The site I chose to do a rhetorical analysis on was shakesperestaging.berkley.edu. This site provided information about all of Shakespeare’s writings. The main idea of this website was to inform viewers of his different plays and their different adaptations. It also provides a lot of explanation of his writings and how to interpret them.
At first glance this website caught my eye. The use of pictures on the home page drew my focus. As I continued to read and look for the purpose of this site I found out that it’s main goal was to collect audio-visual materials connected to the performance of Shakespeare’s plays back then to the present. I loved this idea, being that personally his literature was very hard for me to relate to. The website displays pictures that compare all of the different versions of Shakespeare’s plays. It helps with giving a better understanding of what is going on and helps people who may not comprehend, still appreciate his work.
This website was easily accessible. Everything you needed or wanted to know was there with a click of a button. The different tabs and topics were visible. I felt as if I didn’t have to do too much digging to access the full website. The site put all of Shakespeare’s plays by category. There was also a tab called staging by period which categorized the plays by time period from the Renaissance to the modern day. There were full on comparisons with staging by period and I found myself enjoying this the most.
​As I continue to look at the visuals I couldn’t helped by being intrigued by the paintings from that time period. It helped give me a better visual of what that time period was like. Each play you searched when being on this website, had an overview, images, and bibliography. The author of this website presented a lot of information to give the audience the information they were seeking. The context of this was dealing with the era and setting all these plays took place in and included its English literacy as well.
The website aims for many audiences like students, teachers, and researchers. It has a section for every type of viewer which makes this website versatile while still having the main focus on Shakespeare. The site wants its viewers to learn and by having a category that gives you different viewpoints, a lot of people can find it useful. There is a tab included that showcases the different films and television shows that have been created based on Shakespeare’s work. I am a visual learner so I enjoyed this category. When reading Shakespeare, I believe it can be boring. My mind wanders a lot and reading his plays does not help with this problem. Seeing these plays being acted allows me to have a better understanding of what’s going on. I find myself being more included in the play than excluded because of my lack of focus when it comes to being on paper.
Lastly, there is a category exclusively for blog post. This tab allows people to post their thoughts on plays and new things coming up related to Shakespeare. Some people even post theories on what they believe. These blogs spark interesting discussions between the Shakespeare community and can also intrigue the minds of people who aren’t familiar with his work. In my opinion I believe this website