Blog #3 Setting

The setting in a fiction or drama is the item by which the time and place and the when and where are indicated. (Jago 67) Detailed, the setting hints at the overall atmosphere that the story is going to take on. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, references to the time of day, the season, and the weather help crystallize the image of the separate environments. For example in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there is an opening graveyard scene where the setting is described as a castle in Elsinore sometime in the middle of the night. Usually the word “castle” suggests a dark and spooky scene; this connotation is quite accurate in predicting the eerie events that follow in scene one. Similarly, in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice setting helps mold the image of the Bennet sisters’ surroundings. Austen’s novel, however, presents more of a social scene where the attitudes and personalities of each character are introduced right in the beginning. This insight provides the same kind of information that the setting does in Hamlet, just with points about people and their reactions rather than physical details. Both help to form the storylines and hint at the subsequent scenes or situations. Therefore, setting in a fiction or drama is very crucial and helps relate to the meaning of the stories as a whole. (Jago 67).