△ William Shakespeare
Recorder of human existence: Shakespeare
△ 1947 World Book Company Edition Of Shakespeare's Complete Tragedies and Plays
He was born obscure; hundreds of years after his death, he still enjoyed a high reputation in the history of British and even world literature, and in his short 52-year career, he left 37 plays, more than 14 lines and two narrative poems, and his four tragedies "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth" are world-famous and are still performed around the world as classics. Marx called him "one of the greatest geniuses of mankind", and he was william Shakespeare, the most outstanding playwright and poet of the English Renaissance.
Born in 1564 to a wealthy civic family in Stratford, Warwickshire, Shakespeare studied and was educated in the local grammar school as a teenager, but at the age of 13, the family was in a middle of the road and had to give up his studies to earn a living. Around 1585, Shakespeare left his hometown for London, where he first watched horses for aristocratic patrons in front of the theatre, and later became an actor with his own talents, and then began to write and adapt his own plays, and became one of the shareholders of the theatre. During this period, Shakespeare often accompanied the troupe to the court or in the countryside, and these experiences and observations laid the foundation for his later creations. In 1597, Shakespeare already had considerable assets in London, at which point he returned to his hometown to buy property, where he spent the last years of his life.
△ Stills from "King Lear"
Shakespeare's most important achievement was the play, which can be divided into three periods of development in terms of his creative style and ideas. From 1590 to 1600 was the early days of Shakespeare's creation, when Elizabeth's central sovereignty was still relatively stable, Shakespeare's humanistic ideas and artistic style gradually formed, and he created plays such as "Richard III", "Henry IV", "Everyone Rejoices", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and so on with infinite hope for life.
From 1601 onwards, Shakespeare entered the second period of creation, at this time, the social contradictions in England intensified, the political and economic situation deteriorated day by day, making him feel that his ideals were difficult to achieve, and he began to criticize the darkness of social reality, representative works such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Timon of Athens.
△ Stills from "Macbeth"
The period from 1608 to 1612 was the late period of Shakespeare's creation. When British politics were corrupt, Shakespeare knew that humanist ideals had been disillusioned, so he began to write legendary dramas, abandoning the dark real society and beginning to create a dream world. Representative works include "Xin Bailin", "The Story of Winter", "The Tempest" and so on.
Shakespeare married his wife, who was 6 years his senior, when he was 18, but the married life was not a happy one, and he lived alone in London for more than two decades, while his wife stayed in Stratford. Around 1612, Shakespeare returned to his hometown, died of illness in April 1616, and was buried in Trinity Church.
△ Shakespeare's clown sculpture
Seven years after Shakespeare's death, his complete works were published, and in the next two centuries, his works were introduced to Germany, France, Italy, Russia and other countries in Europe, and caused strong repercussions, and then translated into various languages around the world and widely circulated around the world. Shakespeare was the artist who stood tallest and saw the farthest in the Renaissance, as the French writer Victor Hugo said: "Every once in a while, there must be such a genius in the world... This genius has given the arts, sciences, philosophy, or society as a whole a whole. But his brilliance "shines not only for a century, but for all mankind, from one end to the other." ”
This is Shakespeare, the recorder of human existence.
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Written by | Shunping
Editors| Hanhua, Qingyi
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