The Works of William Shakespeare

The Works of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is customary regarded to be the finest dramatist the world has ever seen and the greatest poet who has created his plays in the English language. Besides, Shakespeare has been the world’s most famous author. No other writer’s works have been published so many times or read so broadly in so many places.

Shakespeare knew human nature as few other writers have. He could notice in a particular dramatic case the qualities that refer to all human beings. He could thus produce characters that have notion beyond the time and place of his works. Yet, his characters are not symbolic people. They are prominent individual human beings. They strive just as people do in real situations, sometimes fruitfully and at times with troublesome and tragic mischance.

Shakespeare created at least 37 works. These works include vivid characters of all kinds and from walks of reality. Kings, pickpockets, thieves, shepherds and philosophers, generals and hired killers all intermix in Shakespeare’s writings. In supplement to his deep conception of human nature, Shakespeare had knowledge in a broad diversity of other subjects. These subjects contain music, the law, art, and politics, the Bible, military science, history and sports. Yet, Shakespeare had no professional knowledge in any subject to the exclusion of the theatre.

Above all other writers stands William Shakespeare, the greatest genius whom it is not possible to characterize shortly. Shakespeare is outstanding as poet and individual, but he stays elusive. The solidity and deep popularity of his taste gave him the possibility to lead the Renaissance in England without privileging or prejudicing any one of its various aspects, while as actor, playwright, and stockholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s players he was drawn into the Elizabethan theatre at every degree. His career (dated from 1589 to 1613) was just within the time of greatest literary prosperity, and only in his writings are all the possibilities of the Renaissance totally realized.

The embroilments and discrepancies of Shakespeare’s epoch find their highest flourish in his tragedies. In these outstanding achievements, all worthies, hierarchies, and types are examined and found wanting, and all society’s hidden conflicts are displayed. Shakespeare opposes husband against wife, mother against child, the in...

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...ruggle against numerous problems which overwhelm on him like the billows of the ocean, menacing to undo him. This is what makes him pessimistic and makes him to reflect on death.

Hamlet is an interesting character. He chooses to be a thinker but must perform the role of a venger. He is intelligent and tender, profoundly disturbed by the evil and the infidelity with which he is ringed. His abrupt swings from inactivity to impulsive imprudence may make him a difficult character to class but they make him one of the most everlasting intriguing characters in fiction. Hamlet is one of the outstanding characters known in world literature.

References:

1. Craig, W. J. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”. London: Oxford University Press: 1914; Bartleby.com, 2000.

2. John Dover Wilson’s “What happens in Hamlet”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1935.

3. Harry Levin “The question of Hamlet”, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959.

4. Nigel Alexander “Poison, Play and Duel: A study of Hamlet”, Routledge, London, 1971.

5. Shakespeare William “The Oxford Shakespeare: the complete works of William Shakespeare”, London: Oxford University Press: 1914, 1350 p.