The Bard Has No Equal
The world of literature, indeed of arts and aesthetics, observes today the birth and death anniversaries of William Shakespeare.
The playwright needs no introduction given the universality of his reputation. In this issue of Star Literature, three former students of English literature pay tribute to the man whose tragedies, comedies, histories and sonnets remain unsurpassed in tone and tenor nearly four hundred years after his passing.
At the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the new millennium, William Shakespeare was voted the greatest Englishman ever born. He beat all his rivals very convincingly. No politician, scientist, sports or cultural personality could come near him. This was not true about any other poet, playwright or novelist anywhere else in the world.
The greatest poet and playwright was supposedly born on April 23 in 1564. Stratford-upon-Avon, the place of his birth, was a prosperous, small market town of Warwickshire with two thousand inhabitants. Baptised on April 26, it is generally accepted that he was born on 23 April, St. George's Day. Four hundred forty seven years after his birth, he is as relevant to us as he was to his readers during his lifetime. Or perhaps he means to us even more now. He died, also on April 23, in 1616 and thus lived for only 52 years. It is known that he wrote nothing during the last four years of his life. His thirty eight plays, two long, narrative poems, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets and several other poems have been admired for five centuries all over the world and will be admired in the coming centuries. He is admired by all students of serious literature, irrespective of religion, colour and age. He is equally popular in India and Pakistan, the Arab Muslim world and Israel, the USA/Europe and the third world. Time cannot wither him.
Shakespeare was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. His father was John Shakespeare, a prominent citizen in Stratford who was a glover and dealt in wool. An Alderman and a Justice of the Peace, he owned property in Stratford, and married Mary Arden, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer from Wilmcote, near Stratford. Though there is no documentary evidence to prove it, it seems likely that William Shakespeare attended the Grammar School at Stratford. He may have left before he completed the full curriculum. At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, eight years older than him, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Anne Hathaway was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer at Shottery, a couple of miles from Stratford. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer and partner of a playing company, called The Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as The King's Men. When James I came to the throne in 1603, the Chamberlain's Men came under his patronage and were henceforth called the King's Men. Shakespeare's success as a playwright made him financially solvent and he owned property in London and Stratford. He appears to have returned to Stratford in the spring of 1612, where he died four years later.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in world literature. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Shakespeare's reputation reached its peak in the nineteenth century. The Romantics loved him very much and the Victorians worshipped him with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called 'bardolatry'. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. He is widely recognised as the greatest writer of the world.
William Shakespeare's plays, especially his tragedies, are perhaps man's best artistic creations. Only the ancient epics and the Greek tragedies can come near him. Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are brilliant long poems. His sonnets, according to critics, are a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death and time. No wonder Shakespeare's influence on later writers the world over is beyond measure.
Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. For example, until Romeo and Juliet, romance had not been viewed as a worthy theme for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore character minds. Hamlet is the best example. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as 'feeble variations on Shakespearean themes'.
Shakespeare influenced all major novelists, particularly Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner and Charles Dickens. Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare. His Captain Ahab in Moby Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear. Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, particularly that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.
William Shakespeare is next to the Bible, our best teachers of literature used to tell us at the Dhaka University during our student days.
Junaidul Haque writes fiction. He is a senior airline official.
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