Shakespeare The Greatest
Uploaded by 2jag2 on Feb 22, 2007
Shakespeare The Greatest?
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616), an English playwright and poet, was and is recognized as the worlds greatest of all dramatists. Scholars have written thousands of books and articles about his shrewd plots, intriguing characters, astounding themes, and defining language. He is the most widely quoted author in history, and his plays have probably been performed more times than those of any other dramatist. He is literature's omnipresent.
Hamlet is perhaps Shakespeare most famous play. It exceeds by far most other tragedies of revenge in the power of its ethical and psychological imagining. The play is based on the story of Amleth, a 9th-century Danish prince. Shakespeare Hamlet tells the story of the prince effort to revenge the murder of his father, who has been poisoned by Hamlet uncle, Claudius, the man who then becomes Hamlet stepfather and the king¦. Results in everyone lying dead and the prince marches in to claim the Danish throne. Hamlet is certainly Shakespeare most intellectually engaging and elusive play. Literary critics and actors turn to it again and again, possibly succeeding only in confirming the play inexhaustible richness and the inadequacy of any single attempt finally or fully to capture it.
Romeo and Juliet is famous for its poetic treatment of the ecstasy of youthful love. The play dramatizes the fate of two lovers victimized by the feuds and misunderstandings of their elders and by their own hasty temperaments. Shakespeare borrowed the tragic story of the two young Italian lovers from a long narrative poem, The Tragic all History of Romeus and Juliet by English writer Arthur Brooke. Shakespeare, however, added the character of Mercutio, increased the roles of the friar and the nurse, and reduced the moralizing of Brooke work. The play made a spontaneous hit.
King Lear, Conceived on a grander emotional and philosophic scale than Othello, it deals with the consequences of the arrogance and misjudgment of Lear, a ruler of early Britain, and the parallel behavior of his councilor, the Duke of Gloucester. Each of these fathers tragically banishes the child who most has his interests at heart and places himself in the power of the wicked child or children. Each is finally restored to the loving child, but only after a rending journey of suffering, and...