Clover Autrey

For my Linguistics course, I compared two very different speeches. (links to speeches at bottom) Tim Minchin and Patrick Pearse are two speakers who have very little in common.  Minchin is a musical comedian who relishes in social satire while Pearse was an activist who was killed for his part in the Irish uprising. Tim Minchin’s speech is a graduation speech given at the University of West Australia in September 2013 titled UWA 2013 Graduation Ceremony. Minchin uses humor to share nine life lessons that he has learned. I found those life lessons to be truly inspirational, especially in their simplicity. 

Patrick Pearse gave a striking speech on August 1, 1915 at the graveside of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa who was a leader in the Fenian movement. It is known as “Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be At Peace.” Even though his speech was a graveside service to honor an individual, Pearse took the opportunity to rouse the hearts of the Irish, especially the younger generation, to free Ireland from British control. The speeches were given nearly one hundred years apart, however Minchin and Pearse both addressed the rising generation of their time as the audience they desired to inspire and rally. Both men chose the words they used to great effect, which is what I focused on. 

Graveside Service. Picture from Wikipedia.

    Tim Minchin begins his speech with a bold statement that life is meaningless. He uses forceful sentences that seem to crescendo and then are chopped off into short sentences that end almost like a punchline. For example, he says that “arts degrees are awesome and they help you find meaning where there is none. And let me assure you . . . there is none”.  He also makes use of the harder stopping sound you get with the phoneme /t/ of bat. These sentences are generally found at the end of paragraphs for emphasis, again like a punchline to his comedic sense of timing, for example: “Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and hit them with a cricket bat”. Where Tim Minchin used humor and common words to get his points across, Patrick Pearse used his words to strike hearts to the importance and seriousness of the Fenian movement. 

Like Minchin, Pearse used the /t/ stop sounds of but and let very powerfully when repeated in this long forceful sentence: “But, friends, let us not be sad, but let us have courage”. Pearse also strings several morphemes together in a powerful urging when he says, “I propose to you, then, that here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul, as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa”. Pearse begins at least two sentences with the adverbs fiercely and deliberately in a flowy, yet strong pattern. The final line of “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace” works better with the word unfree instead of saying it differently like “Ireland without freedom shall never be at peace.” Unfree makes it so much stronger.  

REGISTER LEVELS

Tim Minchin image from UWA

In Tim Minchin’s speech, he employs register effectively by simply speaking in the type of common language used by everyday “blokes” going to art school. He begins talking about doing a “corporate gig” where they “forked out twelve grand for an inspirational speaker who was this extreme sports guy who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off when he got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. It was weird,” Minchin said. to great laughter. Rather than start the speech with a commanding sophisticated type of presence, Minchin becomes relatable to the group of graduating students he is speaking to. However, that does not mean he doesn’t use sophisticated words. He is speaking to graduates after all, art students and science students alike, but he does it in such an easygoing, effortless manner that he truly is speaking to his own kind of people. In one phenomenal sentence, he interweaves slang on a lower register and in the next breath fixes to a different register that shows, although he is funny and common, he is no slough in the mental department either. The paragraph goes as follows: “We must think critically and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and hit them with a cricket bat. Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privileges. Most of society is kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance. We tend to generate false dichotomies and then try to argue one point using two entirely different sets of assumptions. Like two tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts”. Another paragraph uses the denotation of dreams. Minchin says, “I never really had one of these dreams and so I advocate passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals . . . be aware the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery . . . you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye”. With the word dreams, the connotation of a person’s passion and pursuit, the chasing of a dream comes to mind, yet Minchin somehow takes those connotations and flips them on their head as he advises to not hold onto one dream so forcefully that another great thing is never seen. Minchin’s voice has so many great nuances that it is difficult to pick just a few examples of semantic perspective. For example: “Exercise. I’m sorry you pasty, pale, smoking philosophy grads arching your eyebrows into a Cartesian curve as you watch the human movement mob winding their way through the miniature traffic cones of their existence” and “I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there!”. The “So there!” at the end structurally does not need to be tacked on, yet it finished the entire thought with a purposeful exclamation.

