William Shakespeare Essays (1142 words) - William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Even after four centuries, the literary world remains to uphold Shakespeare as the greatest genius in British literature. While best known as a dramatist, Shakespeare was also a distinguished poet. Shakespeares extraordinary gifts for complex poetic imagery, mixed metaphor, and intelligent puns, along with insight into human nature are the characteristics that created the legend he is today. The following essay will address how Shakespeare contributed to modern playwright, the point in time when Shakespeare wrote some of his great plays, which was the Elizabethan era, and the beginning of his acting and playwright career, had influences with William Shakespeare. When you consider the influence of Shakespeare on the modern playwright, it cannot mean purely the choice of plots, since Shakespeare borrowed them from other sources and from history. The lessons he teaches are not merely narrative or certainly those of architecture but individual ones of texture. Shakespeare was an actor, whether great or even good is of no importance. What is certain is that he had to have been a very interesting actor to write works such as King Lear and The Comedy of Errors. He knew in the most delicate detail the possibilities of the actors skills and elevated them to the level of the great (Everything Shakespeare np). He lived at a time when sophistication of audiences had not yet come to demand such plays without impurities, so far more had to be assigned to the domain of imagination. When there were battles, the battles are shown in isolated parts of the conflicts. The suggestive powers of the actor demanded a far greater burden then they do today, for time and space had to be placed with people and decorated by the persuasion of the word and gesture. A boatman rowing across an unseen river finds the way of suggesting not only water but also wind and current by the movements of his body(Rowse 57). Naturally enough, technical advances of three centuries have served to weaken the demands on the public imagination and to assign the actors to roles of simple instruments in an ever-growing orchestra. The stage made a dramatic change from the upper and lower stage of the Elizabethan playhouse, yielding in the seventeenth century, to the proscenium that we know today. Shakespeare was performed under what must have been extraordinarily cumbersome conditions (Cahn 230). Shakespeare was in fact fortunate that he lived in the period he did. It was an era when English drama flourished. His works were based on many different aspects of that period. Many of his plays are traced back to the life or works of saints, biblical accounts, and morality plays, which were particularly from the medieval ages (Cahn ix). The Elizabethan era that he lived in brought about a renewed interest in classical drama. Shakespeare drew upon the literary brilliance of other great writers in that same time period such as Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sydney, Edmund Spenser, Holinshed, and Edward Hall. Shakespeare was influenced by elements of classical literature to create his own distinct form of poetry and drama. His history plays borrow from English histories, and his comedies often incorporate aspects of English folklore. His mythological themes were modeled after Ovids works (Cahn 5). Much of Shakespeares stylistic qualities of writing can be attributed to elements of Ro man classicism, derived from Plautus and Terence. The themes of his comedies are often reflected by Italian Renaissance literature. His history plays tend to trace the English monarchy from the fourteenth century to the emergence of the Tudors in the sixteenth century (Cahn 283). There are numerous reasons as to why William Shakespeare is so famous. He is generally considered to be both the greatest dramatist as well as the most brilliant poet who has written in the English language. Many rationales can be supported to explain Shakespeares enormous appeal (The Shakespeare np). His fame can be attributed to his vast knowledge and understanding of human nature. He was able to find human qualities and employ then into situations in which complex characters were derived that prove to be individual as well. The struggles represented in his works are applicable to everyone. Sometimes the characters are successful, sometimes they fail,