Expression mingles

Shakespeare’s power as an artist in expression mingles throughout with the tenderness of his thoughts and feelings, so it is not accidental that he won the complete admiration of Beethoven, who himself expressed precisely these same qualities-power, tenderness-in his music.
Shakespeare, then, is of such a magnitude that if he had written in Tibetan we would have been forced-those of us who have cultural and creative aspirations ourselves-to approach his work in translation. Some might even make the effort to learn Tibetan, if only not to miss the poetry which translation inevitably impairs. But Shakespeare has done us the service of writing in English, so the question is merely: how to get to grips with him?

The moral force

In spite of Shakespeare’s enormous range, throughout his work there runs one binding link. Astoundingly, Tolstoy failed to see what this link was and dismissed Shakespeare as amoral, someone who was just putting on a show, an unsurpassed show, which, to Tolstoy, made it worse. He failed to see the moral force that runs through all Shakespeare’s plays, and that can best be defined by a word -Shakespeare himself so frequently uses to denote the highest quality he can see in a person: noble. And in the frequent use of another word we can detect too another clear mark of his approval: gentle.

'A Lass'

The word Shakespeare uses ultimately is ‘a lass’.

" Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies
A lass unparalleled. "

He sees through the regal trappings, the worldliness, the sensuality to the original girl underneath. With ‘lass’ he gives, as it were, a biography in one word. Always this audacious use of words: he plays the English language like-a master organist.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, nondescript little boozer gone to seed, midnight. His companion, Sir Toby Belch, mentions that a certain girl adores him. After a little silence, Sir Andrew murmurs, ‘I was adored once too.’ With two small words, ‘once too’, Shakespeare again illuminates a whole life, creates a human being.

What is death?

What is death? With Shakespeare’s metaphor-so totally unexpected, so totally untramelled by any preconcept, so apt-we have an immediate encounter with his genius. It is a ‘lover’s pinch’. This is Cleopatra, of course, after Anthony’s death. She wants to join him, so death becomes ...

. . . a lover’s pinch,
Which hurts and is desir’d.

Notice how Shakespeare has used a single phrase for what in effect is a double-layered metaphor. He could have said that death is something sweet. But this would have excluded that inevitable element of pain. He could therefore have added another idea suggesting this pain. But in his genius he finds that one idea which in itself contains the two concepts. Nor could the vocabulary be more appropriate for the whole relationship between Cleopatra and Anthony.

Shakespeare: the greatest creative writer

No book on creative writing should fail to consider Shakespeare, who is the greatest creative writer of all time. ‘Next to God,’ wrote Balzac, ‘Shakespeare has created most.’ No one has ever dealt with such poetry, such characterization, such dramatic skill, with so many different things. From the gravity of the classical Greeks to the frivolity of the French farce; from Sapphic lyricism to Ibsenian irony; from the Marlovian mighty line to Chaplinesque slap-stick; from murderous horror to domestic backbiting; from the heroic to the mock-heroic; from the palace to the whorehouse; lust, love, nobility, greed, timidity, indomitable courage, people of all ages and conditions-no other writer known to literature has a span like this. Nor is it merely his immense scope, it is how he handles it too.