Patrick Pearse image from Wikipedia

Patrick Pearse has a much more serious register in his eulogy. It is the type of register used for Christian religious ceremonies. In fact, the entire speech is layered with the freeing of Ireland being like death and resurrection of the country. Pearse says, “Let us not be sad, but let us have courage in our hearts . . . Let us understand that after all death comes resurrection and that from this grave and the graves surrounding us will rise the freedom of Ireland”. The very words death and resurrection are used throughout the speech as denotations that connect to other phrases and words Pearse uses such as “sacred dead” and “life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations”. He speaks of being “re-baptised [sic] in the Fenian faith” and “strength of soul”. “Let no man blaspheme the cause” and “the holiness and simplicity of patriotism” rally the Christians at the gravesite service to look toward their faith as not only part of their religion, but as a holy cause and “sacred to the dead” . I can barely imagine how their Irish hearts must have been thrumming as Pearse ramped up his speech, crying that “they cannot undo the miracles of God, who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today”. The speech seems to pull Ireland from the grave to a glorious resurrection, at least within the hearts of the Irish. Pearse became known as the voice of the rising, although he would not live to see Ireland free.

STYLISTIC ELEMENTS AND USE OF LANGUAGE

One of the styles both men utilized is repetition of certain words. Minchin used the word lucky and its variations no less than eight times within one paragraph. “Remember it’s all luck. You are lucky to be here. You are incalculably lucky to be born and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family . . . or if you were born into a horrible family that’s unlucky . . . but you are still lucky”. In the same way, Pearse repeats splendid seven times within his speech: “Splendid and holy causes are served by men who are themselves splendid and holy”. Within this same sentence, Pearse also stylistically repeats words that he has coupled together. The words splendid and holy both begin the above sentence and end it. He repeats groupings of words together in this sentence as well, “Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God”. The use of and instead of commas makes the phrase stronger and more pleasing to the ear as well. The words used this way and then repeated is more rhythmically enhanced than if he would have said, “Our foes are strong, wise, and wary; but strong, wise and wary as they are . . . ”  

COUNTRIES AND HISTORIES

Minchin and Pearse understood the history of their audiences and what language devices to utilize to inspire the younger generations of their countries. In 2013 Western Australia, politics inserted its way into Tim Minchin’s graduation speech. Five months previous, the liberal party won the seat majority in the legislative election, a majority the liberals hadn’t had for close to two decades. There had been hostility among the Australian parties concerning global warming. Minchin knew the audience he was speaking to when he uttered:

The idea that many Australians . . . believe that the science of anthropogenic global warming is controversial is a powerful indicator of the extent of our failure to communicate. The fact that 30 percent of the people just bristled is further evidence still. The fact that that bristling is more to do with politics than science is even more despairing. 

One hundred years earlier, 1913 Ireland was close to civil war between two factions, those who supported the Anglo-Irish union, and those who were in opposition to any involvement from Great Britain in Irish government. The country was further divided as WWI broke out and Patrick Pearse, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, “came to believe that the blood of martyrs would be required to liberate Ireland” (Britannica). It was with that premise and the hope of rallying the Irish who were weary of British rule to take action against their opposers that Pearse created his graveside service oration. Pearse’s intent for Rossa’s eulogy was less about the deceased man and more about shaping his memory and others in the Fenian movement into types of martyrs for the cause of liberation. He speaks about the valiant and splendid dead throughout the speech.

The speech did have the intended effect and did rally the younger generation of Irishmen as a few short years later in 1915, Pearse led a revolt called the Easter Rising. It failed and Pearse was court martialed and shot, fulfilling his desire that the cause had more blood, becoming one of the greatest martyrs of Ireland. With the knowledge of who they were speaking to and what their audience had been through as a nation, Minchin and Pearse were able to make what they said and how they said it touch the hearts of those listening. Understanding the cultural influences of their audiences also enabled them to establish credibility and a rapport by the strength of the words they drew upon.

