Shakespeare is the most important writer of the European Renaissance, an outstanding dramatist and poet, and one of the most outstanding writers in the world. He occupies a special position in the history of European literature and is known as "Zeus on the Olympic Mountain of human literature". Below are the deeds of Shakespeare that I have shared with you. Everyone is welcome to read and learn.
Introduction to Shakespeare's characters
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the most important writer in Britain and Europe during the Renaissance. He was born into a merchant family in Stratford, central England. As a boy, he received basic education at a local grammar school, studied Latin, philosophy and history, and was exposed to the works of ancient Roman playwrights. Later, due to his family's financial difficulties, he dropped out of school to make a living. When Shakespeare was a child, famous theater troupes often toured the countryside, cultivating his interest in drama. Around 1585, he left his hometown and went to London. He first worked as an oddball in the theater, and later became an actor, and then adapted and wrote scripts. In addition to participating in performances and screenwriting, Shakespeare also had extensive contact with society, often traveling to the court or the countryside with theater troupes. These experiences expanded his horizons and laid the foundation for his creations.
He wrote many plays and poems throughout his life. Thirty-seven plays, two long poems and one hundred and fifty-four sonnets have been handed down. In Shakespeare's early creation, his humanistic ideas and unique artistic style gradually took shape, which brilliantly reflected the colorful picture of British society. "Romeo and Juliet" reflects the conflict between the humanist love ideal and the feudal vices, and embodies Shakespeare's idea of ??personality liberation. "The Merchant of Venice" from the same period sharply satirized the extremely self-interested nature of loan sharks, which had profound social significance.
The peak of Shakespeare's creation is marked by the four major tragedies: "Hamlet", "Othello", "King Lear" and "Macbeth". Among them, "Hamlet" is regarded as the best tragedy in the world, and the protagonist Hamlet has become one of the most complex literary models. In his later years, Shakespeare turned to the creation of magical dramas, placing his hope in a utopian ideal world. His works include "Cymbeline" and "The Tempest".
The artistic characteristics of Shakespeare's dramas mainly lie in the perfect combination of vividness and richness of plots. The characters are highly typical and have rich and colorful personality traits. The ideas of the work are naturally expressed through plot characters. Shakespeare was also a master of language. He absorbed the language of the people, as well as ancient and contemporary literary languages, and used them with ease. In the play, prose is sometimes used and sometimes poetry is used, without any rigidity. Shakespeare was called "the soul of the times" by contemporary dramatists, and Marx also hailed Shakespeare as "the greatest dramatic genius."
Style of Shakespeare's works
Shakespeare's earliest plays were written in the style common at the time. He uses standard language to write, which often cannot be released naturally according to the needs of the character and plot. The verses are expanded upon, sometimes containing elaborate metaphors and clever ideas, and the language is often ornate and suitable for actors to read aloud rather than speak. Some critics believe that the solemn speeches in "Titus Andronicus" often hinder the plot; the lines in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" have been commented as artificial and unnatural.
Soon Shakespeare moved away from traditional style to his own characteristics. The opening soliloquy of Richard III pioneered the role of evil in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-aware soliloquies continue into the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play marks the transition from traditional to free style; Shakespeare combined both styles throughout his writing career, and Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the best example of this hybrid style. By the time he was writing "Romeo and Juliet," "Richard II" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare began to write in a more naturalistic style. He gradually turns his metaphors and symbols to the needs of the plot. Shakespeare's usual poetic form is blank verse, combined with iambic pentameter. In practice, this means that his poems are often unrhymed, with each line having 10 syllables, with emphasis on every second syllable when read aloud. The blank verse of his early works is very different from that of his later works. Verses are often beautiful, but sentences tend to start, pause, and end at the end of the line, which can lead to dullness. As Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and change the pattern. This technique unleashed new power and flexibility in the poetry of plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet.
After "Hamlet", Shakespeare's writing style changed more, especially the more emotional passages in later tragedies. British literary critic Andrew Cecil Bradley describes this style as "more compact, lively, varied, and structurally irregular, often intricate or elliptical." Later in his career, Shakespeare employed a number of techniques to achieve these effects, including line-spanning continuities, irregular pauses and endings, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. It is a challenge for the listener to fully understand the meaning. In the later legendary dramas, the plots changed in time and unexpectedly, creating a late poetic style characterized by the synthesis of long and short sentences, the arrangement of clauses together, the inversion of subjects and objects, and the omission of words, creating a natural effect.
