David Alberts, Ph.D.
eNotes Educator
Achievements
12
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1098
Answers Posted
160
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About
Educator, author, playwright, and theatre professional. Dr. Alberts has been an actor, theatre director, and producer, a high school music and drama teacher, and college theatre professor. He's a published playwright, and he's written several articles and five books on theatre-related subjects.
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Recent Activity
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Answered a Question in Macbeth
A literary paradox is a seemingly contradictory statement or situation which, upon further thought or investigation, nevertheless makes sense or contains elements of truth in the context in which... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
Unlike the Prince of Morocco, who preceded him in the play, the Prince of Arragon has no introductory scene in which the audience has an opportunity to learn about his character and personality.... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
The first mention of food in A Christmas Carol occurs in stave 1, "Marley's Ghost," when coldhearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge returns home on Christmas Eve from a day spent counting his money and... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
In act 1, scene 5 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from Macbeth, in which he tells her the story of the three witches and the prophecy—"Hail, King that shalt be!"... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
In act 1, scene 3 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, three witches make three prophecies to Macbeth and to Banquo. The major differences between the prophecies made to Macbeth and those made to... -
Answered a Question in Othello
In act 4, scene 1 of William Shakespeare's Othello, Iago draws Cassio into a conversation about Bianca that the eavesdropping Othello believes is about Desdemona. Bianca enters the scene and... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
In act 1, scene 4 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, after Macbeth almost single-handedly defeats a rebel army led by Macdonwald and another army led by the king of Norway, King Duncan of Scotland... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
In stave 3, "The Second of Three Spirits," of Charles Dickens's classic novella A Christmas Carol, the Cratchit family has just finished enjoying a small but magnificent plum pudding as the finale... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
In act 2, scene 3 of William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, Romeo goes to Friar Laurence early in the morning to tell him about Juliet, the new love in his life, and to ask the... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
In act 1, scene 3 of Shakespeare's Macbeth, three witches give Macbeth three statements. The first, "Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!"(1.3.50), is simply a greeting. Macbeth inherited the title of... -
Answered a Question in Hamlet
In act 2, scene 2 of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet decides that the best way to test the truth of the ghost of his father's accusation against Hamlet's uncle Claudius—that Claudius murdered... -
Answered a Question in The Glass Menagerie
In Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie, Amanda Wingfield is Laura Wingfield's domineering, manipulative, and, at times, emotionally abusive mother. Amanda's dreams for Laura are the same... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
William Shakespeare's As You Like It is seemingly set in two worlds: the court of Duke Frederick and the Forest of Arden, which serves its role as a place of temporary respite from the troubles of... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
The central conflict of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is what the Chorus calls an "ancient grudge" (Pro. 3), an age-old feud of uncertain origin between Romeo's family, the Montagues, and... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
At the end of act 1, scene 7 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth resolves to murder King Duncan and take the throne of Scotland for himself in order to fulfill the prophecy made to him by the... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
"Soliloquy" is derived from the Latin word soliloquium, which means "talking to oneself." Scholars differ as to the precise definition of a soliloquy, but generally speaking, a soliloquy in a play... -
Answered a Question in The Tell-Tale Heart
The unnamed and wholly unreliable narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's classic gothic horror story "The Tell-Tale Heart" tells the reader that he's planning to kill an old man who lives with him because... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
“You were always a good friend to me,” said Scrooge. (stave 1) Ebenezer Scrooge speaks these words to the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, on Christmas Eve, on the seventh... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
"Old Fezziwig" is Mr. Fezziwig, the kindly, jovial warehouse owner to whom Ebenezer Scrooge was apprenticed as a young man and who appears in stave 2, "The First of Three Spirits," in Charles... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
“My time grows short,” observed the Spirit. (A Christmas Carol, Stave Two) Charles Dickens's classic novella A Christmas Carol is structurally organized around time. The story itself takes place in... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
In stave 2, "The First of the Three Spirits," of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Ebenezer Scrooge on a journey into the past—Scrooge's past—which begins with... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
JAQUES. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything (2.7.170–173). In what is... -
Answered a Question in The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams in 1944, derives its title from the collection of small glass animals that belongs to Laura Wingfield, an extremely frail, shy, and reclusive... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
Ebenezer Scrooge has a busy Christmas Day in stave 5, "The End Of It," in Charles Dickens's classic novella A Christmas Carol. The day begins with Scrooge clinging desperately to his bedpost,... -