INTENDED MESSAGE

The speeches of Minchin and Pearse were given to inspire the rising generation to take action. Both men understood the culture that their target audiences were dealing with. Minchin understood his audience of young graduating college students, ready to embark in great things. They were young; they were art students and philosophy students in a largely liberal country and university. They were celebrating their success at completing their degrees so they were joyful. And Minchin spoke with them in a celebratory tone where he wove in his commonsense lessons in a fun and inspiring way, his voice speeding up in long sentences as his joy for them heightened his speech like a waterfall dropping over the edge that can’t be slowed or stopped. He said, “Life will sometimes seem long and tough and God it’s tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad and then you’ll be old and then you’ll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence and that is fill it”. The laughter and joy practically springs from his speech.

For Pearse, he and the younger generation a decade behind him never knew a free Ireland. They had seen uprisings come and fail. Many were going or had returned from fighting in World War One, fighting for the freedom of other countries while they had no political say in their own. As Pearse spoke about the valiant fighters who came before them, he included the younger men in their company, passing on the torch to free Ireland, stating that he spoke “on behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised [sic] in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme [sic]”. He knew exactly what he was doing as he cried out, voicing for them all “we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate”. Anyone listening would feel that responsibility pumping through their hearts, pumping in sync with the crowd around them as they silently made their own pledge as Pearse said the words out loud.

These were two audiences meeting for different purposes nearly one hundred years apart. One audience met to celebrate their achievements upon graduating college, the other group met to mourn a life of one of their stalwart champions for their own country. The two speakers had the same purpose: to inspire the younger generation listening to them to be better people for their country and for others. Tim Minchin’s UWA 2013 Graduation Ceremony speech and Patrick Pearse’s Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be at Peace oration were enhanced through the language of their respective time periods, and the knowledge each speaker had of what was happening in their countries and culture. They utilized the power of words to relate to the younger generations of their time.  

Sources used: 

Donovan, David. “The Bitter Struggle Between Turnbull and Minchin.” Independent Australia, www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-bitter-struggle-between-turnbull-and-minchin,2991

Minchin, Tim. “UWA 2013 Graduation Ceremony.” News.Uwa, www.news.uwa.edu.au/201309176069/alumni/tim-minchin-stars-uwa-graduation-ceremony

“Patrick Pearse: Irish Poet and Statesman.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Accessed Feb. 9, 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Patrick-Henry-Pearse

Pearse, Patrick. “Ireland Unfree Shall Never Be At Peace.” The Century Ireland Project, RTE. Boston College, Aug. 1, 1915. www.rte.ie/centuryireland//images/uploads/further-reading/Ed59-GravesideOrationFinal.pdf

“Western Australian State Election 2013.” Parliament of Australia,

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/WAElection2013

Patrick Pearse images: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Pearse

Tim Minchin image: http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201309176069/alumni/tim-minchin-stars-uwa-graduation-ceremony

I first started talking about sibling rivalry found in King Lear here. Yep, that was me, blaming the entire tradegy of Shakespearce's play on the parent. 

Similar to King Lear, a contemporary story that plays with sibling rivalries spurred on by a parent’s favoritism is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, which brings the theme of sibling relationships to a new level. The older sister, Kate, has leukemia. With a horrible prognosis at how bad the disease will get and that there will be very few donor matches to save her life, her parents decide to have another child solely to be a compatible organ and blood donor for her sister. Anna’s character knows that she was only born to save her sister. She goes to court for medical emancipation when Kate needs one of Anna’s kidneys. Anna has always given whatever Kate needed, but this time she wants the freedom to make her own choices. She relays that “there are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give” (Picoult). 

