William Shakespeare - Literary Essay
December 29, 2012
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date".
Shakespeare is arguably the most famous writer of all time. His work is still read today because the themes of his tragedies, comedies, and sonnets are still relevant and timeless. Between his birth and death 52 years later he wrote 36 plays and 154 sonnets, leaving behind evidence of his ingenious mind, clever sense of humour and a immense sensitivity to human emotion. His work managed to capture practically every aspect of the human experience: its darkest debauchery, its most amazing joy, and all the laughs, tears, and dirty jokes in between. It has been 400 years since Shakespeare's death, and his plays are still continually performed, and are quoted more than any other work of any other author of all time.
His plays have been examined and evaluated by critics trying to figure out and explain their enduring appeal, the critics are left not finding any set of intellectual or clearly formulated ideas as to what. Shakespeare's plays tell fascinating stories, and are rich with complex characters whose lips are brimming with eloquent, vivid speech. It has been often said that Shakespeare's characters are neither completely good or completely evil, that it is in their flawed, contradictory nature that makes them so memorable. Shakespeare had a incredible vocabulary, and an ability to tell a story, no matter what the topic, or how incredibly sad or even perverse that topic was.
Even Hollywood has jumped on the Shakespeare train and has produced at least 250 films based on Shakespeare's plays, characters or plots from his plays. Of Hamlet alone, there has been close to 100 movie and TV adaptions made since 1907. An example of this is the movie Strange Brew (1983) which was inspired by Hamlet. Even Disney has adapted ideas from Shakespeare plays, The Lion King is based on Hamlet just with more songs and less death.
There has also much heated debate whether William Shakespeare was in fact the true authour, or just the name used by the true authour. This debate, is said to have been started by American writer Delia Salter Bacon, who published The philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded in 1857. Bacon argued that Lord Francis Bacon, as well as many others, where the ones who infact had wrote Shakespeare's plays. This assumption sparked many other people to think this also, and before long even Queen Elizabeth I herself was thought to be one of the authours of Shakespeare work.
I am not sure whether Shakespeare truly did write his own work, or if other people wrote it under his name, but one thing is for sure, It still lives on today, and it will continue to live on a hundred years from now. Shakesperae did not become the famous authour he is today while he was alive, it was after his death his work sparked attention of the world. It is this very reason why the conspiracy theory came to light, because Shakespeare was unable to ever prove differently.