Why Do We Still Read Shakespeare Today Essay
Past Cindy Tumiel
Four hundred years have passed since William Shakespeare penned his last play. Yet his prose, plots and characters are as alive today equally they were when the plays were originally staged during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shakespearean works are required reading for high schoolhouse English language students and a form or two for college students who study writing or literature. The plays have been performed in about every language, on stage and screen and at pop festivals effectually the world. Even in prisons, teachers detect that Shakespeare offers contemporary connections that open pathways to learning for some of society's near marginalized.
For 2 of UTSA's eminent literary scholars, the bard of Avon'south enduring entreatment is an enduring topic as well. Alan Chicken and Mark Bayer are oft asked to explicate Shakespeare'due south staying power in the lore of literature. What is it most a long-dead poet and playwright that makes him such an important element of contemporary culture?
The answer is simple for Craven, a professor emeritus at UTSA who taught his commencement Shakespeare class back in 1965.
"He is the greatest dramatist, the greatest poet and the greatest prose writer in the history of the language," said Craven, who teaches undergraduate courses in Shakespeare and has seen all of his plays performed at to the lowest degree once. "He has a presence like Lincoln or Washington in American history."
The linguistic communication is rich, the characters are complex and many of his basic themes – love, treachery, honor, bravery and political intrigue – still resonate today, said Craven.
Alan Craven
Marking Bayer, an associate professor and chair of the Department of English at UTSA, agreed.
"There are two poles of argue about Shakespeare'southward longevity," said Bayer. "Ane is intrinsic to the plays' universal appeal. Only besides, 1 could plausibly argue Shakespeare has been manufactured into what he is today through popular culture."
Academia has helped fuel Shakespeare's mystique by thoroughly incorporating his works into the standard curriculum for high school and higher students, Bayer noted. High school students typically read one play each year. At least one class in Shakespeare is required for higher English majors, which is one of the well-nigh popular academic programs on the UTSA campus, said Bayer. Exterior of the classroom, there are movies, ballets, live theater and Shakespearean festivals. Even popular music and television commercials accept been congenital around notable Shakespearean characters similar Romeo and Juliet, Bayer added.
"A certain amount of Shakespeare's notoriety is predicated on hype," Bayer said.
Notwithstanding, Shakespeare manages to shape the experience of many who have never even seen 1 of his plays, Craven said. Pretty much everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet, and well-nigh people tin can recite at least a couple lines from Hamlet'southward "To be or non to be" soliloquy. "A lot of people are afflicted past Shakespeare fifty-fifty though they don't call up that they know a lot well-nigh him," Craven said.
Even in prisons, inmates who pursue educational opportunities regularly notice lessons most Shakespeare and his plays. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, a play about the conspiracy to assassinate the Roman emperor, is one of the works regularly used to introduce inmates to literature and learning, Craven said. The plot and themes involve murder, political treachery and justice. "These are all things that people in prisons would relate to and be interested in," he added.
A Man of His Times
Still, Shakespeare well-nigh likely did not envision his works as fodder for high schoolhouse English classes or inmates in afar centuries. He was a man of his times, writing for his contemporaries on topics that were the hot-push button issues of his day.
Bayer teaches students to examine the historical context of the plays and the people they were written for. For case, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British audiences, and indeed, the author himself, did not study nor sympathize homo psychology as it is understood today. Nevertheless the psychologically complex character of Village made for a successful play because of its connections with ideas and events that were relevant to the people of Shakespeare's fourth dimension, Bayer said.
"They (early on mod audiences) would enjoy the ghosts, the political intrigue, the murder plots, the nations at war. These were things that were on people's minds at that time," he said.
Mark Bayer
Humans nonetheless feel love, loss, be-trayal, war, humour and tragedy, which gives Shakespeare a foothold in modern times, Craven said. Still, the playwright wrote for live audiences, and Craven encourages students and other Shakespeare lovers to get out of the books and become encounter the plays in a theater.
"His plays were written to exist performed. He conceived in them what an audience needs to know," Chicken said. "If we come at his plays from books and classrooms, we are doing information technology the wrong style."
He laughed, recalling a recent feel of seeing Romeo and Juliet live in a theater that seemed to be filled with teenage girls. They sighed, moaned, giggled and cried as i throughout the production, something the professor delighted in.
"That is exactly the manner Shakespeare intended for his plays to exist experienced," Craven said. "Shakespeare wanted audiences to react. He wanted people to cheer and boo at his characters." These physical connections to Shakespeare are not equally stiff in San Antonio as in other areas of the United States, where summertime months bring Shakespearean festivals or where there may even exist local theater groups that focus on Shakespeare, said Craven.
Of course, England is the real centre of Shakespearean love and lore. No vacation to that state can be considered complete without a visit to Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon. A tourist in London may be able to observe three or 4 theaters simultaneously presenting different Shakespearean works, Craven noted.
Despite the express opportunity to see performances in San Antonio, UTSA'southward courses on Shakespeare remain popular with students, who gain appreciation for the lilting linguistic communication and talent of an author from another era.
"The linguistic communication is and then dense, so rich, the first couple plays they read are hard. Not because the linguistic communication is primitive, but considering it is semantically dense. You have to read the lines over and over," said Bayer. Simply like anything else, time and effort bring an agreement, he said. "Students go into it because it is a requirement, but I do call up they end upwardly enjoying it."
Perhaps some of those students volition end up like Craven, who finds that Shakespeare forms a lens through which he sees life.
"I detect myself quoting Shakespeare all the time," he said. "There is almost always a quote for almost anything one wants to say."
Source: https://www.utsa.edu/ovations/vol8/story/shakespeare.html
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