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3 Conflicts between Virtuous and Evil Human Nature8
3.1 Contrast of virtues and vices in character construction8
3.2 Conflicts of virtues and vices in plot setting10
3.3 Shakespeare’s playwright skills in depicting virtues and vices10
4 Language Skills in Expression of Conflicts12
4.1 Rhetorical symbols as reflections of theme.13
4.2 Expression of conflicts in human nature14
5 Conclusion.16
Bibliography.18
1 Introduction
It is widely acknowledged that William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), an English writer, is one of the artistic giants in Renaissance Europe. During his lifetime, he worked as a poet, a playwright, and an actor. He was a productive writer, producing altogether 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and various short poems(Wells & Orlin,2003:163). He is remembered today as the greatest writer in the English language and one of the greatest dramatists of the world. In fact, Shakespeare made such a great contribution to literature that he is named as the “Muse on the Olympic Mountains of human literature”.
In the Western world, Shakespeare is ranked with Homer of Ancient Greece, Dante of Italy, and Goethe of Germany as the four greatest poets. To be fair, Shakespeare takes the lead in this group of four because his dramas are on the pinnacle in the history of Western dramas. Shakespearean dramas are comprehensive in scope, covering people from all walks of life, from the kings, aristocracy to the underclasses. He excelled in depicting human characters in his plays, paying special attention to the internal mentality of inpidual characters. Each character is vividly expressed, with his or her love and hate, joy and sorrow, and unique characteristics. He was also good at constructing a plot of a story. Almost each of his play undergoes a standard five step process of the beginning, the development, the complication, the climax and the end. What’s more, in Shakespearean plays, the plot is devised on multiple levels, threads, and perspectives. Consequently, the stories are dynamic and interesting.
Shakespeare exhibits both his humanist values and superb language skills in his play writing. First of all, Shakespearean dramas are full of humanistic spirits. All his work spares no effort to extol virtues of truth, goodness and beauty while it also forcefully criticizes vices in human nature. In Shakespearean dramas, the atmosphere and style of stories are usually expressed in strong conflictual situations. His doubt on humanity is reflected in impressive tragic human activities. And his exploration of and pursuit for the meaning of life is completed by mental activities and practical actions. Apart from his humanist spirit, Shakespeare also shows his language talent and thereby he has been become the most quoted writer in the English world. The difficulty to understand his works is more due to his use of rhetoric in his work, rather than to the use of old English. Shakespeare uses quite a lot of metaphor, puns, and oxymoron, making his work marvelous and also difficult to understand.
Besides, Shakespearean dramas span across a wide variety of literary genres, including romantic comedies, English history plays, tragedies, Roman plays, romances, comical and tragical, and non-dramatic poetry.(Wells &Orlin,2003:175). This is exceptional because one can hardly find any other writer in history of world literature, who has the mastery of a full range of genres in drama writing. In this sense, Shakespeare is really a genius. The history play is the tool used by young Shakespeare to enter the career as a playwright because history play was very popular on London stage at that time. Shakespeare and other dramatists of his time drew inspirations from ancient Western civilizations, by incorporating such elements as bloodiness, revenge, ghosts, prophecies, and the supernatural. In this regard, Shakespeare is highly regarded for his tragic plays.