20.Jan.2010 Why Shakespeare?
Why do we study the plays of William Shakespeare? He lived and died almost 400 years ago. He wrote about kings and queens and other people far from our own time. His use of poetry is strange to our ears, and his vocabulary is full of words we don’t understand and can’t pronounce. How could Shakespeare possibly be relevant to our lives today?
To answer these questions, you only need to look at the way Shakespeare’s work has woven its way into the fabric of our world. He has shaped the English language in countless ways, coining words and phrases we still use today. His works are quoted in everything from scientific journals to presidential speeches. His plays are produced around the world, more than those of any other playwright who ever lived. There are many theatre companies for whom Shakespeare is their central and defining focus. Every year, more movies are made based on his works; the Internet Movie Database lists 120 just since 2000. Writers and other artists have long been inspired by his works. West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet with street gangs in New York City. O is Othello at a prep school. She’s the Man is Twelfth Night in a locker room. Operas, ballets, symphonies, paintings, and sculptures are based on his plays. All theatre artists strive to measure their skills against Shakespeare’s works, both on stage and on film.
The characters Shakespeare created may live in exotic places and have fancy titles attached to their names, but they are deeply human characters who experience love, grief, joy, jealousy, and pain, and who wrestle with questions of ethics, morality, and justice, just as we do today. Some of the words he used may have faded from our language over the years, but a minimum of effort to understand these terms yields a maximum of benefit, for Shakespeare’s understanding of the human condition is extraordinary. To quote Hamlet himself, Shakespeare’s plays “hold as ’twere the mirror up to Nature to show Virtue her feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
