The birth and death of a person are literally a lifetime apart. They are as polarised in their significance as they are in their chronology – beginning and end, joy and sorrow, arrival and departure.

It is therefore with a sense of this ambiguity that today while celebrating the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth, we are also commemorating the 398th anniversary of his death.

His works give the same sense of duality that April 23 does. Too many of us are quick to brush off Shakespeare as being boring. Sometimes, a mere mention of his name is reminiscent of end-less struggles with memorising long passages of what were then, to us, meaningless and useless conglomerations of words.

What we tend to forget is that Shakespeare wrote for different audiences. The Globe Theatre, host to so many of his plays, would regularly have the uneducated penny groundlings, and the seated nobility in the outer stall circle, sharing the enjoyment of the same play.

The language, plot and sub-plots and the characters were intended and crafted in a manner to ensure that the play as a whole functioned on two levels, high and low, reaching two different audience types using the same medium. Quite an achievement for the playwright.

His 37 tragic, comical and historical plays, his 154 sonnets and two long poems have given so much to the English language.

Most of our everyday sayings – “what’s in a name”, “hearts and minds”, “the stuff that dreams are made of”, “laughing stock”, and even the title to the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers and so many more – owe their origin to one or other of his works.

Notwithstanding this, we still tend to subscribe to the opinion that his English is difficult and hard to follow. His ability to play with words has left audiences enthralled for centuries now, and this is probably the greatest acknowledgement to the universality of his works. They are not time-bound, and the validity of the arguments and situations in his plays, from the mercenary filialness of Lear’s daughters to the evil envy-driven Iago, to the juxtaposition of Mark Antony’s and Brutus’s speeches, Shakespeare managed to portray with his words the human condition.

Harold Bloom, the Yale and Harvard scholar of note, ambitiously described him as having “invented the human”, and with each new reading of any of his plays this description becomes ever more realistic.

In film we have seen the adaptation of his works into a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and period settings. The material is all there in the way he first issued it, but yet it is ready for moulding and transformation at the hands of contemporary producers and directors, who over the years have helped his works metamorphose so successfully.

It is impressive to note that these works, which have become the cornerstone of classical education in English literature, were created by one who himself had no university education. His genius was natural and not schooled, and yet his understanding and portrayal of the complexity of human nature knows no equal. If speech is man’s greatest show on earth, then Shakespeare is undoubtedly the greatest showman.

William Shakespeare might not have been born great but he definitely died great

He used words like Michalengelo used paints and marble, and Mozart used musical notes.

Through his intricate weaving of wisdom through words, he survives as our contemporary today, almost 400 years after his death.

Irrespective of the many theories about his identity, whether he is one person or more, we have his body as evidence – the body of works which we have learnt to appreciate and enjoy as a complete set.

Perhaps the most appropriate words to give him due tribute on this day are best left to himself, as an attempt by anybody else would be a poor imitation.

Malvolio, the parody of puritan behaviour in Twelfth Night, reads the following lines from a letter he finds: “In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.”

William Shakespeare might not have been born great, but having achieved greatness in his lifetime, he definitely died great, and lives on great, through every reading, every performance and every interpretation or adaptation of his works.

Martin Bugelli is a graduate of English literature and presents a weekly radio programme on Campus FM about Shakespeare’s works.

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