The same sentiment rings true for the sibling rivalry in King Lear. There are the two older sisters, Goneril and Regan, who receive portions of the kingdom only because the favored daughter, Cordelia, who would most likely have received the entire inheritance was disinherited when she didn’t curry favor and verbally flatter her father. Goneril and Regan have grown up in a household where they knew they were not their father’s favorite. That couldn’t have helped their self-esteem. From the beginning, this poor parenting is set up when Lear declares to his daughters, “which of you shall we say doth love us most/that we our largest bounty may extend/where nature doth with merit challenge?” (1.1.50-52). He has completely set them up as rivals, which we can assume he has been doing their entire lives, which would account for their jealousies and rivalries with not only Cordelia, but then between themselves when they turn on each other for the affection of Edmund. Both My Sister’s Keeper and King Lear end with Anna and Cordelia coming to know that their parents do love them, yet tragically they both perish anyway, Anna in a twist of fate when she wins her rights to her own body, becomes brain-dead in an accident shortly afterward. Another contemporary story that plays with sibling relationships along the same vein as King Lear is East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

First Edition Cover ~ Fair Use

East of Eden plays on the rivalry represented in the Old Testament of Cain and Abel, with one son’s offerings being favored while the other son’s is rejected. Charles (Cal) and Aron are twins. Aron is good-natured and has always been favored by his father, where Cal feels that he has a darkness inside of himself and is resentful that he can never please his father. When he makes money to help their struggling family, he is again rejected because his father feels that is wasn’t honest to take advantage of the farmers. This line sums up Cal’s self-worth, “It's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel” (Steinbeck). Swap Cal’s feelings with the sentiments of Edmund who bemoans being born a bastard. “My father compounded with my mother/under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was under Ursa/Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut, I/should have been that I am” (1.2.121-124).  East of Eden also ends in tragedy when Cal shows Aron the truth about their mother being a prostitute. Aron runs off to war and is killed, which causes their father to have a stroke and die. The father’s end is very similar to the death of King Lear as Lear hovers over Cordelia’s corpse, crying, “And thou no breath at all? Oh, thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never” (5.3.315-316). Both Adam, Cal and Aron’s father, and Lear showed poor parenting skills as they, perhaps inadvertently, favored one child over the others, and in effect produced sibling rivalry that brought about terrible ends for all involved. Shakespeare was brilliant in tapping into the complexity of family relationships, creating famous rivalries between siblings that are relatable to almost everyone.  

Relationships are complicated, especially between siblings as they grow together and try to find their place within the family. Compound those relationships with parents who favor one child over the others and there is a dynamic theme to explore and bring to any audience to relate to. If a person isn’t having issues within their own families, they will see rivalry within others, whether it is with their friends, neighbors, work associates, or in the political arena as the people of the Elizabethan era were entrenched in with the succession from the Tudor line to the Stuarts. Shakespeare was able to capitalize on this because it is something that everyone with a family can relate to. While watching a play or movie, we relate to the characters. We feel the anger, loss, betrayal, hope, and love, even more deeply when it involves family members. The theme of siblings vying for attention of their parents, whether it deals with inheritance or pleasing them will endure throughout all generations. The entire play revolved around the test of love that Lear set up between his daughters in dividing his kingdom. Imagine if he had not posed that question and had split up his kingdom evenly between the three sisters. Goneril and Regan may have stayed true to their characters and squandered their inheritance, yet Lear would have been able to have a safe retirement and lived out his life in the partial kingdom with Cordelia, and the conflict between Edmund and Edgar would never have come to fruition without the interference of the two sisters supporting him. Yet there would not have been a plot worth enduring and the theme repeated throughout history.

Works Credited

Shakespeare, William. “King Lear.” No Fear Shakespeare: King Lear. Spark Publishing, 2003. Print.

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Books, 2002 edition. Print

Piccoult, Jodi. My Sister's Keeper. Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print 

When a parent favors one child over the others, jealousies evolve as children seek their place within the family unit. The theme of sibling rivalry is universal in any time period because family relationships and how we view our own identities within our families are complicated. I found this theme interesting because I come from a large family where a lot of how we dealt with each other stemmed from how our father treated us. For example, my mother didn’t make it to the hospital so my father ended up delivering my younger sister. My father and sister always had a special bond and the favoritism and considerations given her were undeniable. Rivalry between siblings is seen in William Shakespeare’s King Lear as the retiring king poses a test of love that pits his daughters against one another. In the secondary plot, Gloucester also favors one son over the other, which also drives the story into tragedy and death over the aspect of inheritance. 

