Joseph Fiennes plays the Bard in
Shakespeare in Love, 1999
Immortal is an overcooked soubriquet,
and one that perhaps few of us as schoolboys (and girls!) would have accorded the
Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. For, most
of us have nightmarish memories of studying his words in class, those plays and
sonnets our teachers invited us to analyse
and revere, as if handed down on tablets of
stone from on high.
But, of course, Shakespeare’s words
were meant to be spoken, declaimed with
emotion, not repeated parrot fashion
by a tedious English teacher, devoid of
meaning and drama, as dead as the ghost
at Banquo’s feast.
Shakespeare’s immortal bequest is
a world of words that is the stuff that
dreams are made on. Through his innate
command of language, he captured the
spectrum of emotions that every human
being feels – desire and fear, hope and
regret, love, hate and despair.
And he did it by dramatising
these feelings in the spectacle
of theatre, which at the turn of
the 16th century had caught the popular
zeitgeist as the tide of the times changed.
Tens of thousands attended performances
at theatres springing up all over London.
In refining the power of words, Shakespeare enhanced the language in a way no
writer had ever done before. Or has done
since. According to broadcaster Melvyn
Bragg, Shakespeare’s use of words was
nothing less than an exploration of the
human condition. In his English: Biography of a Language, Lord Bragg writes: “In
Hamlet, for example, one phrase, ‘to thine
own self be true’, began to explore the
notion of personal identity, the study of
which has intensified since his day to an
extent that even he might not have been
able to predict.
“The great soliloquies express dynamic
shifts in states of mind. Drama can be
internal. He is saying no less than – this is
how we think and how we think is itself
dramatically rich.”
Setara Pracha, Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Buckingham,
wholeheartedly agrees.
“Shakespeare’s theatrical lexicon is
transfixing, transgressive, transformative. It’s
this ability to vocalise abstract constructs –
love, fear, hate, which defines our humanity,
that is his true genius,” says Setara.
“He used words to express the internal
dynamic of our innermost thoughts,
and used shifts in our emotions and
desires to frame dramatic narratives
in his plays, and made for theatrical
spectacle that caught the popular
imagination of his day.”
The Royal Shakespeare
Company’s performance of
Othello, starring Hugh
Quarshie and Lucian
Msamati, 2015
The Bard’s array of Sonnets are no less
compelling than his Drama. Many focus
on the dark night of the tortured soul, lift
the veil on the inner life of demons. Don’t
believe it?
Look up the lines in Sonnet 23, for
example, that requires what Rufus Wainwright called “a quotient of insanity” to
deal with. As he does, so compellingly in
his new album, Take All My Loves.
Shakespeare was instrumental in the
development of the English language, as
it evolved from its Anglo-Saxon and Norman French roots into the common argot
that became the world’s first lingua franca.
And he did it by introducing thousands of
new words into common currency.
So, it is Shakespeare we have to thank
for such dictionary gems as auspicious,
watchdog, sanctimonious, addiction, assassination, belongings and cold-blooded.
And furthermore, for courtship, leapfrog, lack-lustre, barefaced, premeditated,
obscene, accommodation, ill-tuned and
even puppy-dog.
Scholars credit Shakespeare with more
than 2,000 new words which were to become the common currency in the English
we know today. And in the 38 plays, 154
sonnets and other major poetry, his dramatic characters used these words for an
introspective opening up of the mind that
examines the human condition.
Characters like Falstaff and Hamlet, Lear,
and Richard III, Macbeth, Othello, Anthony,
Cleopatra and King Lear helped open up
new cultural horizons first in the Anglo-Saxon diaspora, then the whole world.
It is no wonder that the most famous
opening sentence on the planet is: To be or
not to be, that is the question.
Hamlet’s agonised opening words to
the most famous soliloquy in drama is
just one among a myriad of eternal lines
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