quarta-feira, 11 de janeiro de 2017

A legacy of 400 years

Four hundred after his death, Shakespeare still is a world reference to all lovers of literature and dramaturgy, arousing curiosity about his true identity and literary Works carried out throughout the career

Hamlet, Othello, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet are only some of creations of the one of the greatest playwrights and poets of the world literature history. William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616, he wrote throughout of his life approximately 38 theater performances and 154 sonnets besides so many other writings. However, the author arouses doubts as the authorship of his works and his true identity, maybe by working, without losing quality, with literary genres different (comedy, tragedy, and historical pieces), as explains, professor at Universidade Paulista Cielo Festino, or by the human complexity put in  evidence when humans start to question their own existence.

This questioning man, released to knowledge in the Renaissance Period, is who inspired Shakespeare to adapt to the literature the longings that involved conflicts of identity and human existence. Welington Andrade, professor at Cásper Líbero College, tells that the Shakespeare’s contribution to literature was precisely help to shape this renascence man inside of the theater, taking up the old themes of Greek tragedy that inspired his theater performances.

According to professor and director of theater Tchello Ferraz, Shakespeare was important to raise new themes. Romeo and Juliet, for example, deals with love in a different way within the artistic space than it was in the social context whereas love was handled as a merchandise, a marriage portion to be purchased, explains Ferraz. Shakespeare “brought themes [to the theater] that were not spoken and this had a major impact on society”, stands out.

One of the best-known and most acclaimed works of the English bard is Hamlet. Conforming to Ferraz, as well as other Shakespeare’s characters, Hamlet has a conflicting human psychological construct that makes the public identify with a character hero who is not a hero, but human. For him, “Hamlet is not only a story of heroism but of philosophical questions, of reflecting about the essence, which transits between being and having, bringing this context to human reflection and showing that it is natural for humans to have weaknesses, so Shakespeare is admirable in Literature”. The Danish prince is able to organize more clearly than other characters of Shakespeare, explains Andrade, this renascence man of doubt, revenge, conscience, who is studious and intellectual, but who also acts in the ambit of palatial intrigues, of futile problems.

In the Renaissance, as reported by Festino, “the theater was one of the most popular artistic forms of the period because most people could not read" and the themes of the Shakespearean plays were understood by all types of audience, independent of social class. Besides that, explains Andrade, the theater had politician function because it was the place where people debated the public life as was the case in ancient Greece. “The theater in the period of Shakespeare is an extremely popular art, perhaps matching the Greeks at a time when the theater was like a kind of agora, public debate, and people rushed to theaters to discuss public life," says Andrade.

However, Pedro Granato, professor and director of theater, comments that this popularity and communication with public was losing itself over time. For him, the Shakespearean theater, consequently, ended up getting scholarly for people and so the play of a Midsummer Night's Dream, which Granato directs, was thought to be staged in streets and parks with the intention of rescuing the vivacity of Shakespeare's characters and their conflicts, bringing these conflicts to the public to get them into the story.


Shakespeare is not only admired by working with psychological human themes but also by being always actual and complete whereas addresses important themes that represent the society anywhere in the world, says Ferraz. Besides that, explains Granato, “Shakespeare is one of the most referenced writers and with most reinterpreted works of history, by the facility to work with an author who does not offend anyone and, at the same time, constructed plots that allow for numerous montages and interpretations”, because of that the Shakespearean work is very renovated, oxygenated, and transformed by the generations. Four centuries after his death, Shakespeare, as stated by Granato, is considered by many people “one of the most alive authors we have today."