By Gustav Pope (Austria 1831–1910 Londres) - Museo de Arte de Ponce, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34138387

And it all kind of mirrors what was happening during Shakespeare’s time. Queen Elizabeth died without an heir and rivalry between cousins over the English throne was echoed in the play. Meredith Skura states in Dragon Fathers and Unnatural Children: Warring Generations in King Lear and Its Sources that “insofar as Edgar inherits this role, he is like Shakespeare’s own new monarch, James I, prince of the newly united realm of Britain and first in a new dynastic line” (142). In King Lear, Shakespeare demonstrates through the context of the rivalry with Edmund, how Edgar rises above and casts off his old persona, as a political statement for the audience of his time and culture. William Shakespeare explores the theme of sibling rivalry brought on by parental favoritism through characterization, and use of the issues of his time and culture that makes his themes as relatable today as they were in the Elizabethan era.

Shakespeare had a talent for making characterization believable and true to what his current audience was dealing with in his society. Within a relationship between brothers and sisters, or sister to sister, brother with brother, the way siblings speak to one another, less formal, and with an intimate knowledge of growing up together, Shakespeare was able to take that kind of familiar relationship and bring it to his characters. Robert F.Willson, Jr., John R. Holmes, Joseph Rosenblum attribute this to “Shakespeare’s talent for creating the illusion of reality in mannerisms and styles of speech…Shakespeare’s keen ear for conversational rhythms and his ability to reproduce believable speech between figures of high and low social rank also contribute to the liveliness of action and characters”. Shakespeare wanted everyone in his audience, king and pauper alike, to recognize the universal themes that applied to them. Lines such as “I have been worth the whistle” (4.2.28) spoken by Goneril in King Lear or when she says to her husband, “No more. The text is foolish” (4.2.37) is the kind of thing family members say to each other when not in polite company. It’s these types of dialogue and characterization that everyone can relate to and hear in their own verbiage, albeit in our time it would sound more like “Shut up. You’re not making any sense”. 

King Lear clearly favored one daughter over the others. In Daughters of Chaos: An examination of the women in King Lear and Ran, Cathy Cupitt states that Lear’s daughters “have been living all their lives in a patriarchy, ruled over both politically and familiarly…there must be consequences to this kind of oppression, however benign”. Cupitt further conjectures that the girls most likely never had any access to political power so once they have it, they are “interested only in the exercising of their power no matter what mayhem is caused”. It is Lear himself, that sets his daughters up for failure, rivalry, and jealousies between them when he tests their love for him. He does so, anticipating that his favorite daughter, Cordelia, will flatter him, which will give him justification to give her the largest portion of the kingdom. The older daughters must have grown up knowing who was the favorite child. Goneril and Regan gave their father the flattery wanted, while Cordelia answers more reticently and is disinherited. The characterization of the sisters seems like simplistic ideals between evil and good. Goneril and Regan are evil, which is shown when they blind Gloucester, while Cordelia is the epitome of all that is good. It’s argued that “the split between the good and bad women is so extreme and simplistic it can be read as the use of archetypes rather than the development of characters” (Cupitt). Shakespeare also creates believable characters with the brothers as this same trend of rivalry between siblings continues with Edmund and Edgar caused by their father Gloucester.

The rivalry between Edmund and Edgar is just as tragic and just as impressive with remarkable degrees of characterization. Like Lear who caused the rivalry between his daughters, Gloucester is similarly guilty of favoring one son over the other.  From the first act of the play, Edmund’s resentment is shown clearly at not being a legitimate heir to his father’s lands. He gets the first soliloquy, complaining, “why ‘bastard’? Wherefore ‘base’?/When my dimensions are as well compact?” (1.2.6-7). Gloucester says he loves his sons equally, yet doesn’t recognize Edmund as an heir, clearly favoring his legitimate son, Edgar. “Explorations of Edmund’s character have focused on his exclusion from the social order” (Atherton). Because of this favoritism, Edmund puts a plan in place to gain legitimacy. “Edmund destroys his father and brother when they get in his way, turning one against the other, as he does with his lovers when he commits double adultery” (Skura 127). It is Edgar who pays the price and must flee. The Elizabethan audience would have felt sympathy for Edgar’s fallen pitiful state, anger when his father did not recognize him as a beggar, yet would also have cheered when the brothers met in combat, which proved Edgar’s innocence and Edmund is killed. “Edmund, like a playwright, is good at manipulating people—his father, his brother, his lovers. Edgar, a shake-scene himself is a brilliant improviser” (Skura 133). While Shakespeare was a master at characterization, he also took themes from the people of his day and what was important to them. The theme of rivalry to the common man as well as rivalries for the throne was a huge part of the Elizabethan culture.