The characteristics of Shakespeare's poetry are related to the actual effects of the theater. Like all playwrights of his time, Shakespeare dramatized stories by writers such as Francesco Petrarch and Raphael Holinshed. He adapted each plot to create several centers of attention while showing the audience as many pieces of the story as possible. Features of the design ensure that Shakespeare's plays can be translated into other languages, tailored, and interpreted loosely without losing the core plot. As Shakespeare's skills improved, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motives and a unique style of speaking. However, in his later works he retained the characteristics of his earlier style. In the later Romance plays, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasized theatrical effect.
The artistic characteristics of Shakespeare's creation can be summarized as follows:
First, he adheres to the principle of realism creation and believes that drama is a mirror that reflects life.
Secondly, pursue the natural performance theory and believe that acting should be real and avoid going too far.
Third, the plot is vivid and rich. There are often several intertwined and complex clues in a play, combining tragic and comic elements.
Fourth, a series of artistic images with distinctive personalities have been created. Such as Hamlet and Falstaff.
Fifth, the characters’ language is personalized. For example, Hamlet’s words are philosophical and poetic, the language of Polonius, the royal minister, is artificial, and Iago’s language is full of obscenities. According to computer statistics, Shakespeare created 29,066 words.
Shakespeare’s achievements and honors
Most of Shakespeare’s plays are based on old scripts, novels, chronicles or folklore, but he injects his own ideas into the rewriting, giving the old themes a new twist. Novel, rich and profound content. In terms of artistic expression, he inherited and developed the three major traditions of ancient Greek and Roman drama, medieval England and Renaissance European drama, and made creative innovations from content to form. His plays are not bound by three unities, break through the boundaries of tragedy and comedy, strive to reflect the true face of life, and deeply explore the inner mysteries of the characters, thus being able to create many typical characters with complex and diverse personalities, real and vivid images, and depict a broad, It is a colorful picture of social life and is famous for its broad, profound, poetic and philosophical nature. Shakespeare's plays were popular plays written for the British stage and audience at that time. Therefore, its characteristics such as the blending of tragedy and joy, the appreciation of elegance and vulgarity, the freedom of time and space, and its efforts to mobilize the audience's imagination to make up for the simplicity of the stage were criticized by classicists represented by Voltaire in the 18th century. It was arbitrarily deleted during the performance. It was not until the early 19th century that people began to realize the true value of Shakespeare's plays, through the elucidation of critics such as Coleridge and Hazlitt. However, Shakespearean opera performances at that time were still often incorporated into the five-act structure of the play. At the end of the 19th century, W. Poel and H. Granville Barker strongly opposed the spectacular tradition of Shakespearean theater performances at that time, and advocated the performance of Elizabethan theaters without scenery in order to restore its inherent characteristics.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Shakespeare's plays were introduced to Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and the Nordic countries, and then gradually spread to the United States and even all over the world. They had a huge and far-reaching impact on the development of drama in various countries and have become An important link and source of inspiration for world cultural development and exchange. China began to introduce and translate Shakespeare's plays at the beginning of this century. In 1902, students from St. John's College in Shanghai were the first to perform "The Merchant of Venice" in English. In 1978, the 11-volume "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" was published, which was fully revised and supplemented based on Zhu Shenghao's translation. According to incomplete statistics, China has 65 professional and amateur performance groups, operating in 5 languages: English, Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Cantonese, and in 6 forms: civilized drama, modern drama, opera, radio drama, ballet, and puppet show.* **Performed 21 Shakespeare plays, including most of Shakespeare's important works. Shakespeare's plays have become teaching materials in Chinese middle schools and universities, especially drama schools. The important roles in Shakespeare's plays have opened up a vast world for the training and improvement of Chinese actors.
Shakespeare left thirty-seven plays to the world, including some general plays that he co-wrote with others.
Shakespeare is second to none among all literary figures. Today few people talk about the works of Chaucer, Virgil, or even Homer, but if a Shakespeare play were to be performed, there would certainly be a large audience. Shakespeare's genius for coining words was unparalleled, and his words are often quoted—even by people who have never seen or read one of his plays. Moreover, his fame is not a flash in the pan. His works have brought much joy to readers and critics for nearly four hundred years. Since Shakespeare's works have withstood the test of time, it seems reasonable to assume that they will remain popular for many centuries to come.
When evaluating Shakespeare's influence, readers should consider that without him, there would be no works of his at all (of course, similar conclusions are suitable for every literary and artistic figure, but this factor is important when evaluating The influence of ordinary artists does not seem to be particularly important).
