Once in a loooooooooong while, a GENIUS gets BORN – a star: someone like William Shakespeare. He is the most important writer of the Elizabethan Age – in fact, so important that his time is referred to as The Age of Shakespeare!
The man William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-upon -Avon in 1564 and baptized on 26 April 1564 in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon-Avon. And, he died on 23 April 1616. In his lifetime, he was very successful and admired.
William Shakespeare is the quintessential poet and dramatist. He was also an actor. It is found on record that not only did he act in some of his plays; he also acted for Ben Jonson. He is known as the Bard of Avon; the greatest writer in English language and the greatest dramatist in the world!
He is the best-selling author of all times; over 4 billion of his works have been sold! And he is still relevant today. His works are still selling; his plays are performed all over the world on regular basis, and his works translated into countless languages. Apart from Shakespearean scholars, no child goes through school without reading Shakespeare, even if it is an abridged version of his work.
Born by John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, William married a woman named Anne Hathaway and they had three children: two girls and a boy who died early (Susan, and twins: Hamnet and Judith). His daughters married and the first had a girl child who later married but died in 1670, bringing to an end the William Shakespeare lineage.
Ben Jonson who wrote the preface poem for the First Portfolio, a posthumous collection of William Shakespeare’s dramatic works compiled by his friends and fellow actors in 1623: John Heminges and Henry Condell, hailed Shakespeare as “not of an age, but for all time.”
It is curious to know that when William Shakespeare was a child, schools were taught in Latin, and English Language which was vernacular, was forbidden in grammar schools – no one should speak in vernacular (English)! Sounds familiar today, in Nigeria, doesn’t it!
Remember that we said here that one of the reasons for the Northern Renaissance was when writers began to write in vernacular – ( that was English language, and no longer in Latin or French) so, the common people could read and knowledge spread!
Also, the movable printing press being invented in 1440 (by Johannes Gutenberg – a German) made it easy for literary works to be mass printed and affordable, so knowledge was within reach of the common people.
Note also that English language gained global acceptance after the Bible was translated from the Greek and Hebrew into English at the instance of King James 1 of England, Queen Elizabeth 1’s cousin and successor.
William Shakespeare appeared on the stage of life at the right time. He wrote and acted, putting his plays on stage; people trouped out to see them.
The subjects of his plays were completely secular (projecting humanism and individuality – take for instance such plays like Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet; Comedy of Errors, As you like It, to name a few) – most of these plays had nothing to do with the church or the state.
In his time, playwrights were poets writing in mainly verse – the language of high society. Shakespeare’s extant works are 39 plays – including all the famous plays you know: Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venus; The Taming of the Shrew, etc.
Shakespeare is as famous for his poems as he is for his plays. He has 154 extant sonnets! That’s not all he wrote – these are just surviving ones. No wonder he retired early – at the age of 49 – although some speculate that he might have fallen ill, but this is doubtful as documented records showed he travelled sometimes to London from Avon, his base, bought properties both in London and Avon…
This famous man is said to be an avid reader, reading both classical and modern writings (for example, the influence of Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamophoses in 1567 is seen in Shakespeare’s works) – there’s no way a writer cannot be a reader. His works have influences of Vigil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamophoses and others – luminaries of classical antiquity.
Renaissance writers were not walkovers, they were literati versed in different languages: Latin, French and of course English. In the Compact Edition of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works edited by Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery, they wrote that Ben Jonson accused William Shakespeare of “small Latin and less Greek,”; but took pride in Shakespeare’s classical knowledge.
“A boy educated at an Elizabethan grammar school would be more thoroughly trained in classical rhetoric and Roman (if not Greek) literature than most present-day holders of a university degree in classics.” – Compact Edition of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works.
Do I need to corroborate this claim? In fact, our elders who were trained in the classics are very much better than those of us who attended school when the education boards had removed the classics from literary studies. Talk of the waning of education!
In discussing William Shakespeare, there can be no end. But, we need to stop somewhere. In fact, the book I referred to as the Compact Edition of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works, is a very large and heavy book. It is not compact at all by any standard, but that is the best compact that this great poet and dramatist’s works could be compacted into (smiles).
In closing on Shakespeare, here, we take excerpts from some of his famous works:
His most famous sonnet (poem):
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease has all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eye can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Swiss doctor, Thomas Platter on 21 September 1599, went to see Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he wrote “very pleasantly performed” (in the newly built Globe Theatre), and Platter wrote: “the straw-thatched house.” This Globe Theatre was on the south side of the Thames, roofed with straw!
I included the Thomas Platter account of where he went to see Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, to show us in Africa, that there was a time, in the city of London, when they had, even if it was one place, a –straw-thatched house (straw because they didn’t have palm trees to use the leaves).
Julius Caesar is a historical play based on the story of Julius Caesar who was regarded as greatest ruler in the history of the world. His murder by Brutus, a friend, was regarded as the greatest betrayal.
Excerpts:
Caesar: Et tu Brute? – then fall Caesar.
He dies.
*** *** ***
Anthony’s moving speech:
O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruin of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy–
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue –…
*** *** ***
Brutus
O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.
Cassius
Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.
Brutus
No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.
Cassius
Ha! Portia?
Brutus
She is dead.
Cassius
How scaped I killing when I crossed you so?
O insupportable and touching loss!
Upon what sickness?
Brutus
Impatience of my absence,…
Excerpts from Merchant of Venice
Portia
A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine.
The court awards it, and the law doth give it.
Shylock
Most rightful judge!
Portia
And you must cut this flesh from off his breast.
The law allows it, and the court awards it.
Shylock
Most learned judge! A sentence (to Antonio) come, prepare.
Portia
Tarry a little. There is something else.
The bond doth give thee here no jot of blood.
The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’.
Take then thy bond. Take then thy pound of flesh.
But in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are by the laws of Venice confiscate
Unto the state of Venice.
Graziano
O upright judge!
Mark Jew! O learned judge!
Shylock
Is that the law?
Portia
Thyself shall see the act;
For as thou urgest justice, be assured
Thou shalt have justice more than thou desir’st.
Graziano
O learned judge! Mark Jew – a learned judge!
Shylock
I take the offer, then. Pay the bond thrice,
And let the Christian go.
Bassanio
Here is the money.
Portia
Soft, the Jew shall have all justice, soft, no haste.
He shall have nothing but the penalty.
*** *** ***
Shylock
Give me my principal, and let me go.