Shakespeare may also have been borrowing from the reputations of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, with Mary’s short rule having the reputation of being bloody and Elizabeth being known for her goodness. Elizabeth was the queen after a short reign by her sister Mary. Due to the culture at the time, both the Tudor sisters had to overcome gender barriers about the role of women in politics. Even as queen, they were deemed unfit to rule and were urged to marry so that a man, more suitable to the task than a woman, could reign for them, very similar to Goneril and Regan, who were written as unfit for rule. According to Brenda Zetina “the Tudor queens were initially expected to be good wives and mothers who would let their men rule for them. However, both sisters took drastically different approaches to these expectations” (12). This same culture thinking is played out in King Lear where all three of Lear’s daughters are married as dutiful wives even though the two eldest of the women are given Lear’s kingdom. It is expected that they will be obedient wives with strong husbands to see to the running of the split kingdoms and because they didn’t adhere to that cultural expectation, Shakespeare cast them as the villains, who needed men to work their conspiracies for them. In fact, both women meet their end when their rivalry turns on each other over a man. By drawing on what was happening in society into his plays, Shakespeare may have influenced his culture and the way people think through his entertainment. This becomes especially apparent with the rivalry of Edmund and Edgar and what was happening with the inheritance of the throne.

One of the worst things a parent can do is make their child feel unloved or not as loveable as their sibling, yet it happens all the time, sometimes not as a conscious act. William Shakespeare’s theme of sibling rivalry brought on by parental favoritism is as relatable today as it was in the past, and when it is portrayed as well as Shakespeare wrote it with bringing in the issues of his culture and his ability to convey it through true-to-life characters, the theme will continue to be represented in new film and literature. 

Similar to King Lear, a contemporary story that plays with sibling rivalries spurred on by a parent’s favoritism is Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I touch on those similaries here. 

Works Cited

Atherton, Carol. “Character Analysis: The Villains in King Lear—Edmund, Goneril and Regan.” Discovering Literature: Shakespeare & Renaissance. British Library, 2017. www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/character-analysis-the-villains-in-king-lear-edmund-goneril-and-regan.

Bevington, David. “As You Like It: Work By Shakespeare.” Encyclopedia Britannica,  https://www.britannica.com/topic/As-You-Like-It

Cupitt, Cathy. “Daughters of Chaos: An Examination of the Women in King Lear and Ran.” 4 Oct 2010. http://www.cathycupitt.com/daughters-of-chaos-an-examination-of-the-women-in-king-lear-and-ran/

Shakespeare, William. “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” The Gutenberg Project. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2242

            “As You Like It.” The Gutenberg Project. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1786/pg1786-images.html

“King Lear.” No Fear Shakespeare: King Lear. Spark Publishing, 2003. Print.

Skura M. “Dragon Fathers and Unnatural children: Warring Generations in King Lear and Its Sources.” Comparative Drama. 2008. Ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=32869800&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Books, 2002 edition. Print

“Lady Arabella Stuart” Tudor Place. www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/ArabellaStuart.htm

Willson, Robert F., Jr., et al. “William Shakespeare: The Dramatist.” Salem Press Encyclopedia of Literature, 2017. EBSCOhost, exproxy.snhu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=125599288&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Zetina, Brenda. Mary and Elizabeth Tudor: Embracing and Manipulating Gender Expectations. No. 2, 2015. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?url-https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edssch&AN=edssch.qt0tk2n9p3&site=eds-live&scope=site.