According to statistics, Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words.
It widely used folk language (such as folk songs, slang, ancient proverbs and humorous prose, etc.), paid attention to absorbing foreign vocabulary, and also made extensive use of metaphors, metaphors, and puns. It can be said to be the culmination of English at that time. Many sentences in Shakespeare's plays have become idioms, allusions and maxims in modern English. Relatively speaking, his early plays liked to use gorgeous and sonorous words and phrases; his later mature works appear to be more comfortable. He can not only use rich and diverse languages ??to express the characteristics of different characters appropriately and vividly, but also use simple and natural words and phrases to convey. Gripping emotions and thoughts.
Although Shakespeare wrote in English, he was a truly world-famous figure. Although English is not quite a world language, it is closer than any other language. Moreover, Shakespeare's works have been translated into many kinds of literature, and many countries read his works and staged his plays.
Shakespeare and World Book and Copyright Day: April 23 is a symbolic day in the field of world literature, because William Shakespeare died on this day in 1616. The UNESCO General Conference in Paris in 1995 chose this day to pay tribute to books and authors around the world; to encourage everyone, especially young people, to discover the joy of reading and to renew their appreciation for those who contribute to the advancement of human society and society. Show respect to those who have made irreplaceable contributions to cultural progress. In November 1995, the 28th General Conference of UNESCO adopted a resolution declaring April 23 each year as World Book and Copyright Day.
Evaluation of Shakespeare's characters
In the 17th century, Ben Johnson, a leading dramatist among his contemporaries, praised him as "the soul of the age." Said that he "does not belong to one era but to all generations." Dryden, a British classicist in the 17th and 18th centuries, believed that "Shakespeare has a heart that reaches the sky and can understand all characters and passions."
In the 19th century, after the rise of romanticism and realism, Shakespeare became popular in Europe Hugo, Stendhal and others held high the banner of Shakespeare and promoted the spirit of Shakespeare in their struggle against classicism. Hugo said, "The arrival of a genius like Shakespeare makes art, science, philosophy or the entire society look brand new. His brilliance shines on all mankind, from one end of the era to that end." Germany's turbulent movement also sang loudly. Shakespeare's hymn, marching with his banner. Goethe said: "The first page I read of him made me belong to him all my life; after reading the first part, I was like a blind man who was born, and a strange hand made my eyes see in an instant. Light? Thanks to the gods who gave me wisdom." Balzac, Dickensley, Pushkin, Turgenev, etc. all took Shakespeare's works as examples. Pushkin believed that Shakespeare had a great quality of being close to the people. Dubrolyubov regarded Shakespeare as "a ray of light in the dark kingdom" and said that he "pointed out several new stages of human development" and was "the most adequate representative of the highest stage of human understanding". His works "showed the The most complete ideal of morality." Belinsky has infinite admiration for Shakespeare. He wrote in "Literary Fantasy": "Shakespeare, the divine and sublime Shakespeare, knows all about hell, earth and heaven. He is the master of nature, who sees the pulse of the universe through the eyes of his inspiration. Every one of his plays is a microcosm of the world, including the entire present, past and future." Goethe, the great German poet, pointed out when talking about Shakespeare: "It makes Shakespeare's great heart feel. It is the things within our world that interest us: for although elements of magic such as prophecies, madness, nightmares, premonitions, omens, fairies and elves, ghosts, monsters and magicians, are also interspersed in due course. In his poetry, however, these illusory images are not the main ingredients in his works. The great foundation of these works is the reality and simplicity of his life, so everything that comes from his hands seems so innocent and solid."
Shakespeare's position in Marx's mind is also unique. No other writer can compare with it. In Marx's works, in terms of quantity alone, there are as many as three to four hundred references or references to Shakespeare. Therefore, some people say that Shakespeare was Marx's best companion from beginning to end in the scientific research process. He provided examples, models and historical content for Marx's scientific theory. He provided the prototype and trend of the development of capitalist society, and also provided a large number of image arguments for revolutionary theory. Even the beautiful ideals for the future of mankind coincide and are basically the same.
In the article "Landscape" written by Engels in his youth, he pointed out: "No matter where the plot in his script takes place? In Italy, France or Navarre,? In fact, what is shown to us is always He describes the hometown of eccentric civilians, smart teachers, and cute but eccentric women, merry England (English: Happy Britain); in short, you will see that these plots can only happen under the British sky, and only a few The characters of comedies such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" feel influenced by the South and its climate, just like the characters of "Romeo and Juliet".
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