TEXT D Given Shakespeare’s
popularity as an actor and a playwright and his conspicuous financial success,
it was not surprising that jealous rivals began to snipe at his work. In later
centuries, a common charge was that Shakespeare did not invent many of his plots
but took his basic stories from well-known English history and old legends
instead. It is quite true that these sources have been used by
many English dramatists. But what Shakespeare did to the common facts is wholly
remarkable: he invented new characters, transformed old ones, created a gallery
of kings, maidens, courtiers, warriors and clowns of startling psychological
depth. He rearranged familiar tales with an extraordinary gift for drama,
comedy and fantasy. And over all this Work, so rich with soaring language and
glistening poetry, he cast an unprecedented mood of grandeur and glory. Never
had the theatre been showered with such lyricism and passion, such insight and
profundity. But how could a man of so little education produce
such masterful works Did Shakespeare, in fact, write the plays Through the
centuries, some have suggested Francis Bacon was the "real" Shakespeare. But the
mystery-author theorists conveniently ignore an indisputable fact: numerous
contemporaries stated that William Shakespeare of Stratford and London was the
author of all but a few plays in the present canon. Ben Jonson knew him well, as
did theatre owners, and the actors who signed the validating foreword to the
definitive First Folio (1623) edition of his work. That
Shakespeare was not "educated" means only that he had not endured the dry
curriculum of Oxford or Cambridge in those days. Shakespeare was, in fact, a
wide reader with an inquisitive mind and a confidence in his own perceptions.
John Deyden observed: "He was naturally learned" And Shakespeare certainly
"read" tile nature of human behavionr-male and female, monarchs and jesters,
peasants and buffoons. It was his imaginative range, his jewelled
language, his skill as a storyteller-rather than his erudition-that made
him the wonder of the world. In one revolutionary step, the
dramatist from Avon broke away from the stereotyped morality plays that
dominated the English stage. He preached no sermons; he offered no pious
warnings; he treated good, evil, virtue and sin as would a psychologist, not a
priest. His cool objectivity in rendering human passions has incurred the wrath
of many a righteous soul, and even the great Samuel Johnson chastised
Shakespeare for writing "without any moral purpose". It was
precisely this aspect of Shakespeare, this relentless analytic stance,
embroidered with poetry of luminous beauty , that ushered in what can, without
exaggeration, be called the modern theatre. Shakespeare
destroyed the reigning, stultifying over-simplifications of Elizabethan drama.
He dared to show heroes with flaws and doubts and unheroic impulses; heroines
whose chastity was at war with their carnality; petty and fearful kings; queens
who were monsters, and princes who were charlatans; villains overwhelmed by
guilt or even tempted by virtue-in short, a parade of characters caught, as men
and women truly are, in the conflict of emotions and the paradoxes of human
dilemmas. What is common among the characters in Shakespeare’s drama
A.They reflect the people in reality as well as in his dreams. B.They often have to make hard choices as to what to do. C.They are caught in the conflict of emotions and feel ashamed of themselves. D.All of the above.