Is William Shakespeare Immortal?: Shakespeare's contributions, Shakespeare's influence on contemporaries, Shakespearean Criticism

Learning Objectives:

√ If Shakespeare's contributions had a lasting influence on history?—carried the most weight.

√ The Shakespearean effect on the sum total of wisdom and beauty in the world.

√ Shakespeare's influence on contemporaries. How much did Shakespeare affect the world during his own time?

√ Evaluation is the singularity of Shakespearean contribution.

√ Shakespearean charisma

(Keywords: William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's contributions, Shakespeare's influence on contemporaries, Shakespearean Criticism)

Introduction

In this article, I am going to discuss the most important question: Is William Shakespeare an immortal ? Such questions pop up in our mind when we read it from our university professors as well as enthusiastic readers that William Shakespeare is such a personality whose literary productions and the thought content has somehow shaped and reshaped the very inflow of English literature. Obviously when we are thinking of the immortality of William Shakespeare, it is not that he is biologically mortal. Thinking about how the person can live even after his death? Obviously we are thinking about the immortality of His works , his philosophy,  his thoughts. Here, we will make a little bit of collective analysis on the point of view of Shakespeare's utility mostly for the five basic questions.

1. The first one- if Shakespeare's contributions had a lasting influence on history?—carried the most weight.

2. The second criterion is the Shakespearean effect on the sum total of wisdom and beauty in the world. 

3. The next criterion is Shakespeare's influence on contemporaries. How much did Shakespeare affect the world during his  own time?

4. Another point of evaluation is the singularity of Shakespearean contribution.

5. The fifth and final criterion is Shakespearean charisma.

But before we carry a detailed discussion on these 5 criteria it will be better if I'll judge the last millennium and find out the key elements or key personalities that have shaped or module the very inflow of our civilization.

Who Changed the Millennium

Perhaps one of the best ways to examine the sprawling history of human civilization is to consider the most influential people who shaped it. The  reflection on the last millennium in Scientific, social, and political revolutions during the last 1,000 years have left an indelible mark on the world that exists today.

As per Agnes Hooper Gottlieb, the ten are Johannes Gutenberg, inventor; Christopher Columbus, explorer; Michelangelo, artist; Martin Luther, religious leader; William Shakespeare, writer; Galileo Galilei, scientist; George Washington, statesman; Ludwig van Beethoven, music composer; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, activist; and Mohandas Gandhi, peacemaker.

They are the immortal contributories of world civilization. This question of Shakespearean immortality may bring the greatest of English poet more distinctly before the minds of some of my students. It may widen the interest , a deep and fresh interest in life.  I think, The chief exponent in literature of Shakespeare must be studied in the near future with a deeper recognition of the significance of his work and its value as a source of spiritual culture.  His plays have been written in those aspects which throw light on the dramatist's life, thought, and art ; the many and interesting questions which have been discussed with great ingenuity and at great length by Shakespearean scholars have been touched upon only as they directly affect the history, thought, or art of poetry. Here, we can read the great writers on Shakespeare ~

 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, Mr. F. J. Furnivall, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, Mr. Sidney Lee, Mr. George Wyndham, Mr. Israel Gollancz, Professor C. H. Herford, and Mr. A. W. Ward.

If Shakespeare's contributions had a lasting influence on history?

Shakespeare, an English playwright and poet, is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist in history. He lived from 1564 to 1616. His plays have been published in hundreds of editions, with translations into every major language. Numerous books and scholarly papers have been published about his themes, characters, storylines, and language. And I'm making a valiant effort to stand in for Shakespeare in front of you despite my poor expertise. His plays have likely been produced more frequently than those of any other dramatist, and he is the author who has been most frequently mentioned in history.

The sheer volume of writing produced in the last 1,000 years is staggering. Especially with Gutenberg's invention, a world of words was created that has continued to grow exponentially. Accordingly, there is a galaxy of brilliant writers from which to select one writer as the most influential in the second millennium. In reality, however, there is only one person who has the literary resume to even apply for the job: William Shakespeare. Nearly 400 years after his death, the English playwright and poet remains the most influential writer who ever lived.

Shakespeare's central canon of 38 plays and a series of 154 sonnets is the standard against which all other writers are measured. His language, characters, plots, and wit are all consistently brilliant. Tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet (1595?), Hamlet (1601?), and King Lear (1605?) have survived the centuries with their beauty and power intact and remain some of the most popular and oft-produced plays. His comedies, including A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595?) and Twelfth Night (1600?), still charm and entertain. As many critics have observed, the tragic flaws and comic conceits depicted in Shakespeare's plays are just as relevant at the early 21st century as they were when the plays were written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Shakespearean effect on the sum total of wisdom and beauty in the world

This allowed the consideration of artistic contributions, such as a Beethoven sonata, a Michelangelo fresco, or a Shakespearean sonnet, that may not have directly altered the history books but without which world culture would not be as rich as it is.

