All the literature’s a realm and he’s the king !

My tryst with Shakespeare started long back — I distinctly remember myself reading out loud the lines of ‘Mark Antony’ in a dingy classroom in 9th standard where Julius Caesar play read-acting was being witnessed by an audience of size little over fifty.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar … The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it …
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all; all honorable men)

To be honest , I was more busy focusing on my rhetorical and elocutionary skills while delivering the lines rather than the underlying meaning . The epiphany only came much later after 12th standard when I watched Julius Caesar (1970) starring Charlton Heston as Marc Antony. The speech truly moved me to tears and anger much like the original audience would have I assume— the emotionally sapping ode reeking of love , sarcasm , friendship and patriotism was an absolute delight to listen to again.

The Guinness Book of Records lists 410 feature-length film and TV versions of William Shakespeare’s plays as having been produced, making Shakespeare the most filmed author ever in any language.

In 2003 , a once music composer during his early years in industry who hailed from a small town in Uttar Pradesh — Vishal Bhardwaj — came up with the adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth set against the backdrop of Mumbai underworld. Titled Maqbool , urdu for accepted, the celluloid was critically acclaimed albeit not a box office success among Indian audience. *deep sigh*
Maqbool’s failure is a perfect instance of everything that’s wrong with Indian cine-goers but I guess that discussion should be reserved for some other time .

Anyway , moving on , just 3 years later came Omkara ,adapted from Shakespeare’s Othello which went on to grab even Francis Ford Coppola’s attention. The dark theme and strong language worked like charm and the movie was a box office success. So much so was the influence that a particular track “Beedi” was used as the theme tune to a Brazilian TV soap opera .

Finally the trilogy was completed with the much awaited adaptation of sweet revenge tale , Hamlet. Titled after the lead character much like its inspiration , Haider , was set during the 1990s Kashmir insurgency . It went on to taste the sweet fruits of success and dominated the National Film Awards.

“In all of his work — the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems — Shakespeare uses 17,677 words: Of those, 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare.”

He also inspired modern terms commonly used in the twenty-first century: the term “swag” came from swagger that was in HENRY V, ACT II.

“An’t please your majesty, a rascal that swaggered with me last night.” — Williams

This ‘addiction’ to Shakespeare leaves me ‘bedazzled’ — not ‘jaded’ or ‘gloomy’ — and it is indeed ‘monumental’ and ‘unreal’ to think of that influence of this historical figure continues to ‘dawn’ upon our lives to date. ‘Exposure’ to his works ‘arouses’ emotions of ‘tranquil’ ‘moonbeam’.

All the world’s a stage ,
And all the men and women merely players;

This monologue that goes on to describe the seven stages of of man: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and old transcends generations and will still be recited in classrooms and remembered by folks in centuries to come.

No one gets to be legend without a controversy . Our gem is no different . A 2001 historical drama movie , Anonymous , directed by none other than
the disaster-movie-specialist , Roland Emmerich , explores this dissension : the movie is a fictionalized version of the life of Edward de Vere
who is portrayed as true author of William Shakespeare’s plays. The movie gives support to the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship.

Last but not the least , a small tribute to Shakespeare with few of his commonly-used-now phrases expressed via pop culture .