30) Shakespeare's importance or insignificance in the history of literature Written by Rainer: rainer.lehrer@yahoo.com Learn languages (via Skype): Rainer: + 36 20 549 52 97 or + 36 20 334 79 74

------------------------------

Shakespeare's importance or insignificance in the history of literature Who does not know "To be or not to be, that’s the question!"? But who knows "Purpose is just the slave to memory, of violent birth but poor validity."? (Decisions are difficult to make, and usually we don't keep those promises more than five minutes, only in our memory, they live on as failure.) Was that the importance of this writer in the history of literature? Probably not! In Shakespeare's time, there still were rules for theatre plays established by Aristotle. For example: the unity of time and place. This meant that a play that lasted 3 hours could only include an action, which in reality too took only 3 hours. Part of the action could therefore not take place in Sparta and then in Athens. Shakespeare just didn't care. He broke with it, but without inventing a new system. How much more cleverly did Corneille circumvent this problem in his work: "L’illusion comique". An old man wanted to know what his son, whom he had not seen for 20 years, was doing and where he was at that moment. Therefore, he went to a fortuneteller who showed him all this in a giant crystal ball in which actors played these scenes. Corneille has therefore exceeded the limits without openly violating the rules. The Englishman simply translated many things from Italian (Romeo and Juliet etc.), stole from Titus Livius (Cleopatra and Antonius) or imitated (many Henry and Richard dramas) as a reappraisal of the history of the 100 Years' War, and some stories (Hamlet) borrowed from Celtic or Germanic legends. And between Edmund Spencer and the Victorian period, he was one of the few English writers in England. So, Shakespeare behaving like an elephant in the china shop, the only writer at the right time and his mother tongue also happening to rise to a world language? Until the time of Lessing, who wrote his “Hamburgische dramaturgie” in 1756, there was no real German theatre due to Germany’s political fragmentation (Germany looked politically like a patchwork quilt, which made cultural unity impossible). At that time, English theatre groups appeared on many German stages and influenced the country's literature, for example Schiller's “Wallenstein” etc. Back to list!

-----------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------

Back to Hungarian portal! Back to English portal! Back to German portal! Back to Spanish portal! Back to French portal! Back to Russian portal!