LEARNING FROM WILLIAM SHAKEAPEARE

 

          LEARNING FROM WILLIAM SHAKEAPEARE

            The British poet-playwright William Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 and died on the same date in 1616. He had no adequate schooling to become a great poet or dramatist.

            It will not wrong to say that he was a born genius. He wrote thirtyseven plays of all types –farce, history, romantic comedy and tragedy. He is also credited with one hundred and fifty-four sonnets and five long poems.

            His tragic plays Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello are marvelous both for their contents and craftsmanship. In these and other plays, there are great soliloquies and speeches. ‘The Seven Ages of Man’ is one of them from his great comedy As You Like It.

            Given below is a didactic speech from the play Hamlet. It is addressed by a character Polonius, a counsellor of state, to his son Laertes,  when he is leaving for France.

            The whole speech is full of maxims pregnant with universal wisdom to be acquired by every person to become enlightened.  

            Here is the full text of the speech:

           

            “Give thy thoughts no tongue,

            Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

            Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

            Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

            Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,

            But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

            Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d courage. Beware

            Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

            Bear’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.

            Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice,

            Take each man’s censure, but reserve the judgment.

            Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

            But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

            For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

            And they in France of the best rank and station

            Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

            Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

            For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

            And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

            This above all : to thine own self be true,

            And it must follow as the night the day

            Thou canst not then be false to any man.

            Farewell, my blessing season in thee.

                                                *******

G.R.Kanwal

24 May 2025