Answered a Question in Oedipus Rex
In Sophocles's classic ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Jocasta—who is both Oedipus's birth mother, and, by a cruel twist of fate, his wife—personifies the irony that infuses the entire play.... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
In stave 1, "Marley's Ghost," of A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens in 1843, Ebenezer Scrooge's friendly and good-hearted nephew, Fred, comes to Scrooge's counting-house on Christmas Eve... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
When the Prince of Morocco first appears in Williams Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as a suitor to Portia, a beautiful and wealthy heiress, the Prince seems to want to impress her with his... -
Answered a Question in As You Like It
In William Shakespeare's comedy-romance As You Like It, a melancholy lord named Jaques has chosen to live in the Forest of Arden with the banished Duke Senior, whose dukedom was usurped by his... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
In the third paragraph of stave one, "Marley's Ghost," of Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol, the reader learns that Ebenezer Scrooge "was an excellent man of business." The questions is,... -
Answered a Question in The Tempest
In William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero orders his servant-spirit, Ariel, to create the tempest at sea that causes the shipwreck which opens the play. On the ship are the men who usurped... -
Answered a Question in The Tempest
Prospero's master-servant relationship with the spirit Ariel begins when Prospero releases Ariel from inside a pine tree where Ariel has been imprisoned by "This damned witch Sycorax" (1.2.314) for... -
Answered a Question in Treasure Island
Although it would have enhanced the story of his life and his legacy as a pirate to die a pirate's death in a hand-to-hand battle aboard ship, in search of buried treasure, or with "a knife in the... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
In act 1, scene 5 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth enters the play reading a letter that Macbeth wrote to her regarding the prophecies of the three witches. Lady Macbeth's response to... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
In the context of the prologue given by the Chorus at the beginning of William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the entirety of the play is an example of dramatic irony in that the... -
Answered a Question in Pygmalion
In act 4 of George Bernard Shaw's classic play Pygmalion, written in 1912 and first performed on the London stage in 1913, professor of phonetics Henry Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering are... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
There are three prophecies in act 1, scene 3 and three more in act 4, scene 1 of Shakespeare's Macbeth which apply to Macbeth and which appear in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland... -
Answered a Question in Death of a Salesman
Near the beginning of act 1 of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Biff Loman and his brother, Happy, have come back to their childhood home, and Biff is lamenting the fact that he's thirty-four... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
Now that Macbeth has fulfilled the prophecy of the witches and succeeded in his own ambition to become king of Scotland by murdering King Duncan and taking the crown, Macbeth remembers that there... -
Answered a Question in Death of a Salesman
In their first appearance in Arthur Miller's great American play Death of a Salesman, Biff and Happy Loman, two adult men, are in their childhood bedroom listening to their parents talking... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
In her famous "the quality of mercy is not strained" speech in act 4, scene 1 of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia, disguised as a young Doctor of Laws, appeals to Shylock's... -
Answered a Question in The Merchant of Venice
In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Arragon, who appears in only one scene in the play, is the second of Portia's suitors who submits to the casket test devised by Portia's... -
Answered a Question in Heidi
In Johanna Spyri's classic novel Heidi, the old pastor from Dorfli, the hamlet halfway down the mountain from where Heidi and her grandfather lived, frightens Heidi out of her wits by appearing... -
Answered a Question in Out of the Dust
In the brief "Tested by Dust" journal entry for "April 1934" in her 1997 novel Out of the Dust, author Karen Hesse, writing from the point of view of 14-year-old Billy Jo Kelby—who had just the... -
Answered a Question in Night
Elie Wiesel's novel Night is an autobiographical account of his experiences in the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945. In the midst of the daily toll of death and dying that... -
Answered a Question in Romeo and Juliet
For in a minute there are many days. (act 3, scene 5, line 45) Juliet says this to Romeo on the morning after their wedding night, when Romeo, who's been banished form Verona for killing Tybalt,... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
The word "ambition" appears only three times in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth himself uses the word only once. The reason that the word appears so few times in the play is that Macbeth's... -
Answered a Question in The Tempest
It's generally believed that Miranda was about three years old when she and her father, Prospero, were set adrift at sea after Prospero's brother, Antonio, usurped Prospero's dukedom of Milan with... -
Answered a Question in A Christmas Carol
Although Bob Cratchit is described fairly early in stave 1 of A Christmas Carol, his name isn't mentioned until stave 3, when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Ebenezer Scrooge to see Bob and... -
Answered a Question in Macbeth
When the witches first appear in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the role they play is to set the scene for the play, introduce some suspense—"When shall we three meet again?" (1.1.1)—draw attention... -
Answered a Question in Sonnet 18
The first line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 appears to be a question: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shakespeare doesn't ask, "May I," or "Can I," or "Would you mind if I," nor in any way...
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