An English actor said it best: at his best, Shakespeare was the best ever, and is the best ever, and no one has ever been at their best more than Shakespeare.
Who has been better? Euripides? Sophocles? Aeschylus? Racine? Moliere? Marlowe? Wilde? Shaw? Schiller? Inge? Williams? Sartre? Albee? Genet? Saroyan? Brecht? Beckett? Miller? Ionesco? Osborne? Anouilh? Pinter?
Chekhov? Too small a canvas.Ibsen? A joke, his only claim to fame is that he invented modern Liberalism, PREDICTABLE modern Liberalism. Shakespeare, did not create an arrogant, self righteous and boring political philosophy but recorded Humanity, in war, peace, bravery, treachery, despair, anger, jealousy, rage, buffoonery and madness. Who is eternally greater? HEDDA GABLER or LADY MACBETH? JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN or HENRY V? AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE or JULIUS CAESAR? GHOSTS or KING LEAR? THE WILD DUCK or ROMEO AND JULIET? Ibsen is a bad cable TV writer, paid by the word, compared to Shakespeare.
In this Blogger’s opinion, only the Italian playwright Pirandello comes within a football field of Shakespeare’s genius, and he only wrote two masterpieces.
Shakespeare, in his oeuvre, had TAMING OF THE SHREW, RICHARD II, RICHARD III, TEMPEST, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, TWELFTH NIGHT THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and on and on.
Only Shakespeare has more answers to the questions of Life than the Bible, and Shakespeare is a better writer.
Ever wonder about the responsibility of President George W. Bush to all those men he sent to die needlessly in the invasion of Iraq?
“But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it…..SHAKESPEARE, HENRY V”.
Ever wonder why white women marry black guys? It was OTHELLO's back story.
“When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered. My story being done
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
She swore, in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange,
'Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful.
She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished
That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake.
She loved me for the dangers I had passed…. OTHELLO, ACT ONE, SCENE 3”
Ever wonder why one should not join the Nazis and kill Jews?
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed withthe same food, hurt with the same weapons, subjectto the same diseases, healed by the same means,warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, asa Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poisonus, do we not die? …THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.”
This Blogger has seen actors reach for the Shakespearean heights; he has seen Nicol Wiliamson do HAMLET on Broadway. In London's West End, he has seen Sir Derek Jacobi do a matinee performance of RICHARD III, let his audience take a dinner break and then do RICHARD II in the evening, same day.
It takes more than talent to do Shakespeare; it takes courage.
Ever wonder about Life itself?
“MACBETH…
”Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Shakespeare was also a poet, with sonnets rivaling THE SONG OF SOLOMON in sexual allure.
Some scholars say that Shakespeare did not write his plays.
Shakespeare’s contemporaries thought he had done the work; including that most cynical of Elizabethans, playwright Ben Jonson. In 1623, they published the First Folio of his plays. “In April 2016 a new discovery was announced, a First Folio having been found in Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. It was authenticated by Professor Emma Smith of Oxford University.”
This Blogger finds it interesting that the greatest genius in the history of Letters thrived in a police state; which is what Elizabethan England was, a police state, with a stunningly effective and efficient Protestant STASI, led by Sir Francis Walsingham. It has been rumored that Shakespeare was a closet Catholic in a Protestant police state.
This Blogger does not believe that, because of Shakespeare’s language. Before Shakespeare, only one man in the history of the English speaking people captured the epic grandeur and cadence of the language, the Protestant martyr, William Tyndale.
Tyndale, against the wishes of Henry VIII, translated the Bible into English.
“… Tyndale was arrested….In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake. ...
In 1611 the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the Old Testament 76%. With his translation of the Bible the first to be printed in English, and a model for subsequent English translations, in 2002, Tyndale was placed at number 26 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.”
In an age in which people took their religion seriously, this Blogger does not believe a closeted Catholic would borrow his cadence from one of the greatest Protestant writers ever.
Shakespeare has the most profound effect on actors; mountaineer George Mallory felt compelled to try and conquer Mt. Everest because it was there. Shakespearean actors are the mountaineers of English speaking Civilization. Shakespeare compels actors to attempt the heights, to expend themselves, to risk it all because Shakespeare is there, looming.
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