What roles do families play in Shakespeare''s plays?

Families transact their relationships in a number of ways. Alongside and in tension with the

emotional and practical dealings of family life are factors of an essentially moral nature such as

loyalty, gratitude, obedience, and altruism. Morality depends on ideas about how one should

behave, so that, for example, deciding whether or not to save a brother's life by going to bed with

his judge involves an ethical accountancy drawing on ideas of right and wrong. It is such ideas

that are the focus of this study. It seeks to recover some of ethical assumptions which were in

circulation in early modern England and which inform the plays of the period. A number of plays

which dramatise family relationships are analysed from the imagined perspectives of original

audiences whose intellectual and moral worlds are explored through specific dramatic situations.

Plays are discussed as far as possible in terms of their language and plots, rather than of character

Explanation:

 Families transact their relationships in a number of ways. Alongside and in tension with the

emotional and practical dealings of family life are factors of an essentially moral nature such as

loyalty, gratitude, obedience, and altruism

Explanation:

to save the day, harry must get past a scary three-headed guard dog.