3 Review(s)

Dramas and Sonnets of William Shakespeare Vol. 1 is helpful to every learner of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) who, doubtless, saw himself as merely another professional man of the theatre who moved almost casually from play-acting to playwriting. And indeed, he was very much a man of his time, a man of the Elizabethan theatre, who learnt to exploit brilliantly the stagecraft, the acting, and the pub­lic taste of his day. It happens very rarely in the history of literature that a craftsman who has acquired perfect control of his medium, masterly ease in handling the techniques and conventions of his day, is also a universal genius of the highest order, combining with his technical proficiency a unique ability to render experience in poetic language and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of hu­man psychology. Man of the theatre, poet and expert in the human passions, Shakespeare has appealed equally to those who admire the art with which he renders a story in terms of the acted drama or the insight with which he presents states of mind and complex­ities of attitude or the unsurpassed brilliance he shows in giving conviction and a new dimension to the utterances of his characters through the poetic speech he puts in their mouths. It is a remark­able combination of qualities. Yet he was no poetic genius descending on the theatre from above, but a working dramatist who found himself in catering for the public theatre of his day.