Why is Shakespeare Universal?

It is a good occasion today to pay homage to the genius of William Shakespeare. He was born on April the 23rd, 1564. I have no qualms about confessing that I, being a Muslim and an Asian, am very strongly prejudiced in favour of the likes of Sheikh Saadi, Hafiz Shirazi, Maulana Roomi, Omar Khayam, Firdousi and Urfi. They enjoy the status and the stature of giants in the world of letters, and the traditions and standards of greatness they set run down to Allama Iqbal in the modern times. I remember when I was a student of English Literature nearly half a century back, I felt ill at ease, comparing Shakespeare with any of these wizards. But as I started reading the great bard and playwright of the Elizabethan age, I started cultivating doubts about my well-entrenched prejudices. Soon I came to the conclusion that ‘creative greatness’ had no race, religion or ethnicity. It was universal. My fascination with the poetry Shakespeare wrote, with the characters he created, and with the human strengths and frailties he harnessed in his plays, has never diminished all these years and decades. Let it be acknowledged that nothing like Shakespeare has ever graced any civilization. As a poet, he might well have been surpassed by quite a few, but as a teller of tales, as a writer of plays and as a creator of characters, he has no parallel in history. And his combined identity as a poet-playwright is simply unsurpassable. He is Homer, Sophochles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Plutarch combined in one. The characters he created are universal, and can be found in every society, and in every field of human activity, ranging from commerce to politics. The ’emotions’ he captured in his writings are so familiar that each one of us can feel the presence of Shakespeare inside. Look at the wide range of characters he created! Romeo & Juliet. Othello & Ophelia. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Antony & Cleopatra. Hamlet and Horatio. Julius Caesar and Brutus. And scores of others. Let me recall here some of the immortal lines he wrote and his characters spoke. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space / Kingdoms are clay (Antony in Antony and Cleopatra) ——- That I might sleep out this great gap of time / My Antony is away. (Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra) ——– Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have / Immortal longings in me (Cleopatra). ——– All the world’s stage / And all the men and women merely players: / They have their exits and entrances / And one man in his time plays many parts (As you like it). ——— The head is not more native to the heart (Hamlet). ——— Neither be a borrower nor a lender be; / For loan oft loses both itself and friend. (Hamlet) ——– To be, or not to be; that is the question: / Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles / And by opposing, end them? (Hamlet). ———- Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me (Henry IV) ———- Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily (Henry IV). ———- There is a history in all men’s lives (Henry IV). ———- If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me / I had it from my father (Henry VIII) ———- Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: / By that sin fell the angels (Henry VIII). ——— So every bondman in his own hand bears / The power to cancel his captivity (Julius Caesar). ———- Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears / I come to bury Caesar, not praise him./ The evil that men do lives after them / The good is oft interred with their bones. (Julius Caesar). ———- If you have tears, prepare to shed them now – (Julius Caesar). ———- But yesterday, the word of Caesar might/Have stood against the world; now lies he there / And none so poor to do him reverence (Julius Caesar). ———- How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child (King Lear). ———- Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand (Macbeth). ———– Why should I pay the Roman fool, and die / On my own sword (Macbeth). ———– God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man (Merchant of Venice). ———— The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was (Midsummer Night’s Dream). How poor are they that have not patience! / What wound did ever heal but by degrees? (Othello). ———— Long live Shakespeare!
24-04-2008