<i>The legacy of Shakespeare</i>
Mathew Arnold paid the highest tribute to Shakespeare when he said in "To Shakespeare", "Others abide our question. Thou art free." Arnold's absolution of Shakespeare gives us a measure of the immense influence the Elizabethan bard wields centuries after his death. Again Shakespeare's unquestionable authority is reinforced when A.B. Aldrich heralds in 'King William': "Yet 'twas the king of England's kings /The rest with all their pomps and trains / Are mouldered, half-remembered things---/'Tis he alone that lives and reigns!"
It seems beyond dispute that Shakespeare is pre-eminent among all literary figures. His plays pack theatres and provide Hollywood blockbusters with scripts, and his works are considered fundamental to the teaching of English literature, inspiring millions of pages of scholarship and criticism every year around the globe. He has given us many of the words we speak, even the thoughts we think. Shakespeare's gift for a well-turned phrase is without parallel and he is frequently quoted even by persons who have never seen or read his plays. His plays provide lessons of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, teach decency, courtesy, benignity, generosity and humility which are universal and eternal. His works have given pleasure to readers and viewers for almost four centuries. It is, therefore, plain that his popularity is not merely a passing fad. As his works have stood the test of time, it seems reasonable to assume that the works of Shakespeare will continue to be popular for a good many centuries to come.
Shakespeare came to our part of the world carried by the colonial rulers. But in course of time he proved more of the ruled than the rulers, and it is no wonder that Shakespeare at once cast his magic spell upon us. Right from the time when the study of English literature was introduced at Hindu College in Calcutta, Shakespeare has been a favourite subject of study among Bengali students. Nirad C. Chowdhury informs us how a cult was built around Shakespeare in nineteenth century Bengal: "I do not know if any other country or people in the world has ever made one author the epitome, test and symbol of literary culture as we did with Shakespeare".
Michael Madhusudan Dutt, father of Bengali blank verse and himself a fine classical scholar, was an ardent admirer of Shakespeare. This great poet was known to quote frequently from Macbeth ----"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in the petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time" at the twilight of his life.
Bankimchandra Chatterjee was fond of using quotations from Shakespeare as chapter headings. Vidyasagar, the Sanskrit scholar, who had a shrewd understanding of the genius of Shakespeare, translated The Comedy of Errors and called it Bhrantibilas. Rabindranath Tagore's sonnet-34 included in Balaka is a fine tribute paid by one great poet to another.
Though the Indian empire is no more, Shakespeare has established his sovereignty over the people who live in the territories formerly covered by that empire. The Indians discarded the British but retained Shakespeare. Even while gripped in the throes of the fight for freedom, its pioneers had the magnanimity to stop and pay homage to an English poet in whose writings they found an unequivocal denunciation of any group or individual who seeks to usurp the rights of another. In Shakespeare's "The Tempest" Caliban, the ruled, gibes at the ruler as if he were a mouthpiece of the colonized masses: "You taught me language / And my profit on't is / I know how to curse / The red plague rid you /For learning me your language."
Relatively few people today read the works of Chaucer, Virgil or even Homer. But a large body of readers still read and enjoy Shakespeare. In our hours of joy and anguish, in our moments of happiness and sorrow, in our moments of meditative calm and philosophical resignation, it is Shakespeare's thoughts and his language that come instinctively to our minds. Whether it is Antony's oratory or Prospero's magic or Rosalind's romantic adventures, the effect on our minds is that of something that can touch us deeply, stir our imagination and whet our appetites for more of the same stuff. The more thoughtful ones among Shakespeare's readers prefer his tragedies to his comedies. Though Shakespeare has no real philosophy of his own, they are much impressed by the deep thoughts on life and death and different other subjects that he put here and there into his plays. Even the most casual readers are struck by Shakespeare's ability to put himself inside the skin of every type of human being from a king to a clown with equal facility. And the wonderful thing about his characters is that you cannot quite make up your mind about them and the last word on how to take these characters will perhaps always remain unsaid. Just think of Shylock. The predatory money-lender and hard-core villain, arouses our pity when he pleads for universal humanity, "Hath not a Jew eyes? / Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimension, senses / healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the / same winter and summer, as a Christian is?"
