Shakespeare`s reputation as the greatest English writer comes from his great work. Shakespeare wrote about every aspect of human experience in his plays. His plays include comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances. We often think we know William Shakespeare very well. Certainly, we can plunge into the atmosphere of incredible and unbelievable things, reading Shakespeare`s plays. But it doesn`t mean that we know the writer quite well. It is not enough only to know Shakespeare`s poems and plays as individual texts; we have to understand them in relation to one another, and in relation to other literature, and drama of the period in which they were produced. Reading William Shakespeare`s plays is, among other pleasures, an exercise in historical linguistics. The typographical appearance of Shakespeare`s plays and poems resemble that of modern printed works. Shakespeare`s texts are recognizable and graspable.
Shakespeare seems very close to us. His phrases and quotations have become so familiar to us that it is sometimes with a start that we realize how many of our everyday expressions were first minted in the fertile and fruitful mind. When we utter a clich? as “one fell swoop” or a phrase “to be, or not to be”, whether we recognize it or not we are quoting Shakespeare. Shakespeare also expanded our visual horizons. In every nation that has a dramatic or literary tradition Shakespeare is the playwright whose works are most frequently performed, the poet whose writings furnish the most accessible source of allusion.
Shakespeare is a part of us, as a literary model or as a universal language. And because he is so central to our lives, sooner or later we`ll feel a desire to know and understand him better. Shakespeare`s plays were translated into at least sixty-eight languages. Can you imagine this? It says to us he is popular around the world and he is “in the hearts of people”. So, we still remember Shakespeare because of his talent, language, and imagination. And these find place in his plays.
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