetypal sorcerer; an evocative figure of the shamans of ancient cultures. He speaks of his skill in magic as the "art of the mine" (I. ii. 291) and controls spirits, like Ariel, to govern natural "calamities" by invoking the gods: "Jupiter's lightning" (I. ii. 201) and the "terrible trident" of "the mightiest Neptune" are both summoned. In creating Prospero as a sorcerer who controls nature, Shakespeare alludes to the idea of ​​the playwright as sorcerer. In addition to the numerous instances in which Propsero refers to his "art so powerful" (V. i. 50), there are other clues that the audience should infer a similarity between Prospero and the playwright, the dramatist, and the shaman. Prospero states that the other protagonists "are now in my power" (III. iii. 90) and sees this as a demonstration that his "high charm works" (88). Later in the play, as if speaking the playwright's words anticipating the narrative arc and resolution of the fiction, Prospero informs Ariel that "by and by all my labors will end" (IV. i. 264). By drawing parallels between the figure of the sorcerer and that of the playwright, Shakespeare shows that, in the same way as the ancientpriest exercised control over his environment through magic, the playwright exercises control over his audience through magic and the illusion of the stage. the illusion of the stage can be seen metaphorically, in The Tempest, through the recurring motif of sleep and dreaming, while Shakespeare highlights the artifice that creates the illusion of the stage by placing a play within a play in works such as A Dream midsummer night. It is significant, in The Tempest, that Ariel's first appearance occurs immediately after Prospero has put his daughter Miranda to sleep. He tells her that 'You want to sleep; it's a beautiful dullness, | And forget it. I know you can't choose' (I. ii. 185-6). Prospero's power to induce sleep encapsulates the playwright's conscious aim of, in Coleridge's words, urging the audience to "give themselves over" "to a dream." This is reinforced by Artaud's statement that "the public will believe in the illusion of the theater provided that it really considers it a dream and not a servile imitation of reality." Once Miranda has fallen asleep, Prospero can call her spirit to "Come Near" (188), in the same way that Shakespeare can build up the siege of Harfleur, in Henry V, once the chorus has instructed the audience to "work on one's thoughts, and there see a siege" (III, 25). These are self-conscious elements, such as the recitation of spells, which precede, and then induce, the dream state. The connection between dream and myth is the one that it simultaneously shows both to evoke a symbolic language and to infer a primitive past, which ritual used to celebrate the death and rebirth of a god Northrop Frye sees a connection between the two, in his Anatomy of Criticism (1957), and speaks of. "a rhythmic movement from the normal world to the green world and vice versa […] The green world has analogies, not only with the fertile world of ritual, but with the world of dreams that we create from our desires'. The idea of ​​descending into the dream state, as is done in the theater, or as the protagonists of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream do, recalls the death of an ancient god because the descent into the dream is similar to the descent of the god in death. The god's death is dreamlike because he has the ability to resurrect, or "Wake" (306), to use Prospero's instructions to Miranda. The god awakens due to a ritual controlled by a priest, who needs the god's rebirth in order for the environment to be fertilized. Frazer recalls that "every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing from the cheerful earth to the bleak underworld" (326). Also in A Midsummer Night's Dream the protagonists enter an "underworld". To define Shakespeare's other world as "bleak", however, would not be correct. Instead, Shakespeare constructs a vibrant and colorful world to make clearer the idea of ​​his play's function as a fertility ritual. The purpose of the descent to return revitalized is implicit in Demetrius' comment to Helen that he is "wode inside this wood" (II. i. 192). In the word 'wood' the idea of ​​fertility is evoked, while 'wode' is a play on words which suggests both 'wooed', further suggesting the attempt to achieve fertility, and the idea of ​​'frenzy', since the word derives from Old English 'wÓd'. The “underworld” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream may not be “bleak,” but there is a sense of frenzy as the protagonists attempt to satisfy their sexual desires. The idea of ​​descent into another world reminiscent of the rival rituals of primitive societies is one that manifests itself not only in Shakespeare's works. Literature has used the convention of the dream as a means for its protagonists to learn and change as early as the Breton Lays and Romantic poetry of the medieval era in British history. This canbe seen in the dream preceding the hero's adventure in Sir Orpheus and in the change of the dreamer's perspective in Pearl, to name but two. The link between sleep and death has also been well established since Shakespeare was writing; a level of knowledge about the nature synonymous with sleep with death can be inferred in The Tempest in one of Ariel's songs. The spirit sings: 'Your father lies for five fathoms, | Coral is made from his bones; | Those are pearls that were his eyes, | Nothing about him fading away | But it undergoes an epochal change Into something rich and strange” (I. ii. 397-402). Implicit in this song is the idea that death, like sleep, is not a finite point. It is a point of “change”. The influence of mythology on Shakespeare's writing is evident here not only in the philosophy evoked but in the application of water imagery; death is not just a change, but an "epochal change". Shakespeare uses the image of water abounding in Frazer's depiction of rituals celebrating Adonis and Osiris, among others, which later became common currency in the mythological stories of Christianity; the stories of water being transformed into wine and the ritual of water used in baptism are just two that show the symbol to be used to convey the idea of ​​transmutation. The philosophy implicit in Ariel's song, that one's "bones" become "coral" and one's "eyes" become "pearls" after death, extends across vast historical cultures, from Egyptian to Roman to Oriental. The mythology of ancient Eastern cultures, in particular, would have been difficult for Shakespeare to access. He would have known something about the Roman belief system by reading Plutarch's Lives, but the Buddha's philosophy would most likely have been inaccessible. Yet the Buddha's idea of ​​the one containing the many, and the many containing the one, is strongly alluded to in Ariel's song. The symbolic mutability of death and sleep is further conveyed in Hamlet. Contemplating suicide, Hamlet repeats the phrase "to die, to sleep" (III. i. 59) and wonders "what dreams may come" "in that sleep of death" (65). By focusing on two examples among many possible, it can be ascertained that Shakespeare's mythology was one drawn from a universal pool, whether he knew it or not. While the act of descending into an "underworld", along with the comparisons between sleep and death help to infer a debt to the ancient mythologies of the dying god, it is in The Winter's Tale that this idea is even more implicit. Hermione's death and rebirth are both literal and symbolic. Literally in the sense, like in the myth of Adonis or the myth of Jesus, she really dies and really comes back to life. Symbolic in the sense that this idea is represented in the transmutation of his body into a statue. This symbol recalls and reinforces the idea of ​​the father's death, in The Tempest, as an "epochal change"; like the "bones" that became "coral", Hermione's body became marble. The anticipation of Hermione's rebirth is created in Paulina's words: 'I say she is dead […] If you can bring | Dye or shine in the lip, eye, | Heat outside or breath inside, I will serve you | As I would with the gods” (III. ii. 203-7). In The Winter's Tale, as in the myth of Adonis, the anticipation of Hermione's rebirth is inherent in her death. In Paulina's words, Shakespeare alludes to the idea that this death and rebirth are intertwined with the act of ritual and prayer; Paulina will serve the person who revives Hermione in the same way she would serve the gods. The Hermione statue is a means of symbolically encapsulating the idea of ​​transformation; death and rebirth blend together in a single visually representative device. The statue resembles the effigies of the gods whothey were burned or thrown into the sea as part of the fertility ritual. The idea of ​​the effect of Shakespeare's mythology as one that communicates in a universal language arose from a reading of Lévi-Strauss's essay, "The Structural Study of Myth". Seeing the contradictory nature of mythology, and thus suggesting his difficulty in defining it, Lévi-Strauss asked: "If the content of a myth is contingent, how will we explain the fact that myths all over the world are so similar?" He proceeds, in his essay, to analyze the semiotics of mythology at a linguistic level (“sounds” and “meaning”) to answer his own question: “Myth is language – to be known, the myth must be told; it's a part of human language.' The Tempest, in demonstrating its mythological elements visually and philosophically, also demonstrates, within its narrative, the idea that myth itself is language. The mythological elements of sleep and magic are juxtaposed with the recurring theme of language. Prospero instructs his earthly spirit, Caliban: "Thou earth, thou: speak!" (I. ii. 314), in a manner reminiscent of the primitive priest who invokes his environment to communicate with him. It can be seen that the interaction, between the protagonists not equipped with magic, takes place within the mythical structure. Ferdinand, speaking to Miranda, exclaims: 'My language? Sky! | I am the best of those who speak this speech, | If I were where we speak (I. ii. 429-431); the word, here, is seen as a precious tool for communicating with one's environment. Removed from the environment in which his language is understood, Ferdinand is helpless. Later in the show, having once again spent time on the island and in Miranda's company, Ferdinand learns to speak the language of mythology; he speaks from his “soul” (III. i. 63) and implores “heaven” and “earth” to “witness this sound” (68). In the microcosm of the island, the word is closely linked to mythology; Sebastiano observes, for example, that Antonio speaks a "sleeping language" (II. i. 211). On a metatheatrical level, words are used by both the playwright and the sorcerer. Words are used to induce scenic illusion and to build myth. They are used to invoke spirits and gods. Caliban suggests all this when he informs Stephen that 'voices, | That if I had then woken up after a long sleep, | It will make me sleep again' (III. ii. 138-40). Prospero also makes an inference between the illusion of mythology and the illusion of the scene created by the words: «These are our actors, | As I predicted to you, they are all spirits and | They are dissolved in the air, in nothingness [...] We are a lot of stuff | How dreams are made, and our little life | It is rounded by sleep' (IV. i. 148-158). Remember: this is just an example. Get a custom article from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay Freud saw dreams as arising from the need to sublimate desires. Dreams and myth coexist closely in Shakespeare's works, and the idea of ​​desire is added to this existence in statements such as those of Northrop Frye, in which the "dream world" is created by "our desires." Freud's studies, particularly in The Interpretation of Dreams (1890), suggest that there are common desires in everyone and see them manifested in dreams, mythological stories and the works of Shakespeare. A famous example is that of the “Oedipus complex”. The complex takes its name, and what it designates, from Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex, which in turn is influenced by a mythological background. Freud defines it, in Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, as a "sexual object investment directed towards the mother and an identification with the father which takes him as a model". Freud saw this particular desire as sublimated in dreams, in mythology, 1997