SHAKESPEARE SAID

 

SHAKESPEARE SAID

British poet-playwright was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom, on 23 April 1564 and is believed to have died on 23 April itself in 1616. Known as world’s greatest literary genius, ‘not for an age, but for  all time ’. he had only a smarting of education at Stratford Grammar School. He married , at the age of eighteen,  Anne Hathaway, a young woman of twenty-six.   

                English poet, Matthew Arnold (1822-88) paid his tribute to Shakespeare in the following sonnet:

                Others abide our question . Thou are free.

                We ask and ask ------- Thou smilest and art still,

                Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,

Who  to the stars uncrown his majesty,

Planting his steadfast footstep in the sea,

Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,

Spares but the cloudy border of his base

To the foil’d searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,

Self-schooled, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,

Didst tread on earth unguess’d at.---Better so !

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,

All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,

Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

               

Today, 23 April 2023 , is Shakespeare’s birthday. A lot of what he said in his numerous plays and sonnets and a few poems is full of eternally quotable lines;  only a handful of them are given here

 for your enlightenment.

 

       As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;

They kill us for their sports. (King Lear).

                                …….

                Cowards die many times before their deaths;

                The valiant never taste of death but once. (Julius Caesar).

 

                                                …….

                The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

                ‘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)

                                ……….

 

The web of our life is of mingled yarn. Good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not : and our crimes would despair if they not cherished by our virtues. (All’s Well That Ends Well).

                                                ……

 

What a piece of work is a 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 god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! (Hamlet ).

 

                                             …..

                                               

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child. (King Lear) 

 

                                                                *******

23 April 2023                                                                                                                      G.R.Kanwal                                                                                                                        

 

 

                                ……