Poet William Shakespeare – The World Most Populated writer

Poet William Shakespeare is A Dramatist Nonpareil, A Moralist Per-excellence

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Poet WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: ON SHAKESPEARE BEN JOHNSON

Ben Johnson talked about the poet William Shakespeare in his writing several times. Therefore, in this article, we will try to cover many of the speeches expressed by him about William Shakespeare. So, let’s dive into the main discussion on the poet William Shakespeare.

Soul of the Age! The applause!

Delight! The wonder of our stage!

My Shakespeare rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer,

Or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie

A little further, to make thee a room:

Thou art a monument without a tomb,

And art alive still while thy book doth live

And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

……………………………………………………………………

Euripides and Sophocles to us

Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show

To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe.

He was not of an age, but for all time!

…………………………………………………………

Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,

That so did take Eliza, and our James!

But stay, I see thee in the Hemisphere

Advanc’d, and made a Constellation there!

Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage

Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage;

Which, since thy flight form hence, hath mourn’d like night,

And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.

William Shakespeare: A writer for every language

Poet William Shakespeare remains the most discussed and critically analyzed writer in any language of the world. He is also easily the most-performed playwright. The all-pervading influence of Shakespeare surpasses the effect of Homer, and of Plato, and Aristotle, and challenges the holy Scriptures of the West and East alike in shaping human character and personality.

Shakespeare wrote extensively about multifarious human situations and his dramatic concerns centered on human beings. It was in 1998 that Harold Bloom, the Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, USA, published his seminal book- ”Shakespeare: the invention of the Human”. In this epoch-making book, Bloom expounds on one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships that Shakespeare not only invented the English Language but also created human nature as we know it today. As such, as a dramatist, he is ranked as one of the greatest dramatists that the world has ever witnessed as of today. Owing to our space constraints, we would like to focus on Shakespeare as a pragmatic moralist with reference to some of the dramas such as King Lear, Hamlet, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, etc.

William Shakespeares King Lear

In King Lear, When Lear, the father becomes blind spiritually and intellectually, Cordelia, the intellectually enlightened girl reminds her dear father about the universal filial bond between a father and a daughter. ”Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your Majesty According to my bond, no more nor less.” [ Act -1 Scene 1] Again, when Lear insists Cordelia to modify her speech lest she should be deprived of her paternal property, she goes on focusing on the inborn obligations between a daughter and a father, and the patent fact that a daughter should have other obligations after getting married sans her father.

“Good my Lord,

you have begot me, bred me, loved me:

I Return those duties back as are right fit,

Obey you, love you, and most honour you.

Why have my sisters husband, if they say

They love you all? Happily, when I shall wed,

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry

Half my love with him, half my care and duty.

Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters.

To love my father all”

More on Poet William Shakespeares King Lear!

When King Lear became irrational and took the hasty decision to disown Cordelia, the most loyal and devoted daughter, Kent, the most conscientious and sincerest courtier came forward and urged the King to see deep into things and evaluate Cordelia justly:

“See better, Lear, and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.”

On the other hand, when the Duke of Burgundy, the greedy suitor of Cordelia, became reluctant to marry her when she was abandoned by her father, Cordelia unequivocally declared that she would not marry the Duke, the dowry-crazy man. “Peace be with Burgundy! since that respect and fortune are his love.

I shall not be his wife.” W. B Yeats, one of the most celebrated poets of the modern age, focuses on the fact that the harmonious fabric of society is collapsing in his famous poem The Second Coming,

“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

This total disintegration of society is foreshadowed by Shakespeare much earlier in King Lear. In Act 1, Scene 2, Earl of Gloucester laments- “Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities – mutinies; in countries- discord; in palaces- treason; and the bond cracked, ‘twixt son and father…………. The King falls from bias of nature- there’s father against child. We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves”. In Hamlet, the most enigmatic among Shakespearean tragedies, weighing the chaotic circumstances of the state of Denmark, Hamlet utters a metaphysical comment in Act- 1, Scene -5.

