By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most perennially popular and widely studied plays. Its story of ‘star-cross’d lovers’, whose love for each other is doomed from the start because they belong to rival families in the Italian city of Verona, is one of […]
Tag: English Literature
Macbeth: Key Quotes Explained
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) If, as the old quip has it, Hamlet is a great play but it has too many quotations in it, a similar charge might be laid against Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. So many lines in the play have become proverbial and […]
A Short Analysis of Queen Elizabeth I’s ‘Heart and Stomach of a King’ Speech at Tilbury
Queen Elizabeth I’s speech to the troops at Tilbury is among the most famous and iconic speeches in English history. On 9 August 1588, Elizabeth addressed the land forces which had been mobilised at the port of Tilbury in Essex, in preparation for the expected invasion of England by the […]
A Summary and Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Remarkable Rocket’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ is one of the fairy tales for children written by the Irish author Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). It was published in the 1888 collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales. ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ is about a firework which is set to be […]
10 of the Best Erotic and Sensual Love Poems
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Love is obviously a key subject in much classic poetry. But what are the best sensual love poems ever written: those poems which carry an erotic frisson which speaks of desire as well as devotion? Below, we select and introduce some of the very […]