Shakespeare the Likes of Him Will Never Be Seen Again
By Cindy Tumiel
Four hundred years take passed since William Shakespeare penned his last play. Yet his prose, plots and characters are equally alive today every bit 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 students and a grade or ii for college students who study writing or literature. The plays have been performed in virtually every language, on stage and screen and at pop festivals around the world. Even in prisons, teachers find that Shakespeare offers contemporary connections that open pathways to learning for some of social club'due south near marginalized.
For 2 of UTSA's eminent literary scholars, the bard of Avon'south enduring appeal is an enduring topic also. Alan Chicken and Mark Bayer are ofttimes asked to explain Shakespeare's staying power in the lore of literature. What is it about a long-dead poet and playwright that makes him such an of import element of gimmicky civilisation?
The answer is simple for Craven, a professor emeritus at UTSA who taught his outset Shakespeare grade back in 1965.
"He is the greatest dramatist, the greatest poet and the greatest prose writer in the history of the language," said Chicken, who teaches undergraduate courses in Shakespeare and has seen all of his plays performed at least once. "He has a presence like Lincoln or Washington in American history."
The language is rich, the characters are complex and many of his basic themes – honey, treachery, accolade, bravery and political intrigue – yet resonate today, said Craven.
Alan Craven
Marking Bayer, an associate professor and chair of the Department of English at UTSA, agreed.
"In that location are two poles of debate about Shakespeare'southward longevity," said Bayer. "One is intrinsic to the plays' universal appeal. But also, one could plausibly argue Shakespeare has been manufactured into what he is today through pop civilization."
Academia has helped fuel Shakespeare's mystique by thoroughly incorporating his works into the standard curriculum for high schoolhouse and higher students, Bayer noted. High school students typically read i play each year. At least 1 class in Shakespeare is required for college English language majors, which is ane of the most popular bookish programs on the UTSA campus, said Bayer. Outside of the classroom, there are movies, ballets, live theater and Shakespearean festivals. Fifty-fifty popular music and tv commercials have been built around notable Shakespearean characters like Romeo and Juliet, Bayer added.
"A certain amount of Shakespeare's notoriety is predicated on hype," Bayer said.
Still, Shakespeare manages to shape the experience of many who have never even seen i of his plays, Craven said. Pretty much everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet, and most people can recite at to the lowest degree a couple lines from Hamlet'due south "To be or not to be" soliloquy. "A lot of people are affected by Shakespeare fifty-fifty though they don't think that they know a lot nigh him," Craven said.
Fifty-fifty in prisons, inmates who pursue educational opportunities regularly find lessons about Shakespeare and his plays. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, a play virtually the conspiracy to assassinate the Roman emperor, is one of the works regularly used to innovate 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
Yet, Shakespeare almost probable did not envision his works every bit provender for high school English classes or inmates in distant centuries. He was a human of his times, writing for his contemporaries on topics that were the hot-button issues of his day.
Bayer teaches students to examine the historical context of the plays and the people they were written for. For instance, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British audiences, and indeed, the author himself, did not study nor understand human psychology as it is understood today. Yet the psychologically complex character of Hamlet made for a successful play because of its connections with ideas and events that were relevant to the people of Shakespeare's time, Bayer said.
"They (early modern audiences) would relish the ghosts, the political intrigue, the murder plots, the nations at war. These were things that were on people's minds at that fourth dimension," he said.
Marker Bayer
Humans still experience love, loss, be-trayal, war, humor and tragedy, which gives Shakespeare a foothold in mod times, Chicken said. Still, the playwright wrote for live audiences, and Chicken encourages students and other Shakespeare lovers to go out of the books and go run across the plays in a theater.
"His plays were written to exist performed. He conceived in them what an audition needs to know," Chicken said. "If we come at his plays from books and classrooms, we are doing it the wrong way."
He laughed, recalling a contempo 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 one throughout the production, something the professor delighted in.
"That is exactly the way 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 non as strong in San Antonio as in other areas of the United States, where summer months bring Shakespearean festivals or where there may fifty-fifty exist local theater groups that focus on Shakespeare, said Craven.
Of grade, England is the real heart of Shakespearean dear and lore. No vacation to that country tin exist considered consummate without a visit to Shakespeare'south hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon. A tourist in London may exist able to observe three or four theaters simultaneously presenting unlike Shakespearean works, Craven noted.
Despite the limited opportunity to see performances in San Antonio, UTSA'due south courses on Shakespeare remain popular with students, who proceeds appreciation for the lilting linguistic communication and talent of an author from another era.
"The language is so dumbo, so rich, the first couple plays they read are difficult. Not because the language is archaic, but because it is semantically dumbo. You have to read the lines over and over," said Bayer. But similar anything else, time and try bring an understanding, he said. "Students go into it considering information technology is a requirement, but I do think they end up enjoying it."
Perhaps some of those students volition end up similar Chicken, who finds that Shakespeare forms a lens through which he sees life.
"I discover 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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