Shakespeare was the outstanding dramatist of the English Renaissance, and the most outstanding literary artist in the world, and to this day, Shakespeare's works are constantly being put on the theatrical stage or the big screen, and they are constantly interpreted in various ways.
For example, the familiar Roll Fu, in order to star in Shakespeare's plays, once postponed the filming of the film, which shows that Shakespeare's works not only have a lofty status in the minds of ordinary people, but also in the hearts of actors, actors are proud to be able to play Shakespeare's works.
Shakespeare has been away from us for hundreds of years, the English of his writing era belongs to Middle English, which is very different from the current English, so what charm does Shakespeare have, enough to make us still obsessed with it hundreds of years later?
Shakespeare's works have many praiseworthy places, such as his beautiful lines, conflicting plots, etc. Today we use the comedy "The Merchant of Venice" to analyze a significant feature in Shakespeare's works, which can make Shakespeare's works travel through hundreds of years, and in modern society we are still discussing Shakespeare.
This important feature is that most of Shakespeare's works do not have obvious moral tendencies, it is difficult to clearly say who is a good person and who is a bad person, and it is this kind of work that does not presuppose a moral position that can penetrate the changes of ideas in the era of change, and finally can still be clearly displayed in front of us.
Human morality has always been in flux, and the criteria for what is a good person and what is a bad person have been changing, especially in modern times, the rise of various ideological trends, people's views on the right and wrong of good and evil, almost a hundred and eighty degrees of great turning.
Once a good man, later we think he is an evil person, once a person who was extremely evil, he may also become a hero, and this change in evaluation criteria is widespread in various regions and countries.
For example, Yukio Mishima's famous play "Marquise Sade" fully realizes the phenomenon that the evaluation of characters under this moral change is hugely different.
The plot is very simple, the Marquis of Sade is a nobleman who has been sent, in the first two acts of the previous play, he was arrested and imprisoned for adultery, and the arrest and imprisonment of a person generally symbolizes that the social evaluation of this person has reached the worst peak, and the wife of the Marquis of Sade has gone to great lengths to rescue him, even if he says a large number of very beautiful lines on the stage, although he is still unable to rescue his husband.
Just when Mrs. Sade has given up, this time a revolution suddenly broke out in France, since it is a revolution, then everything is different, at this time Mrs. Sade's mother keenly discovered the value of Sade, and Sade's behavior in prison saved Sade's family overnight, making Sade a person worthy of applause.
Her impassioned lines illustrate the prevailing view in people's minds at the time:
In the torrent of this revolution, the slightest negligence, Alphonse's shameless sins will become the seeds of applause. As soon as the wind changes, he will be respected, and the contempt for him in the past world will become evidence of innocence. The experience of being in prison in a royal prison may be transformed into a distinguished medal. That's how the world has changed. ...... He, as long as he is skillful in coping, is probably the only nobleman who is not hung on the lamppost.
This passage is very straightforward to say what everyone has done to the Marquis of Sade, and as the revolution progressed, it was soon completely reversed, from a former sinner to a man who is now not only innocent, but also a glorious, correct and great man.
The same is true of many literary works, they strive to praise a certain character at a certain time, or use the most vicious language to attack a certain ethnic group, but with the passage of time, such works may be extremely popular, but they will soon be forgotten, but the new evaluation system comes, and the original sonorous and powerful works will become unheard of and finally completely forgotten.
On the contrary, those works that do not clearly express the author's position can be passed down for a long time, he does not criticize anyone, he does not praise anyone, he just faithfully writes about that era in words, as to whether that era is good or bad, this has been commented by posterity, and most of Shakespeare's works belong to this kind.
Only by understanding the lowest level of human nature in the work can we avoid being wrapped up in the torrent of the times and eventually lose the long river of love, which is evident in Shakespeare's famous comedy "The Merchant of Venice".
The comedy "The Merchant of Venice" is very famous, a brief review of the plot, in the city of Venice, the rich merchant Antonio has a good friend named Bassanio, because this Bassanio is a person who does not know frugality and likes to play music, so he often borrows money from Antonio in life.
Antonio has always been very affectionate, knowing that his friend is unreliable, and will lend him money every time, but this time it is an exception, because Antonio has no money, his money is pressed on an ocean-going freighter, this time he really has no money to lend to Bassanio.
