Posts Tagged ‘Literary’

Shakespeare’s Words

May 14, 2010

Shakespeare’s Words

Did William Shakespeare write his plays and sonnets with a collaborator? Perhaps his co-author was someone who had experienced the intrigues of the Royal Court, as did Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who was at Court and who did travel to such foreign places as Venice and Verona. Or was his collaborator fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe, or maybe the dramatist Ben Jonson? Oh, or maybe Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, her creative participation covered up in a conspiracy of authorship? To write, to compose, to tell a story, to express in blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter, is no easy matter for one person.

Shakespeare is Shakespeare. All you have to do is to undertake to compile a list of Shakespeare Festivals staging plays today across the country and around the world, even in China and Japan. You soon bag your endeavor because the list is virtually endless. All these productions, of course, require collaboration on the part of many, many talented people: the writer who adapts, skilled actors, experienced stage designers, effective directors, possibly musical background composers, even imaginative publicists creating websites to sell tickets. So today academia and audiences respect and praise the final draft and even the sometimes modernized setting of a Shakespeare stage or movie production.

Therefore, we should read or watch and enjoy Shakespeare, all the time imagining the Bard with his quill pen and inkwell composing away in some pub amidst the hubbub of turn of the 16th century English, Bohemian and Italian life. It’s not that possible collaboration diminishes or advances; it’s the final production and the thoughts it conveys that we love.