William Shakespeare is arguably one of the world’s greatest playwrights of all time. His works, which became famous during his lifetime, are popular even today. The relevance of the problems of the pieces made them immortal. The masterpieces of Shakespeare’s dramatic legacy are the tragedies “Romeo and Juliet,” “King Lear,” “Othello,” “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” which became classics of world literature and stage productions. This paper aims to study and analyze the works of William Shakespeare and evaluate what has influenced his art.
Shakespeare’s genius developed and blossomed in the climate of an era when a historical upheaval took place in the lives of the peoples of Europe. The writer reflects in his work issues such as the rush to liberation from the shackles of the Middle Ages, the widening of the horizons of the earth and the boundaries of human thought, the birth of a new ideal of beauty in life, and art (Hage 124). His talent matured at a time of great hope when the awakening and strengthening of the national consciousness of the English people. However, the dreams and hopes of humanists faced the tragic contrasts of the era, the living nightmares of the Middle Ages, and the ugliness of the nascent bourgeois society (Hart 7). The divergence of the ideal and reality was the source of the tragedy in Shakespeare’s work. Shakespeare’s tragedy raises the fundamental questions of his age and, by asserting a humanistic ideal, rises to a universal sounding (Hage 124). Shakespeare did not create for a select few. He drew inspiration from the life of the people, its history, its tales, fairy tales, and ballads.
The works of Shakespeare are conventionally divided into three periods. The first period called the optimistic, or humanistic, includes works created in 1590-1600 (Hage 126). These are early sonnets, dramas, chronicles, and comedies, in which the prevalence of love of life, faith in man, and moral values. Decorates a period of early creativity tragedy “Romeo and Juliet,” which belongs to the pen of a mature playwright (Liu and Yu 379). The narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece reflect Shakespearean values and his use of mimesis, or imitation, in literature (Hart 3). The tragic poetics originate from the philosophy and wisdom of Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, who considerably influenced the art of the English writer (Hart 2). The voice of a character in Shakespeare’s poems represents his life connected to the reader and their response to the literary work.
The humanists’ sorrowful epiphany of their ideals is reflected in Shakespeare’s work’s second – tragic – period. Among the pieces of art created in 1601-1608, tragedies predominate in the foreground of plays the lowest vices of the human soul, such as enmity, revenge, malice, betrayal, envy (Hage 152). Even the pictures of nature in the plays change: gloom, chaos, and destruction are the picture of the world presented in the dramas of the tragic period (Hage 153). Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear are the masterpieces created by the playwright at the moment of collapse of hopes and loss of harmony.
The last period of creativity, called the Romantic period, brings together works created by Shakespeare between 1609 and 1613. These include the previous historical chronicle, Henry VIII, and four plays that reflect the actual reality of the English Renaissance (Hage 152). Researchers of Shakespeare’s last plays argue over the characterization of the genre, calling them romantic dramas or tragicomedies (Liu and Yu 379). Most literary scholars hold to the second version, for which plays such as Cymbeline, the Merchant of Venice, and The Winter’s Tale have become good examples.
Among Shakespeare’s last plays, the tragicomedy The Tempest is especially outstanding, in which the belief in the possibility of harmony and peace in the sphere of human relations is most clearly felt. In the productions of plays during this period, a new world was created, where the viewer could see both past and present (Liu and Yu 379). The latter works can rightly be called dramas of ideas, which the great English creator left for his descendants to ponder.
To sum up, William Shakespeare rightfully occupies the place of the greatest playwright of all time. Thanks to his work, literature entered a new stage of development because Shakespeare showed humanity that the heroes of his works could be portrayed in a comprehensive development, not just one facet, as it was before. Closely related to his era, the Renaissance, Shakespeare showed himself to be a true humanist. At the same time, he did not idealize man but represented him truly, as he was, with his dark and bright sides. The writer knew how to give his deep thoughts the perfect frame. That is why his plays are still the reference. The language of his works is amazingly rich and varied, able to convey polar shades: from funny to tragic, from the sublime to the prose. The works of Shakespeare have not lost their relevance, as they are read, reprinted, and sold. They are dramatized and staged in theaters, and they are translated into different languages. Shakespeare’s works are the wealthiest layer of world culture, taking root in various nations and countries.
Works Cited
Hage, Ralph. “Necessary Victims: William Shakespeare’s Tragic Ethics of Identity.” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, vol. 27, 2020, pp. 123–154. JSTOR.
Hart, Johnathan Locke. “The Voices of Life and Death in Shakespeare’s Narrative Poems.” Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 20, no. 5, 2018, pp. 1–9. ProQuest.
Liu, Zhengbing, and Mengting Yu. “A Comparative Study of Romeo and Juliet and The Butterfly Lovers.” International Communication of Chinese Culture, vol. 7, 2020, pp. 379–394. SpringerLink.