Give a critical estimate of Shakespeare as a dramatist.

Ans.

Introduction

Shakespeare is considered as “the greatest genius that, perhaps, human nature has yet produced. S.T. Coleridge calls him “our myriad-minded Shakespeare”. According to Lord Lyttelton. “No other author had ever so copious, so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the passions, the humours and the sentiments of mankind. He painted all characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal force. If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it except his works, other beings might know what man was from those writings.

His University

Shakespeare undoubtedly possesses the quality of universality in his dramas. He was, as Ben Jonson rightly remarked. “not of any age, but of all ages”. Dwellings on the quality of universality in Shakespeare, T. S. Baynes remarks’: “But, after all, it is of course in the spirit and substance of his work, his power of piercing to the hidden centers of character, of touching the deepest springs of impulse and passion, out of which emerge the issues of life and of evolving those issues dramatically with a flawless strength, subtlety, and truth. which raises him to immensely above and beyond not only the best of the playwrights who, went before him, but the whole line of illustrious dramatists that came after him. It is Shakespeare’s unique distinction that he has an absolute command over all the complexities of thought and feeling that prompt to action and bring out the dividing lines of character. He sweeps with the hand of a master the whole gamut of human experience, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mamilius, and pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur, up to the spectre-haunted terrors of Macbeth the tropical passion of Othello the agonised sense and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustained elemental grandeur, the Titanic force, the utterly tragical pathos of King Lear.”

Shakespeare’s work is said to posses the organic strength and infinite variety, the throbbing fulness, vital complexity and breathing truth of Nature herself. He is above all writers the poet of Nature, the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of man and his environment, manners and life. His characters do not belong to this country on that, one profession or the other, but come from all lands and all walks of life. They are the rightful progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply and observation will always find, unaffected alike by the vagaries of fashion, the accidents of custom and the change of opinion. They run the whole gamut of the world, the flesh and the devil, motivated by general passions and principles and conforming to the common pattern of life. Shakespeare’s persons are not individuals; they are a species eternal and true taken from nowhere in particular, though met here, there and everywhere.

“And yet paradoxically enough no two characters or Shakespeare are alike. Shakespeare never repeats himself. Indeed universality of idea and individuality of character are his specialities. With all the versatility of dramatic Proteus, he changes himself into every character and enters into every condition of human nature. Myriad are the shapes and guises, but like the colour in at kaleidoscope, all so bright and clear, all so true to life, that in the words of Pope “it is a sort of injury to call Shakespeare’s characters by so distant a name as copies of Nature”. Or, as Goethe would have it, “his characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they Show you the hour like other, and the inward mechanism also is all visible.

Truth and Variety of His Characters

In Shakespeare we find ‘God’s plenty’. As Hazlitt remarks, “His Characters are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men not like authors”. Actually it is a pure sense of wonder that overtakes us when we are told that Shakespeare created as many as twelve hundred characters. And yet no two characters in his plays are said to be alike. Nay, his characters remain true to life and nature. Even when he borrows the dust of a character from some writer, the magic wand of Shakespeare, with its miraculous touch, turns it into pure gold. Kings, courtiers, prophets and priests, clowns, beggars and rustics, poets, generals, murderers and rogues – all these have been living in the illuminous pages of Shakespeare ever since he created them. About his characters, Alexander Pope has rightly observed: “His characters are so much Nature herself, that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those of other poets have a constant resemblance, which shows that they received them from one another and were but multipliers of the same image; each picture, like a mock rainbow, is but the reflection. But every single character in Shakespeare is as much an individual as those in life self, it is as impossible to find any two alike; as much as from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins, will upon comparison be found remarkably distinct. To this life and variety of character we must add the wonderful preservation of it, which is such throughout his plays, that, bed all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons. I believe one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker.”

His Dramatic Technique

Shakespeare is unique in handling his dramatic material. He draws no hard line between a comedy and tragedy. In this he faithfully imitates life. Life is not all comedy; nor is it all tragedy. It is a whole in which tears and laughter intermingle. His comedies have the element of tragedy and tragedies abound in comic situations. Shakespeare may, therefore, be called ‘the lord of human smiles and tears’. About the dramatic faculty of Shakespeare, W. Richardson has observed: “Many dramatic writers of different ages are capable, occasionally, of braking out, with great fervour of genius, in the natural language of strong emotion. No writer of antiquity is more distinguished for abilities of this kind than Euripides. His whole heart and soul seem torn and agitated by the force of the passion he imitates. He verses to be Euripides; he is Medea; he is Orestes. Shakespeare, however, is most eminently distinguished, not only by these occasional sallies, but by imitating the passion in all its aspects, by perusing it through all its windings and labyrinths, by moderating or accelerating it its impetuosity according to the influence of other principal and of external events, and finally by combining it in a ‘judicious manner with other passions and propensities, or by setting it aptly in position. He, thus, unites the two essential power of dramatic invention, that of forming characters; and that of imitating in their natural expression, the passions and affections of which they are composed.”

