Shivangi Singh
“Let books be your dining table,
And you shall be full of delights.
Let them be your mattress
And you shall sleep restful nights.”
Enter the world of literature! Alphabets, sentences, paragraphs dance in unison to create perfect philosophical musings, historical legends, romance, drama and poetry – a palpitating land that reflects the real world, but with refreshingly different perspectives.
“Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum.
(I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am)”
Legends walk the pages, love blooms; new story unfolds in every surprising twist and turn of Bookland. There are unbelievable things happening, new sagas being created, ideas taking shape, and a sea of wisdom flowing with the eternal symphony, ‘Men may come and men may go but I go on forever’. You are transformed when you enter it and see things, which you had seen before but never understood. Legendary writers discuss their thoughts; poets sing of forgotten times, dramatists create sweet comedies and heart-rending tragedies – it is difficult to escape the delights of the enchanting Bookland.
Shakespeare: The king of Bookland
And the undisputed king of literature is the ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’, William Shakespeare (April 1564 - 23 April 1616), about whom Ben Jonson says, “He was not of an age, but for all time!”
Shakespeare and literature seem to be synonymous! It is strange how literature, even now, pays homage to that man of average education, who is said to have held horses of royal gentry outside the theatre. The playwright wrote plays mainly for performances and never thought that his works will rule generation-after-generation – a fact evident from the unavailability of his original manuscripts. Shakespeare is said to have a vocabulary of over 29,000 words (The average American's vocabulary is around 10,000 words).
Little is known about the bard’s personal life, but too much is said. The poet (eighteen at the time of marriage) was unhappily married to Anne Hathaway (twenty-six), abandoned his family, and left Stratford-on-Avon to earn his living. He joined a traveling company of actors and went to London. Another story goes that he fled his birthplace to avoid arrest after stealing Sir Thomas Lacy's deer. But there is little or no proof for any of these suppositions. However, contemporary records establish the facts on his baptism, marriage, parentage and his life after the year 1594.
Comparatively, an insight into the psyche of Shakespeare-the-dramatist is easier because of the massive body of work, which the gifted genius left behind for generations that followed. The dramatist completed at least 38 plays with well over 100,000 lines of dialogue – an unbeaten record in the history of English literature for beauty of thought and expression. It is surprising how the master wrote about trivial people, who mused and thundered in such lovely language. Leave aside the protagonists; even his minor characters articulate timeless philosophies, unfound wisdom and sublime thoughts with panache.
"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts," says the philosophical Jaques in ‘As You Like It’.
History, romances and tragedies
Extensive vocabulary (the writer also coined words whenever required) combined with Shakespeare’s innate ability to present persons, places, and events with precision, exalted his plays. His works can roughly be divided into four groups. From 1590 to 1594 (the experimental period) he produced the early historical plays like ‘War of the Roses: Henry VI’ (parts 1, 2, and 3), ‘Richard III’, ‘Richard II’, ‘Henry IV’, and ‘Henry V’ and others like ‘Titus Andronicus’, ‘Love's Labour's Lost’, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, ‘The Comedy of Errors’ and ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.
The second period ends around 1601, and marks the establishment of Shakespeare as a playwright. This period includes the timeless romantic tragedies like ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and the most staged comedy ‘The Merchant of Venice’. Others include ‘A Midsummer-Night's Dream’, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’, ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ and the historical plays like ‘Henry IV, Parts I and II’, ‘Henry V’, ‘Richard II’, ‘King John’ and ‘Julius Caesar’.
The third period that ends around 1610 is the most important phase of Shakespeare's career, when he wrote the four unparalleled tragedies – ‘Hamlet’, ‘Othello’, ‘Macbeth’, and ‘King Lear’. Simultaneously, he also created such comedies as ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘All's Well that Ends Well’ and the epic historical – ‘Antony and Cleopatra’.
The final period ends around 1611 with interesting plays like ‘Cymbeline’, ‘Henry VIII’ and romances such as ‘The Tempest’ and ‘The Winter's Tale’.
‘Dark Lady’ and more
In the Elizabethan age, it was fashionable to write sonnets. Shakespeare composed 154 sonnets in his lifetime and it is believed that he started writing in 1593 at the age of 29. According to scholars, the sonnets can be divided into three groups.
Shakespeare wrote twenty-six sonnets, mostly to a young man, and 17 of them urged him to get married.
Another One hundred and one sonnets have been written to a nobleman (probably the same young man as in the first 26) on diverse themes like beauty, rivalry and despair. The remaining 27 sonnets are written mainly to a lady, popularly known as ‘The Dark Lady’ in literature. Scholars believe that the poet was in love with the mysterious lady. He talks of love in the beautiful lines from one of his love sonnets.
