Shakespeare and Me.

I love Shakespeare, and before anybody gets on their high horse and starts to ramble on about the authorship question, and how the plays and sonnets where not written by William Shakespeare. Just don't!

I don't care about who did or didn't write these wonderful words, I care that they were written down. If someone can prove that it was Edward de Vere, Kit Marlow, Francis Bacon or any of the other multitude of candidates people claim, then all well and good. Until then I will continue to refer to these collected works as those of Shakespeare. 

Now that we have gotten that out of the way I will continue. Some people say that Shakespeare is hard or too old fashioned and hence not relevant. About these people I would say to quote the great man himself "They have a plentiful lack of wit."

When I first picked up my first Shakespearian play The Merchant of Venice, I too found it daunting. That was until I was told about the poetry of the language and how sometimes with words, less isn't more (Thanks Mrs Bennett). Once you understand that the sentiments of the words is what is important, you can look beyond them to realise how important they are (more about this later). You can of course "translate" the plays into modern English, just as they can be translated into any other language. I for one though prefer the original. There is a richness that makes the extra effort to understand it worthwhile.

Sure you can say;


Now all of my family's troubles have come to a glorious end
Thanks to my Brother, King Edward IV.
All the Cloud that threatened the York family
have vanished and turned to sunshine
Now we wear wreaths of victory on our heads
We've taken off our armour and weapons and hung them up as decorations.


but doesn't it just sound better as;

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York,

And all the clouds that loured upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments

Shakespeare's contribution to what we refer to as modern English should also not be overlooked he invented thousands of words and hundreds of proverbs still in popular use today. I won't list any as, I assume that if you are reading this then you have access to the internet, so can stop being lazy and look for yourself and be surprised.

Of course the plays and sonnets aren't just a good guide to the English language (though they are that too.) They are as I mentioned earlier important. Shakespeare's works are a mirror to show us our humanity. He displays love, camaraderie, deceit, villainy and every other aspect of what makes us more then mere animals. The joy and despair of Romeo and Juliet's love, The anguish of Henry the Fifth the night before Agincourt, Macbeth's blind ambition, Lago's envy and anger at Othello, Shylock's anger at his persecution etc etc etc. All these are things most of us deal with regularly throughout our lives. As long as they are relevant so is Shakespeare. 

Of course he isn't the first, nor the only person to have shown us these aspects of humanity. A couple of thousand years before Shakespeare, Homer did a fantastic job with The Iliad and The Odyssey (and if you are lucky I will write a piece on him someday). However in my opinion Shakespeare did it better then those before and has yet to be equalled by those who followed.

I will end with a quote from someone more qualified then me to praise Shakespeare

"He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul."
John Dryden Quote (1631 - 1700), "Essay of Dramatic Poesy"