400 years since his death, Shakespeare remains the greatest writer in the English language
A picture shows a floral tribute on a traditional "bier" in front of a bust of author William Shakespeare during a parade marking 400 years since Shakespeare's death, in Stratford-upon-Avon in central England on April 23, 2016. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
- Italy has its Dante, Germany has Goethe and the Russians have Pushkin and Tolstoy, but for English speakers – and many who read him in translation – Shakespeare reigns supreme.
- It is frequently suggested that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would be writing film scripts on a laptop in Hollywood.
- The clarity and drama of Shakespeare’s plots lend themselves perfectly to the world of opera.
- Many of the great classical composers have honoured Shakespeare, none more enthusiastically than Giuseppe Verdi, with three of his finest operas – Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff.
What do the following phrases have in common: Dead as a doornail, Break the ice, A fool’s paradise, The game is up, Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Faint-hearted, Brave new world, For goodness’ sake, Dogs of war, Foregone conclusion?
They were all dreamed up by one man – William Shakespeare – Britain’s national poet and international icon of the English language, who died 400 years ago on Saturday.
Commemorations of his life and works — 37 plays and 154 sonnets — are taking place all over the country. In my local Waterstones, I counted 23 books about him, and our independent library is hosting lectures on Shakespeare in art, Shakespeare in wartime, Shakespeare and science, all of Shakespeare’s plays performed in 90 minutes, a film of Othello in Catalan, and music from the age of Shakespeare.
WS, Sweet Will or the Bard of Avon, as he was variously called, was the son of a glove-maker in the English Midlands; at age 18, he married a local girl, Anne Hathaway, then left for London, where he wrote plays and acted in them; he returned eventually, by then comfortably off, to his birthplace in Stratford on Avon, where he bequeathed his second-best bed to his wife, and died on April 23, 1616, the same day as his birth in 1564.
Italy has its Dante, Germany has Goethe and the Russians have Pushkin and Tolstoy, but for English speakers – and many who read him in translation – Shakespeare reigns supreme.
During his long incarceration 6,000 miles from England, Nelson Mandela kept one book by his bedside, Shakespeare’s Collected Works. Mandela was born and grew up in Transkei and English was not his mother tongue, but he read, marked and pondered the plays, declaring, “Shakespeare always seems to have something to say to us.”
WRITING FILM SCRIPTS
It is frequently suggested that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would be writing film scripts on a laptop in Hollywood. Certainly his plays adapt marvelously to the screen, with some of the greatest actors in the great roles: Paul Robeson as Othello, Laurence Olivier as Hamlet, Richard III and Henry V, Orson Welles as Falstaff, Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth and Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth.
The movie classic, Ran, is a Japanese take on King Lear, and Gus van Sant remade Henry IV as My Own Private Idaho, starring Keanu Reeves.
The American high school movie, Ten Things I Hate About You, has no Shakespearean language but is based on The Taming of the Shrew, in the same way as Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story came from Romeo and Juliet.
And talking music, the clarity and drama of Shakespeare’s plots lend themselves perfectly to the world of opera. Many of the great classical composers have honoured Shakespeare, none more enthusiastically than Giuseppe Verdi, with three of his finest operas – Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff.
Shakespeare was a man for all seasons and my guess is they will still be reading him in 2416.
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My breakfast porridge comes in a paper packet. What you do is empty the oats into a microwave bowl or into a pan for the hob, then fill the packet with milk or water and slosh it onto the oats to cook. You then throw the packet into the bin. The other day I filled the packet with milk but could not find the oats. I had thrown them into the bin.
I tell myself I really shouldn’t feel bad about this increasing dottiness. As I wrote last week, a lady friend took her TV remote when she went shopping, thinking it was her mobile phone. And here’s another one I heard about: An old fellow found that the pipe under his kitchen sink was leaking, so he put a bucket under the sink to catch the drips. When the bucket was full, he emptied it into the sink.
Those stories are true. The following are jokes, but who is to say they haven’t happened in reality?
INCREASING FORGETFULNESS
An elderly man was worried about his increasing forgetfulness and told his doctor, “I can never remember where my keys are, what I have gone upstairs for, whether I answered a letter from my daughter, where I put the TV remote. What do you advise, doctor?” In his kindest tone, the doctor replied: “Please pay my bill in advance.”
A lot of older people are now texting and tweeting, so acronyms such as LOL (Laugh out loud) and ROTFL (Rolling on the floor laughing) are well known to them. Indeed, they have acronyms of their own: ATD (At the doctor’s), FWIW (Forgot where I was), IMHAO (Is my hearing aid on?)
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This column has run a fair few lawyer jokes and some Scottish ones, too, so here’s one for the Irish, no offence intended: What did St Patrick say as he was driving the snakes out of Ireland? “Are ye all right in the back, lads?”