Consider the case of the saintly Angelo slowly losing himself into the charm of a majestic young lady and reasoning with himself against irresistible temptation and then succumbing to it which brings forth the basic human instincts that underpin Shakespeare's plays: "If the thieves for their robbery have authority/ when judges steal themselves: what, do I love her,/ that I desire to hear her speak again?/ And feast upon her eyes? O cunning enemy, that to catch a saint/ with saints dost bait thy hook."
Then you cannot fail to notice the philosophical streak of Shakespeare when you hear the Prince in 'Romeo and Juliet' asserting, "Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill", or Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, declaring, "Why then it is none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison, or a clown playing the wise saying, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrown upon them".
Shakespeare chose to give Hamlet some of the most dazzling poetry he ever wrote. The prince marvels at the immensity of man: "What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, 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 animalsand yet, to me what is this quintessence of dust?"
You cannot miss the undercurrent of wit that goes with Shakespeare when the great poet puts the lover, the poet and the madman on the same footing, insanity being common to all. As you leaf through Twelfth Night you relish with a smile on your lips the intimation of the mysterious chemistry that defines love which, unable to find expression, saps the vitality of a young lover, 'She never told her love /But let concealment like a worm i'th'bud /Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,/And with a green and yellow melancholy,/She sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.'
Where else can you find the like of the cynically fascinating character who is glorifying the very man he killed? You hear Brutus saying, "As Caesar loved me I weep for him, as he was fortunate I rejoice at it; as he was valiant I honour him, but as he was ambitious I slew him."
That lying can be a fine art is brought home to you when you hear from the mouth of a Shakespearean character, "He will lie, sir, with such volubility that truth will think as if it were a fool."
A fairly large body of our readers of earlier generation treated Shakespeare as if he were only a poet. Poetry in the east was supposed by the common reader to serve purposes apparently different from those that Shakespeare's poetry expressed. It was expected to be instructive, to have a didactive aim in view, to drive great moral lessons home. Shakespeare excites such readers most when he repeats in ornamental poetic phrase a trite observation about human life or nature. All one has to do to prove this is to consider the popularity of such quotations as "frailty, thy name is woman,'' "life is full of sound and fury signifying nothing", "All that glitters is not gold", etc. We have all heard such quotations repeated even by those who have not read a page of Shakespeare.
There are other quotations of this kind which have become part of the idiom spoken by the English-knowing classes. They are valued for their epigrammatic quality, for their terseness, sometimes because they contain a word or phrase which savours of something exotically beautiful. However, their popularity is doubtless proof of Shakespeare's appeal; but by no means can they prove beyond doubt that Shakespeare is really understood.
In our universities there is a tendency to forget that Shakespeare meant his plays to be acted. He was an actor himself and took part in his own plays as well as in those written by others. Our students seldom see his plays acted; they read them, are examined on them but hardly ever play them. None can deny that there is a great deal of latent talent among our students and this could be utilized in the production of some of these plays. These productions may not be completely successful---no production ever is but the moment students start acting their parts, the words and characters of Shakespeare will become alive and they will get more enjoyment from the plays than they would have got by simply reading them. They would also have a deeper understanding of the plays because it is a fact that when a play is acted its meaning becomes clearer and the relationship between the different characters are brought into proper focus. Not that acting out Shakespeare's plays is totally unheard of. Sometimes one or two plays are acted here and there by English Department students but that too is few and far between. Far from being an unceasing fountain of pleasure which a lively stage performance is all about, Shakespeare largely exists in pages of books, long abandoned and strewn with dust that adorn the shelves of old libraries.
Must we then reconcile ourselves to the prospect of Shakespeare being forgotten? There are , it seems to me, two possible ways out of this situation . The first is to ensure that at least those who specialize in English literature at the university level are given a good grounding in Shakespeare. This will guarantee that we shall have in the country at least a small class of people capable of understanding Shakespeare in the original. Secondly, Shakespeare must be made available in good translation to those who do not know English or who have a poor command of the language.
To forget Shakespeare would be to throw away the best part of what we have received from the west. No matter what we say, Shakespeare in a non-English speaking country like ours must in the ultimate analysis remain the responsibility, if I may so put it, of the academics or of a small minority of readers and admirers. If they are convinced, as we believe they are, that Shakespeare represents something priceless, embodying some of the highest values of which man has any knowledge, offering us poetry and drama of an order almost unmatched in the history of civilization, keeping his memory alive must be considered a service to civilization itself.
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