SHAKESPEARE
AS DRAMATIST
By; Jawad Ahmed Muhammad Shahzad
and
Sagar Noor
Contents………
Shakespeare as dramatist
Shakespearean Drama Features
Conclusion
Shakespeare as dramatist
The facts about Shakespeare are interesting in
themselves, but they have little to do with his
place in literature. Shakespeare wrote his plays to
give pleasure. It is possible to spoil that pleasure
by giving too much attention to his life, his time,
and the problem of figuring out what he wrote.
He can be enjoyed in book form, in the theater, or
on television without our knowing any of these
things.
Some difficulties stand in the way of this enjoyment.
Shakespeare wrote more than 350 years ago.
The language he used is naturally somewhat different from the
language of today.
Besides, he wrote in verse.
Verse permits a free use of words that may not be understood by
some readers.
JAWAD’S TURN…………..
Shakespearean Drama Features
Shakespeare wrote 37 plays in about 24 years. His plays were written for
performance.
His dramas can be divided into histories, tragedies and comedies.
The protagonists in the early plays are historical figures, including rulers
of England.
His play Hamlet considered to be the epitome of Renaissance in which
the protagonist achieves his perfection only after death.
His play Richard-III is the epitome of Machiavellian evil in which Shakespeare
balances between the role of king and the role of the man.
As the dramatist of Renaissance Age, Shakespearean plays focus on the man,
exploring his weaknesses, depravities, flows etc.
All the characters ranging from soldiers to king speak English.
His plays have been divided into five acts. However, the division was imposed on the
Shakespearean play by Nicholas Rowe; one of the first editors of Shakespeare.
Most of the Shakespearean plays are problem plays in which the playwright do not
provide any solutions and audience are supposed to decide.
Shakespeare, in his plays, goes into the depth of human behaviour and redefines the
geography of the human soul.
His final plays move against the wave of Jacobean Theatre that focused on blood
tragedy and social comedy.
One finds the traces of colonialism in his plays. e.g. In The Tempest Prospero
enslaves Caliban who is the native of that island.
SAGAR’S TURN………
Conclusion…………
Shakespeare’s dramas were performed in theatres and people were always very
anxious to see the performances of his dramas. He had provided his audience all
pleasurable emotions and enlarged our knowledge and understanding of human
psyche.
Moreover Shakespeare had a marvelous understanding of human life and human
psychology. The stage on which Shakespeare worked on assisted him to develop as
a dramatist. He developed through his early experimentation in plotting and
adaptation. He wrote many historical plays and these chronicle plays he wrote were
not stable and they showed the histories of different periods of time.
It should be noted that he is more popular in our time than he was in his own,
however. He is known world-wide for all his plays, poems, and sonnets that he
produced in just a few short years during his writing career.
The development of Shakespeare as a dramatist is associated with various
things. One of these things is the public of his time and his inheritance of a
dramatic technique.
According to my research, he has been said to be one of the greatest dramatist
of all time.