The man who is sometimes known simply as the Bard also heavily influenced the English language, which has emerged as the dominant tongue of the Western world. He created and popularized many words that survive in the English language today, and his famed lines are arguably the best known in all of literature: “Get thee to a nunnery,” “The lady doth protest too much,” and “Et tu, Brute?” are just a few of the many Shakespearean lines still commonly quoted. Other languages have their beloved writers, but all languages and lands pay homage to Shakespeare.

  How much did Shakespeare affect the world during his  own time?

There is no simple explanation for Shakespeare’s unrivaled popularity, but he remains our greatest entertainer and perhaps our most profound thinker. He had a remarkable knowledge of human behavior, which he was able to communicate through his portrayal of a wide variety of characters. He was able to enter fully into the point of view of each of his characters and to create vivid dramatic situations in which to explore human motivations and behavior. His mastery of poetic language and of the techniques of drama enabled him to combine these multiple viewpoints, human motives, and actions to produce a uniquely compelling theatrical experience. Numerous writers have mined Shakespeare so as the generation of writers. It is also evident that it will continue the same.

 The singularity of Shakespearean contribution.

In the criterion of singularity of contribution, Shakespeare is recognized as a singular brilliance charting entirely new territory. A plain and practical narrative of the great dramatist's personal history tells us everything. With a full record of the duly attested facts and dates, I have seen æsthetic brilliance. Shakespearean literature, as far as it is  concerned to me, still amazes us.  His writing supply within a brief compass an exhaustive and well arranged statement of the facts of human achievement, reputation and glorification. After studying world literature, history, and bibliography , we can get the processions of literature and theaters directly or indirectly related to the great master. 

As we are discussing somebody is writing or thinking about  the conditions under which 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'The Merchant of Venice' were written; the references in Shakespeare's plays to his native town and country; his relations with Ben Jonson and the boy-actors in 1601; the favour extended to his work by James I and his Court; the circumstances which led to the publication of the First Folio, and the history of the dramatist's portraits So on.

 Shakespearean Charisma

  William Shakespeare may not have been intellectual giants noted for pathbreaking new discoveries, but he nevertheless exerted great influence by virtue of his ability to inspire other people to imagine. William Shakespeare is a charismatic writer. No doubt he lived in a play-loving age, with great predecessors like university wits, but he read the illiterate crowds, gave them what they wanted and simply reflected their own thoughts and feelings. So he had the favorable atmosphere but he was  shaped and enriched by two hemispheres —the little village of Stratford, and the great city of London. In Stratford he learned to know the natural man in his natural environment; in London he learned to know the social, the artificial man in the most unnatural of surroundings. Knowledge enroute to these places are Shakespeare's own. 

Charismatic Shakespeare is everywhere in his works. His great tragedies Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet are stuffed with new word pictures, new characters, both historical and imaginary, with a surpassing vividness. Othello, Lear, Macbeth and Hamlet & Rosalind, Portia, Juliet, Cleopatra, Caesar, Brutus, Orlando, Shylock, Falstaff, Touchstone, there is endless variety. Shakespeare is universal as he is a master artist of human characters as well as  human psychology.

Conclusion

This article has covered a very small portion of the wide field of Shakespeare. But I have gone far enough, I think, to justify the conviction that Shakespeare's collection of sonnets and dramas has reasonable resources to be regarded as an infinite narrative. He is immortal. Like other great men, William Shakespeare has also had his critics. I must quote here from writers, rivals, critics and other commentators with varying assessments of the Bard's work.

Ben Jonson, in the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected works, 1623 thinks, "He was not of an age, but for all time!" But Robert Greene calls him ' an upstart Crow'. Ben Jonson, in Timber: or Discoveries, published in 1641 says," wherein he flowed with that facility that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped.' John Dryden, "Essay of Dramatic Poesy", 1668 thinks that Shakespeare is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. Horace Walpole thinks Shakespeare wanted taste. To Voltaire , he was a savage. Samuel Johnson quoted in Life of Johnson by James Boswell, 1769 that Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. 

Ardhendu De

Reference study: 1. Agnes Hooper Gottlieb

2. Shakespeare, William: (n.d.). InfoPlease. Retrieved November 15, 2022, from https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/arts/bios/english-lit-1500-1799/shakespeare-william/critical-opinion