THUS SPAKE WILLIAM SHAKESPERE
1.All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then whining school-boy with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’s eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth, And then the Justice,
In far round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, world too wide
For his shrunk shank and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. (As
You Like It,Act2, Sc.7.)
2.What a
piece of work is man, how noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in form and
moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! In apprehension how
like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! (Hamlet, Act 2,
Sc.2.)
3.We are
such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a
sleep. (Tempest, Act 4, Sc.1.)
4.Life’s but
a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/
And then is heard no more; it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury,/Signifying nothing. (Macbeth , Act 5, Sc.3)
5.The
lunatic, the lover, and the poet,/Are of imagination all compact:/One sees more
devils than vast hell can hold,/That is the madman; the lover, all as
frantic,/Sees Helen’ beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s
eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,/Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;/
And as imagination bodies forth/The forms of things unknown, the poet’s
pen/Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a
name. (Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Sc.1).
6. As flies
to wanton boys, so are we to gods; /They kill us for their sport (King
Lear).
7.It is the
stars,/ The stars above us, govern our condition. (King Lear).
8.The fault,
dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves that we are underlings. (Julius
Caesar).
9.The
quality of mercy is not strain’d,/ It droppeth as the gentle rain from
heaven,/Upon the place beneath: it is twice
bless’d;/It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:/’T is mightiest in the
mightiest; it becomes/The throned monarch better than his crown;/His sceptre
shows the force of temporal power,/The attribute to awe and majesty, /Wherein
doth sit the dread and fear of kings/But mercy is above this sceptred sway,/ It
is enthroned in the hearts of kings,/It is an attribute to God himself,/An earthly
power doth then show likest God’s/When mercy seasons justice. (Merchant of
Venice, Act Iv, Sc.1.)
10. Let me
not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments. Love is not love/Which alters
when it alteration finds,/Or bends with the remover to remove:-O no it is an
ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests, and is never shaken./It is the star to
every wandering bark,/Whose worth is unknown, although his height be
taken./Love is not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/Within his bending
sickle’s compass come;/Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/But
bears it out even to the edge of doom./If this be error and upon me prov’d,/I
never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. (Sonnet
CXV).
11.To be ,
or not to be: that is the question:/Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/And by
opposing end them? To die: to sleep;/No more; and, by a sleep to lay we end/The
heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to, ’tis a
consummation/Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; /To sleep: perchance to
dream: aye, there’s the rub;/For in that sleep of death what dreams may
come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/Must give us pause. /There’s
the respect /That makes calamity of a long life;/For who would bear the whips
and scorns of time,/The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,/The pangs
of disprizd love, the law’s delay, /The insolence of office, and the spurns/That
patient merit of the unworthy takes, /When he himself quietus make/With a bare
bodkin? who would fardels bear,/To grant and sweat under a weary life,/But that the dread of something after death,/The
undiscovered country from whose bourn/No
traveller returns, puzzles the
will,/And make us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others that we
know not of?/ Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;/And thus the native
hue of resolution/Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,/And
enterprises of great pith and moment/With this regard their currents tun
awry,/And lose the name of action. (Hamlet, Act 3, Sc.1).
12. Lear:
Poor naked wretches, whersev’e r you are,/That bide the pelting of this
pitiless storm,/How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,/Your loop’d and
window’d raggedness, defend you/From seasons such as thee? O, I have ta’en/Too
little care of this! Take physic, pomp;/Expose thyself to feel what wretches
feel,/That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,/And show the heavens
just. (King Lear, Act 3, Sc.iv).
13. The
patient dies while the physician sleeps;/The orphan pines while the oppressor
feeds;/Justice is feasting while the widow weeps;/Advice is sporting while
infection breeds. (Rape of Lucrece).
14. Lear:
Come, let’s away to prison;/We two along will sing like birds I’ the cage;/When
thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down/ And ask of thee forgiveness; so we
we’ll live,/And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh//At gilded
butterflies, and hear poor rogues/Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them
too,/Who loses, and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;/And take upon’s the mystery
of things,/As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out:/In a wall’d prison,
packs and sects of great ones/That ebb and flow like the moon. (King Lear).
Here is now a brief note about the
poet’s life and literary merits.
English playwright and poet , William Shakespeare is known
all over the world as the greatest writer in the English language. He was born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden at Stratford-upon-Avon, U.K. on 23rd
April 1564 and died there on 23rd April 1616.
John Shakespeare who ran a general business was made an alderman
in 1565 in which capacity his son William Shakespeare had the right to free education at Stratford-on-Avon Grammar School. The principal teaching in this school was Latin which
was then the universal language of scholars, and a man who
was ignorant of it naturally had all the great avenues of learning closed to
him. Shakespeare studied at the Grammar School for six years up to the age of 13.
There is a tradition that Shakespeare
commenced life as a butcher’s apprentice.
Possibly he did, yet he also did everything to become a supreme poet and
dramatist of the world. His works
comprise 38 plays, 154 sonnets and three long poems. The first play Love’s Labour Lost was staged in 1591
and the last one The Tempest in 1611.
It is a considered view of many scholars
that Shakespeare’s plays appear so full and many-sided that we may read them at
different times in our lives and in different moods, again and again, and still
find them as fresh as ever. There is always the bright, charming story,
fascinating to a child; there is the true picture of life, full of interest to
all healthy minds; there is the fine delineation of character and the sound
expression of feeling through which we learn to understand better both ourselves
and others; there is the general spirit of love and the lesson of moral truth
to guide us in action, the philosophic thought which helps us to understand why
things are as they are , the clear sight which sees with hope the end to which
things are working, and above all the faith In God which strengthens our own.
And on the surface of the plays lie the neat little sayings in which great truths
are so completely wrapped that we can use
them as household words.
Finally, let us have a look at William J. Long’s
opinion about Shakespeare’s place and influence. This literary historian believes
that Shakespeare holds, by general acclamation, the foremost place in the world’s
literature, and his overwhelming greatness renders it difficult to criticise or
even to praise him. Two poets only, Homer and Dante, have been named with him;
but each of these wrote within narrow limits, while Shakespeare’s genius included
all the world of nature and men. In a word, he is the universal poet. To study nature
in his works is like exploring a new and beautiful country; to study man in his
works is like going into a great city, viewing the motely crowd as one views a
great masquerade in which past and present mingle freely and familiarily, as if
the dead were all living again. And the marvellous thing, in this masquerade of
all sorts and conditions of men, is that Shakespeare lifts the mask from every
face, lets us see the man as he is in his own soul, and shows us in each one
some germ of good, some “soul of goodness’ even in things evil. For Shakespeare
strikes no uncertain note, and raises no doubts to add to the burden of your
own. Good always overcomes evil in the long run; and love, faith, work, and
duty are the four elements that in all ages make the world right. To criticise
or praise the genius that creates these men and women is to criticise or praise
humanity itself. (English Literature,p.154; Ginn And Company, America,
1945).
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26th
April 2021 G.R.Kanwal
