On Sleep
Keywords:
sleep, Oresteia, Macbeth, Waiting for Godot, vengeanceAbstract
Theatre demands our attention, our senses to be wakened continuously in order not to miss something. In this respect, in plays and on stage, the state of sleep gets to be used as a metaphor, as a way to signal or disclose something: a fault of character – laziness, for instance, which is much more common in contemporary plays; a suspension of the retaliatory acts, as it happens in “Oresteia” by Aeschylus; a tension which comes from the insomnia which bears the tremor of the guilt in “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare; or a deeply metaphor for the wakening from a state of blindness, of oblivion in “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett.
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