问答题

Shakespeare

For any Englishman, there can never be any discussion as to who is the world"s greatest poet and greatest dramatist. Only one name can possibly suggest itself to him: that of William Shakespeare. Every Englishman has some knowledge, however slight, of the work of our greatest writer. All of US use words, phrases and quotations from Shakespeare"s writings that have become part of the common property of the English-speaking people. Most of the time we are probably unaware of the source of the words we use, rather like the old lady who was taken to see a performance of Hamlet and complained that "it was full of well-known proverbs and quotations!"
Shakespeare, more perhaps than any other writer, made full use of the great sources of the English language. Most of US use about five thousand words in our normal employment of English; Shakespeare in Iris works used about twenty-five thousand! There is probably no better way for a foreigner (or an Englishman!) to appreciate the richness and variety of the English language than by studying the various ways in which Shakespeare used it. Such a study is well worth the effort (it is not, of course, recommended to beginners), even though some aspects of English usage, and the meaning of many words, have changed since Shakespeare"s day.
It is paradoxical that we should know comparatively little about the life of the greatest English author. We know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon, and that he dies there in 1616. He almost certainly attended the Grammar School in the town, but of this we cannot be sure. We know he was married there in 1582 to Anne Hathaway and that he has three children, a boy and two girls. We know that he spent much of his life in London writing his masterpieces. But this is almost all that we do know.
However, what is important about Shakespeare"s life is not its incidental details but its products, the plays and the poems. For many years scholars have been trying to add a few facts about Shakespeare"s life to the small number we already possess and for an equally long time critics have been theorizing about the plays. Sometimes, indeed, it seems that the poetry of Shakespeare will disappear beneath the great mass of comment that has been written upon it.
Fortunately this is not likely to happen. Shakespeare"s poetry and Shakespeare"s people (Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, Falstaff and all the others) have long delighted not just the English but lovers of literature everywhere, and will continue to do so after the scholars and commentators and all their works have been forgotten.