M S Tyagi
New Delhi (The Hawk): On Sunday, the world will mark the 459th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth. India will take note because from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Shillong to Nashik, the Bard is integral part of our lives.
Who has not heard of William Shakespeare? His 54 Sonnets are the invaluable gifts to the generations of English school children, and his 38 plays have been performed in hamlets, villages cities and metropolises for some 400 years. Over the course of his 20 year career as a playwright, William Shakespeare wrote tragedies and comedies that capture a range of the human experience greed, lust, blood, ambition, betrayal and braggadocio.
The most famous of all English playwrights, Shakespeare was born in Startford-Upon-Avon on 23rd April 1564. William's father John was a wealthy merchant and a respectable member of community within the small warcikshire town. It appears of John's business interests may have taken a turn for worse when William was is his early teens, as William failed to follow his father into the family business.
When William was only 18 year old, he was married with Anne Hathway. Anne was 26 at the time and very, very shortly after the wedding, their daughter Susanna was born. Two year later Anne gave birth to twins, Hamlet and Judith . Shekespeare went to London and Joined a company of players in 1586. He began to compose his own plays and his plays became very popular. His plays were liked even by Queen Elizabeth I.
Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist not only of English but in the whole Scenario the Literary world. No mode of dramatic writing was untouched by him. He wrote comedies, tragedies, farces, tragi-comedies, histories and romances with equal success. He has not only attempted in the field of drama but also he has given 154 sonnets and some other long poems which show his super human genius. His age is called Golden Era of English literature.
Shakespeare's plays have been translated in different languages through the country. Now-a-days number of events and characters connected to his plays have become part and parcel of our life. Shakespeare lovers agree that reinterpreted of his plays have made the Bard acceptable right again, notably Gulzar's 'Angoor', which was based on 'A comedy of Errors' and vishal Bhandway's 'Omkara', Which was based on 'Othello'. Mumbai-based playwright Ramu Ramnathan Compared the work of English Bard to the 'Ramayana' and the 'Mahabharat'. "Shakespeare is a bit like that. His stories are told and retold and nobody ever gets tired of them. The characters are eternal and that's why it's easy to locate them in any situation'', he says. Small wonder that phrases like a 'proud of flesh' What's in a name, 'to be or not to be' and play titles such as 'Much Ado About Nothihg' and 'As you like it', have become part of our daily vocabulary. The heroine in male disguise, in 'The Merchant of Venice' and young lovers caught between warrying families (Romeo and Juliet) regularly feature in Indian Cinema. M.S. Tyagi, the English lecturer of U.P. based Hindu Inter College, Chandpur says that Shakespeare's literature is evergreen. The incidents, facts, plots, themes and characters described in the plays of William Shakespeare still stand the test of human life. U.P. English Scholars Association, District Bijnor pays heartfelt tribute to this great personality on his 459th birth anniversary.