If Romeo weren't born in Verona ...

by Gwen Herat

In York, it was all right by Shakespeare who chose not to be a strict disciplinarian because they remain remote in time and place from his age. He opted to select his fables from Italian romances, English histories, French tragedies and ancient chronicle. He had the audacity to pry into Plutarch of Thomas North.

This proves Shakespeare's foreign plots and he must not be censured too hard for many of the strange events that occurred in his plays. One must remember that he was not the historian of his time and neither did he pretend to be one. He may have been careless with time and places; or for that matter, the countries and in the process, he invents many of them.

The youthful exuberance and trust in each other leads the young lovers to scarifice their lives for each other and turn the tragedy into the best loved love story in the world.

One play historically correct. Portia plays a small role but Shakespeare lifts her to a pedestal that she is long remembered in Julius Caesar.

This makes us think why the strange events that took place in Denmark or the wilds of Scotland, may have been more accurate if one of his contemporaries among the University-wits, wrote the identical plays.

Most of his plays were founded on imagination though at the end, they looked so convincing to create characters that were to be immortalised in the future; such as Hamlet and Ophelia; Romeo and Juliet, Portia and Othello.

It is indeed not enough to evaluate Shakespeare's gifts but to accept them in totality. Very rarely can another playwrite give the illusion to their characters the way he has done.

Even those who have been critical, fail to sum him up, have failed and are always excessive, inhuman, arbitrary or over-theatrical and fail to recognise their own extravagance. However, they even reluctantly accept that his characters whether good or bad, move with the realities of romantic or historical happenings and possess unfailing humanity that makes them plausible within senses and sympathy.

Profound difference

The profound difference in the bard's work and that of his contemporaries contains the greater truth that are more serious and substantial and fundamentally do not belong to his plays.

They are academically more advanced, logical and philosophical on which they have majored from seats of academy. More often than not, these University-wits have rubbed it hard and sore on Shakespeare who would not even have felt its impact because of his secondary education.

With time, Shakespeare proved his superiority and completely wiped their theories out. He proved his point when he gave much space to the epical and consciously continued on a greater scale. He lay before them that he had been in contact with what were or what he believed to be, the realities of the past.

It was a challenge none could take up. His efforts to revive the happenings of the past left him with a taste of truth in his treatment of subjects and their characters.His six dramas of English history and three Roman tragedies together with Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth based on earlier legendary chronicles accepted as genuine history, are in my opinion incorrect and found nowhere else, but as Shakespearean drama. I do not understand why scholars fail to accept my theory and speak out when the truth is glaring out. Why be afraid of Shakespeare?

Many believe that other playwrights made history unreal and Shakespeare did not. I do not agree on this but that Shakespeare could warrant the truth where it is necessary. His works mostly connect to national history with ancient religious drama and edification.

Skipping from one chronicle to another impartially he leaves London for Rome and abandons his inspirational leanings from Holinshed for Plutarch. He snaps its spirit to paint the characters such as Coriolanus, Brutus, Julius Caesar and Antony Cleopatra. His first act was to breathe new life into famous events.

Did he do it? I suppose so.

Violation of truth incapable of conceiving drama made Shakespeare less scrupulously reactive. With him the broad epic manner was an insight to human drama that he highlighted in his plays.

He had an excellent fantasy and gentle expressions wherein he followed it, was necessary for him to have stopped but did not. This is where I find his controversial attitude while scholars keep silent. To the point of excesses, he is an abundant writer and lacks self control where his genius ran away with him as mentioned by Ben Jonson.

I always believe that literary judgement often rests upon antithesis. Laboriously the minds of men are focussed and contrast spontaneously where it is warranted. I have tried and am still trying to deal with this side of William Shakespeare in the weekly series I write in the Daily News under the caption, Inside Shakespeare's Mind, but still failed to get to the bottom of it.

Besides his variety of poetic gifts, he could endow imaginary beings with life and events and develop the easy natural spontaneous efforts.

Very few characters of any importance in any play earlier failed to receive from their creators the vital spark until Shakespeare arrived and changed the scenario.

The world persuades audiences and readers alike in the presence of his plays today as it was from the beginning ever since he took centre stage in the theatre much to the discomfort of the puritans of the day. It is principally in this respect that Shakespeare differs and surpasses his rivals.

He remains Shakespeare every day, every moment.

Tendency

But is Shakespeare's art less real because it is essentially mobile? Shakespeare's tendency to efface all its traces can reveal their secret.

But hidden behind illusions, his art creates what the mind refuses to bare. His sonnets bear testimony to this side of his work. It is true that he can be eloquent and effective where it is warranted and has the wit to feed his characters differently. In doing justice to a genre that doth not belong to him but using it for a noble and artificial tragedy, the force of contrast become his own. Unless Shakespeare tells us that a particular play is an adaptation, most of us will be ignorant of the fact.

He is open about from where he borrows inspiration but declaim it as essential. Very often, he makes a real character from a clown or fool to add dignity to the play. And Shakespeare is crafty; he never repeats a character nor an event. Each play has its own authenticity. He is a great story teller, a psychologist by turn. Is not Hamlet a fragment of a tragedy. He could have still built around the story to make it more high-profile though it is his best tragedy and play with such powerful dialogue as not found anywhere else in his plays. He turns philosophical in places when he questions, what law doth love obey? How is the thread that binds two hearts, spun and broken on sudden changes of feelings. He cannot answer himself though to him love is the supreme master of wisdom and feeling. They repudiate their own vows to frustration which the Prince of Denmark is all about. That is why I keep repeating that there is a part of Hamlet in every man.