However, this is not difficult for the affectionate Antonio, in order to be able to help his friend realize the start-up capital of his career (Bassanio's so-called career is to need a large amount of money to pursue Portia, who has just inherited a large amount of family property), so Antonio pulled down the old face and decided to borrow money from the Jewish businessman Shylock to support Bassanio.
You know, this Antonio has never given a good face to Jewish moneylenders, he has repeatedly cursed Jews in public, humiliated the Jewish nation, denigrated the financial industry on which Jews depend for their livelihoods, and even spit on Shylock's face, which was a common phenomenon at that time, and everyone generally had a bad impression of Jews, especially many Jews engaged in the money lending industry, which was more likely to be hated.
But there was no way, who let Bassanio be a friend, things went well, Antonio successfully borrowed three thousand dollars from the Jew Shylock, which was a large amount at the time, because it was impossible to provide collateral, Sherlock's condition was that after three months, if it could not be returned, it would cut off a pound of meat as a punishment, the two sides formally signed a contract, in Venice, which attaches importance to the spirit of the contract, this matter is even guaranteed.
The first half of the thing is like that, can you tell from it who is the bad guy and who is the good guy?
The "good guy" here really doesn't look like a good guy, there are too many shortcomings, and even a bad guy by today's standards, this person is the initiator of the whole thing, Bassanio.
Bassanio is a man of great love but nothing to do. In order to maintain a decent life, he always could not make ends meet, and soon his family would be ruined.
Ordinary people must know open source and throttling when they reach this situation, but this Bassanio is neither open source nor throttling, because he has a simpler way: find a friend to borrow.
Such a person is now a person who has no money and is hard to pretend, and the object of criticism in the current society is a "positive" image in this comedy, but it is obvious that Shakespeare did not face this positive character, and some of his behaviors are almost like bad people.
To put it bluntly, Bassanio is delicious and lazy, Antonio is completely intolerant, he is too mean and harsh to the Jews, then the play seems to say that Sherlock is a negative character, we used to know this story, we will think that Sherlock is a bad person, but if you really watch this play carefully, you will find that the most wonderful part of the whole play, Shakespeare arranged a self-defense scene for Sherlock, and this defense finally became the best line in the history of business to justify his name.
The best part of this drama is that in the end, because Antonio can't pay back, the two sides in the courtroom make generous statements, and each of them expounds their views in very sharp language, pushing the whole play to a climax, but the best thing about this statement is that Shakespeare sets him in court, that is, both sides have to say their reasons very clearly, which also gives the bad guy Sherlock the opportunity, this kind of scene where both sides have to be fully reasonable, and the ability of Shakespeare's comedy to travel through time and space.
Because in that era, both works that glorified the spirit of nobility, such as Bassanio, were innumerable, and correspondingly, there were many articles criticizing the Jews, but now both articles have basically disappeared, and only this drama, which makes both sides speak, does not make people feel that the work of the author is biased against has survived.
At that time, the court was full of swords, and Portia, dressed as a man, hoped to spare Antonio by touching Charlotte and making him understand the true meaning of kindness and love, and Portia's generous statement was very contagious:
Mercy does not come reluctantly, it falls from the sky like a spring rain and soaks the earth. ..... So, this Jew, think about it... Because when we pray, isn't it God's mercy that we pray for? Since we pray that God will give us mercy, we will. We should treat others with compassion.
Portia succeeds in connecting kindness with God in the hope of awakening the good in Sherlock's heart, but Sherlock remains unmoved and makes her own very classic point, which allows the work to transcend four hundred years:
Don't the Jews have eyes? Don't the Jews have hands and feet, no heart and liver, no feelings, no love and hate? Could it be that the same diet feeds Christians but not Jews? Can't the same weapon hurt Christians but not Jews? Jews will have the same disease as Christians, be cured by the same methods, shiver in winter, sweat in summer...
Sherlock is very sensational about how he is Jewish, but in essence there is no difference between him and them, so that it can be applied to any era and any different ethnic group, which is the common background of human beings.
Although the play eventually became a drama in which Shylock was unable to cut a pound of flesh from Antonio's body without shedding a drop of blood, the confession of Sherlock, the villain, finally gave the comedy a tragic, enduring vitality.
Summary: An important reason why Shakespeare's plays can endure is to conceal the author himself, neither praise anything nor criticize anything, let the characters talk to themselves according to their actual situation, and develop an independent life, even after hundreds of years, we can still interpret what we want to see from the tenacious vitality of the characters, which is the charm of Shakespeare's works.