Thematic strategies

If you’ve read the play and done some annotating, you’re ready to start identifying and discussing the key thematic ideas. After all, it’s very difficult to discuss metalanguage, characters, or authorial intent without discussing the recurring ideas which link them. Even from one reading of the play, you’re likely to have some ideas about what the central themes might be – it’s quite easy to work out that the theme of love is central to Romeo and Juliet or that Hamlet is a play which revolves around the idea of death. More difficult, however, is how to discuss these themes in a sophisticated and complex way. When writing your analysis, you should be careful of writing a discussion of themes which is too simplistic.