“The time is out of joint “

Poet William Shakespeares Hamlet

Lack of mutual trust and the absence of moral and spiritual values in the family and society at large may degenerate the total fabric of the family and the society, Hamlet, being disillusioned by the unnatural deeds of both Claudius and his mother compares the world to a depraved Wasteland and the distorted nature of the humans as nothing but the vile dust. In Act- 2, scene- 2, one of the most striking soliloquies of Hamlet-

“………………………………………I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; ………………………………..What piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals- and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ?”. What Laertes tells his sister Ophelia regarding upholding her honor and dignity can be told by every brother to his dear sister. And what Polonius, the affectionate father tells Laertes, the dear son, going to France for higher study can be followed by every father. In Act- 1, scene 3, Laertes comments–

“Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain

If with too credent ear you list his songs,

Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open

To his unmaster’d importunity.

………………………………………..

Be wary then: best safety lies in fear.” On the other hand, in the same scene, Polonius advises Laertes his dear son,

“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

………………………………………………

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

William Shakespeares As You Like It

In “As You Like It”, Duke Senior is betrayed by his younger brother Duke Frederick and his accomplices. Once Duke Senior, the elder brother patronized the younger. But being ungrateful and tempted by money and power, he drove away Duke Senior to the Forest of Arden. The exiled Duke accepted forest life as something safer and more securer than court life which is full of intrigues and conspiracy. He says in Act – 2, scene – 1,

“Now, My co- mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

………………………………………….

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say

“This is no flattery – These are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I am,”

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

In Act 2, scene 7,

William Shakespeares View on Human 

Jaques focuses on the futility of the mundane world and the changing roles of human being from birth to old age. The following speech delivered by Jaques visualizes a human being as a puppet in the human drama over which he has no control. Man is born on earth enters the stage of human drama, and departs at a predestined time in between, plays several diverse parts as he ages and progresses during his lifetime. Initially, he is a baby weak and ill in a nurse’s arms. Then he is an unhappy child moving along at a snail’s pace on the way to school.

Eventually, he becomes a lover, a soldier, a justice, and so on and so forth. At the fag end of his life on earth, a man has to reach old age, the very helpless and pitiable stage commonly regarded as a second childhood on earth. What is very disgraceful and miserable, an old man is just a shadow of what he had been; all glamour is lost, leaving him where he was in the beginning.

But the stark truth is, this final stage is worse than early childhood as a child grows and gets experienced, strong and smart day by day while an old man only grows weaker, older, and more disabled as he foreshadows death waiting for him. The most striking point of the following speech is that in this unique speech, old age has been portrayed by Shakespeare very ruthlessly-“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

(Poet William Shakespeare’s famous speech)

“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,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Then the whining schoolboy, …………………. Then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, …………………. then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

…………………………………….

And then justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

………………………………… The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

………………………………………..

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistle in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”.[ Act -2, scene 7, line139-166]

Poet William Shakespeare Marchant of Venice

At this stage, I take the privilege of discussing only one scene of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ Act -4 scene –1, where Portia, one of the most intelligent girls in Shakespearean dramas, lectures on mercy as a divine blessing. Mercy is focused on in an unparalleled way by Portia,

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath; it is twice blest;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

…………………………………………………

Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

………………………………………………………

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice”.

Last but not least, Shakespeare’s other plays, to mention like Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest, etc have imparted the same message that the invention of humans is the prime concern of this champion of dramatists. Needless to say that English, being the world language, is getting more and more contextual in the modern globalized world. Very reasonably, Shakespeare, the best and the central writer of the English language is universally staged and discussed all over the world with the utmost attention and full vigor and enthusiasm. Harold Bloom, one of the foremost authorities on Shakespeare, asserts, “There is nothing arbitrary in the supremacy of Shakespeare. Its basis is only one of Shakespeare’s gifts, the most mysterious and beautiful: a concourse of men and women unmatched in the rest of literature.”

In the end, I guess you have got enough ideas about what Mr. Johnson thinks about the poet William Shakespeare. 

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