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

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 23 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 alltimes. In his plays the reader is confronted with characters from all sorts of socialcultural and religious backgrounds. Among the most well-known characters we findkings (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 notgive a play its title. Looking at professions Shakespeare employs characters from allsocial levels - be they grave-diggers jesters killers or noblemen.Within the plays those characters seldom stand alone. They appear in groups in thecontext of their friends and families. A character is thus provided with a wife orhusband a mother and father maybe a step-parent grand-parents sisters brothersgirl- or boyfriends and mates. As a family does not consist of only one age groupShakespeare has to focus on several generations of characters waving a complex netof relations and interactions.In this paper I would like to look at the representation of 'young' people in two ofShakespeare's tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. The term 'young' will bereflected upon in my second chapter as will be upon the term 'tragedy'. As a futureteacher the presentation of youth is an interesting topic for me and looking at youngpeople interact (and interact with older characters) in Shakespeare will be somethingworth 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 ina 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