As there are more weeks in the year than there are Shakespeare plays, about every month or so, my weekly post will be not be about a specific play but something else related to Shakespeare. Today, as the first of these posts, I want to talk about one simple question:
Why Shakespeare?
Part of the reason that I decided to do this project was to figure out the answer to this very question. I love Shakespeare, obviously, but what is it that makes him so unique, important, and brilliant?
I don’t think there is one single or one right answer to that, and I don’t know how my thoughts about this may change over the course of the year, but there are a few things that come to mind now. None of them are necessarily unique to Shakespeare, but this is my view at the beginning of this project.
What it all boils down to is this: Shakespeare is writes beautifully with characters that bring to life experiences and emotions that are universal and remain relevant. His works lend themselves to an infinite number of valid interpretations. This means that you can read the same play (or even just a small set of lines) over and over again and get something different out of it every time.
This is how I would summarize the way that I think about Shakespeare. I am sure that I will grasp his work much better over the course of the year, and I hope that by the project’s conclusion, I will be a lot closer to understanding the answer to this question.
