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."