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments.
Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds.”
World Book and Copyright Day
The death anniversary of the bard is celebrated as World Book and Copyright Day on the 23rd of April. At UNESCO's General Conference held in Paris in 1995, the day was chosen as ‘World Book and Copyright Day’ to pay tribute to books and writers and to encourage everyone to discover the pleasures of reading.
The day has even greater significance. On this day, other writers like Cervantes and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors such as Maurice Druon, Haldor K Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
On the 445th death anniversary of Shakespeare we pay our tribute with a little change in one of his famous quotes from ‘Hamlet’:
“What a piece of work was Shakespeare! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In apprehension how like a God…”
Trivia
All Uranus' satellites are named after Shakespearean characters.
Shakespeare mainly relied on scenes from his childhood, common country customs and superstitions, fairs and other popular entertainments for raw material for his plays.
Interestingly, words like ‘assassination’, ‘puke’, ‘bedroom’ and ‘bump’ were coined by Shakespeare. If you say ‘laugh it off’ you are also quoting Shakespeare. The most derogatory insult that Shakespeare used was 'You bulls pizzle’. He also coined the phrase ‘the beast with two backs’ (meaning intercourse) in ‘Othello’.
Shakespeare wrote the amusing inscription for his tombstone at Stratford's Holy Trinity Church –“Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, and curst be he that moves my bones.”
The animal world is well represented in Shakespeare's works. Over 3,000 references to some 180 difference species of animals - both real and imaginary - have been used in the plays.
When reading horizontally from Shakespeare's original published copy of ‘Hamlet’, the furthest left hand side reads, 'I am a homosexual' in the last 14 lines of the book. Scholars believe that it was more than just a coincidence.
There are only two authentic portraits of Shakespeare; the widely used engraving of William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout first published on the title page of the 1623 First Folio and the monument of the great playwright in Stratford's Holy Trinity Church in Stratford.
Shakespeare and wife had three children - daughter Susanna, twins Hamnet and Judith. Susanna received most of the Bard's fortune when he died in 1616, age 52. Hamnet died at age 11, Judith at 77. Susanna died in 1649, age 66.
Most academics agree that Shakespeare wrote his first play, Henry VI, Part One around 1589 to 1590 when he would have been roughly 25 years old.
Shakespeare lived through the Black Death. This epidemic that killed over 33,000 in London alone in 1603 when Will was 39, later returned in 1608.
The Great Bard suffered breech of copyright. In 1609, many of his sonnets were published without the bard’s permission.
Shakepeare never published any of his plays. We read his plays today only because his fellow actors John Hemminges and Henry Condell, posthumously recorded his work as a dedication to their fellow actor in 1623, publishing 36 of the playwright’s plays. This collection, known as ‘The First Folio’, is the source from which all published Shakespeare books are derived and is an important proof that he authored his plays.
Legend has it that at the tender age of eleven, Shakespeare watched the pageantry associated with Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth Castle near Stratford and later recreated this scene many times in his plays.
Unlike most famous artists of his time, the Bard did not die in poverty. When he died, his will contained several large holdings of land.
Shakespeare was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights (Ben Jonson). Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and later before James I, who was an enthusiastic patron of his work.
Even Shakespeare had his critics. Robert Greene described the young playwright as an ‘upstart young crow’ or arrogant upstart, accusing him of borrowing ideas from his seniors in the theatre world for his own plays.
William’s 126th poem contains a farewell, to ‘my lovely boy’ a phrase taken to imply possible homosexuality by some post-modern Shakespeare academics.
The Bard gave most of his property to Susanna, his first child and not to his wife Anne Hathaway. Instead his loyal wife infamously received his ‘second-best bed’. The Bard's second best bed wasn’t so bad, it was his marriage bed; his best bed was for guests.
Suicide occurs an unlucky thirteen times in Shakespeare’s plays. It occurs in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ where both Romeo and Juliet commit suicide; in ‘Julius Caesar’ where both Cassius and Brutus die by consensual stabbing, as well as Brutus’ wife Portia; in ‘Othello’ where Othello stabs himself; in ‘Hamlet’ where Ophelia is said to have "drowned" in suspicious circumstances; in ‘Macbeth’ when Lady Macbeth dies; and finally in ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ where suicide occurs an astounding five times (Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras and Eros).
William Shakespeare is one of the most identifiable icons of England. Others include members of England’s Royal family, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and red double-decker buses.
First Published: Thursday, April 23, 2009, 00:00