“Its just Shakespeare’s house, no big deal.”
I’ve actually heard that phrase, if you can believe it. My
friend and I were in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and we were slightly lost—we found a
nice park, a church, and the theatre, but we couldn’t find the house the
Shakespeares lived in. She was ready to give up and go sit in a warm coffee
shop, which sounded like a great way to get out of the drizzle.
I convinced her
that it would be worth our time (I may have promised something important in
return, like a first born child or something), and after a little more
wandering, we found the house. Then she had the privilege of being present for
my English Major fan-girl moment.
The point of this, though, is that the small little house
built so long ago in that tiny little town is still important because one man
lived in it when he was growing up. Why?
Because he’s Shakespeare.
I think its so interesting that there are so many “big
names,” or recognizable people, that came out of the Renaissance. Shakespeare, Gutenberg, Machiavelli, Da
Vinci, Michelangelo, and the list goes on. I think this encompasses the whole
point of the period: The individual was becoming more important as the humanist
view emerged, and the period was being led in this direction (and others) by the
artists and the thinkers. All of these
people are creating something and adding something new to the world.
Shakespeare in particular made up a lot of new words, and in
doing so revolutionized the language. At
the same time, Francois Rebelais was doing the same thing to French, and Miguel
de Cervantes did the same with Spanish. I think that tells us something very
clearly about the period: there were too many new ideas and new experiences for
the languages. So that meant it was also
time for new words.
I like your post and I think it is interesting because Shakespeare is so important in our daily lives (whether we realize it or not) and yet people aren't sure exactly who he is (or was). Whenever I read about Shakespeare, I think about how people question whether is was really the same man who lived in Stratford-Upon-Avon or if it was someone entirely different. Granted, I don't know how logical these arguments are, but you would think that in a time when the individual was becoming more important, people would keep a better record of who Shakespeare actually was.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that sticks out to me when I think about Shakespeare and the Renaissance is how Shakespeare paralleled the Renaissance in his own focus on the individual. He would study individuals and try to determine how and why they acted the way they did. His plays hold so much of a place in history because of how accurate he was in portraying human emotion thanks to his observations.
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