There are but a very few people who continue to live in the public's memory well after their times,such people do not belong to a generation or an era but they belong to the ages.Shakespeare is one such remarkable human being.
His works are being read,discussed and enacted even to this day and it is amazing that they are as relevent today as they were 400 years ago.The range of human emotions that Shakespeare is able to potray in his plays is simply too vast to comprehend.
Shakespeare arrived at a time when English was looked down upon by even the Englishmen as it was seen as a language of the peasents and the middle-class people.The upperclass Englishmen preferred to patronize the more 'refined' French.Shakespeare changed all that and was primarily responsible for the rise of English as the lingua franca or "The Language of the World".
Shakespeare is also credited to have invented a deluge of English words and phrases.He not only invented words he gave existing words new meanings.In all of his work – the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems – Shakespeare used more than 18,000 words. Of these about 2000 were invented by Shakespeare himself.Which means he invented 1 out of every 10 words he used or in other words he invented a word of his own in every two lines he wrote!!!
Words like - assassination , accused, champion, critic, foibles, frugle ,gossip, hint, jaded, ode, monumental , summit, unreal, zany - have become commonplace today. It is just amazing , well even 'amazing' is a word invented by shakespeare.
He created some of the greatest fictional characters in history - from the Romantic Romeo to the Tragic Hamlet to the Melancholic Macbeth to the Pity arouing King Lear.He also brought back to life great historical characters like Ceasar,Antony,Cleopatra,Coriolanus.He gave them all some of the most memorable lines to speak.His characters are the ones every actor worth his salt aspires to potray even to this day.My favourite though is Hamlet.Hamlet's characteristics are those of a quintessential youth - Naive,angry,vengeful,frail - and then again everybody loves a tragic hero.
It is almost insulting to confine people like Shakespeare,Gandhi,Newton,Einstein as citizens of a particular country....they are in fact Citizens of the World.
His works are being read,discussed and enacted even to this day and it is amazing that they are as relevent today as they were 400 years ago.The range of human emotions that Shakespeare is able to potray in his plays is simply too vast to comprehend.
Shakespeare arrived at a time when English was looked down upon by even the Englishmen as it was seen as a language of the peasents and the middle-class people.The upperclass Englishmen preferred to patronize the more 'refined' French.Shakespeare changed all that and was primarily responsible for the rise of English as the lingua franca or "The Language of the World".
Shakespeare is also credited to have invented a deluge of English words and phrases.He not only invented words he gave existing words new meanings.In all of his work – the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems – Shakespeare used more than 18,000 words. Of these about 2000 were invented by Shakespeare himself.Which means he invented 1 out of every 10 words he used or in other words he invented a word of his own in every two lines he wrote!!!
Words like - assassination , accused, champion, critic, foibles, frugle ,gossip, hint, jaded, ode, monumental , summit, unreal, zany - have become commonplace today. It is just amazing , well even 'amazing' is a word invented by shakespeare.
He created some of the greatest fictional characters in history - from the Romantic Romeo to the Tragic Hamlet to the Melancholic Macbeth to the Pity arouing King Lear.He also brought back to life great historical characters like Ceasar,Antony,Cleopatra,Coriolanus.He gave them all some of the most memorable lines to speak.His characters are the ones every actor worth his salt aspires to potray even to this day.My favourite though is Hamlet.Hamlet's characteristics are those of a quintessential youth - Naive,angry,vengeful,frail - and then again everybody loves a tragic hero.
It is almost insulting to confine people like Shakespeare,Gandhi,Newton,Einstein as citizens of a particular country....they are in fact Citizens of the World.
Posts