His Humour

Humour is the essential feature of Shakespeare’s dramatic genius. He illustrates every phase and variety of humour. A complete analysis of Shakespeare’s humour would make a system of psychology. Humour is present both in tragedies and comedies. There are comic characters in almost all his plays. There is a great variety of these characters. Some of them simply stand for the spirit of mirth and merriment and boisterous laughter. But Shakespeare generally takes greater pleasure in witty and subtle humor. It becomes sometimes grim. There is a good deal of farcical humour too in his plays. Above all, his laughter is genial that hunts none and entertains all. His laughter is light-hearted, sympathetic and genial.

His Objectivity

Objectivity is one of the major traits of the dramatic genius of Shakespeare. Most and novelists consciously or unconsciously identify themselves with their characters. But Shakespeare is different. He is a dramatist, and he does not lay bare his soul in his plays. The idea of getting at the soul of Shakespeare through his plays will be resented by many critics. The drama is an ‘Objective’ art; the less said about the dramatist’s self revelation, the better. As a matter of fact, the dramatist conceals his self behind his characters and particularly in the case of Shakespeare who has created such a bewildering variety of characters, no two beings alike, his personality, if he has reflected it in any of his characters, is absolutely elusive. It is the quality of objectivity, he has the eye of the creator, viewing the bright and dismal things alike.

His Humanity

Shakespeare’s greatness lies in his wide and all embracing humanity. He shows a great admiration for human-beings. He loves human-beings and has an infinite feeling of sympathy for his creations. In his dramas we ourselves feel admired. We like him because he likes us. In his characters we find a glorious picture of ourselves. This is evident from his view about man in Hamlet:

“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how expressive and admirable in action, how like, an angel in apprehension, how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

His Insight and Imagination

Shakespeare’s imagination is par excellence. It is so rich and blooming that no poet could surpass him. His fertile imagination is present everywhere in his plays. In his teeming brain one idea begot another, and that one another still and so on till we have a mosaic of ideas just spoken of and the self-same idea is distended to its furthest dimensions, the self-same idea on which in the process of development, the light that never was on sea or land is focused.

Davis Masson has observed, “Shakespeare is as astonishing for the exuberance of his genius in abstract notions, and for the depth of his analytic and philosophic insight, as for the scope and minuteness of his poetic imagination. It is if into a mind poetical form in there had been poured all the matter that existed in the mind of his contemporary Bacon. In Shakespeare’s plays, we have thought, history, expedition, philosophy, all within the round of the poet.”

His View of Life

Shakespeare does not put forward any definite view of life in his plays. But his plays are not without wise observations on life. In fact, his observation are the gems of the philosophy of life. They are a rich treasure-house of wisdom. For example, in As You Like It, he gives a real picture of the world:

The ‘world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

Likewise in Macbeth, there is a deep explanation of life:

Life’s but a walking shadow, man a poor player,

That status and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.

Signifying nothing.

In The Tempest also the dramatist makes a meaningful observation on human beings:

We are such stuff

As dreams are made of and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

The observations and innumerable others make Shakespeare the greatest dramatist.

His English

There is a great difference between the Elizabethan English and the modern English. Shakespeare’s English is Elizabethan. In his English we find many words changed in meaning, many archaic words. Some of the words are pronounced in different manner. Words such as advised, contingent, danger, discover: expert, fond, virtue, shrew, prevent, presently, etc. are used in different sense. Deighton remarks about Shakespeare’s English: “In the works of Shakespeare, the English language rises to its highest power and widest compass. Other writers have a recognizable and individual style, but the completeness of Shakespeare’s Mastery over the resources of the English language made him a master of all styles, so that in his hands, his mother tongue was capable of expressing the whole range of feeling and of portraying the most divergent types of character. A part of Shakespeare’s mastery of the English language lay in the wide range of his vocabulary.