ILARIA T.

During the Summer I knew I wanted to do something special to raise awareness on the importance of Literature, and in particular of William Shakespeare, by digging deeper into a social issue, of course not in a banal way! There has been a debate on whether Shakespeare’s Drama is still relevant nowadays: the various opinions are extremely controversial... However I came up with a conclusion: Shakespearean Drama is definitely still relevant nowadays, and here are the main reasons why...

Firstly, the great playwright deals with a huge amount of fascinating themes that hide secret issues that he found at the time, but can help us to highlight and understand some issues we still face today. They can be extremely relatable! They definitely are timeless.

Secondly the Great Bard of Avon invented some expressions we still use nowadays: he helps us to enrich our vocabulary and our minds.

Last but not least his characters are extremely compelling, especially the ones we find in tragedies. In my view it’s hard to create characters that are intriguing and make you closer to the plot by communicating strong morals and values.

We can surely state that sometimes this author can be even more current than contemporary writers, because of his fascinating themes, characters and expressions!

Firstly, the enormous quantity of themes he was able to deal with and analyse is breathtaking! I didn’t even notice before, how many of them are still relevant to these days. Through the presentations my classmates and I are doing, I was able to grasp some new information and dig deeper into these engaging issues and striking core concepts. The ones that particularly CAUGHT my attention are into the plays my classmate Martina dealt with: “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, a reflection on modern Patriarchy. Here Shakespeare deals with the themes of Patriarchy, equity and women’s power with such a critical way.

And the play Marianna dealt with: “king Lear” and the struggle between parents and children, which is the most complex bond ever because children want to be independent and have their own ideas and sometimes this is hard to accept for parents.

These two issues are actually timeless and the author was able to focus and communicate them in such an intriguing way and through captivating stories. Of course there are plenty more!

Secondly, Shakespeare is still relevant because he invented some expressions we still use nowadays such as “the world is mine oyster” pronounced by the character of Pistol in the Merry Wives of Windsor, which means that we can do whatever we want with our lives. Or “ Vanish into thin air” in Othello, that means: to disappear without a trace. Believe it or not, he invented over 1700 words we still use nowadays! This is insane! How can people tell he is not relevant and not part of our daily lives if we constantly quote him?

Lastly, William Shakespeare was a master in creating a huge amount of intriguing characters: rich in different personalities, traits and ideas, with the aim to convey a message and to make the audience more involved and passionate about his scripts. It’s also amazing to see how much effort he did put into the formation on his main characters and how accurate he is in their descriptions. They never go out of date, since their qualities are timeless. For instance the character of Macbeth is extremely relatable for how ambitious he is or in Hamlet the protagonist makes us dig deeper into the human development in order to teach us that to change ourselves we firstly must discover ourselves.

The process that lead me to the conclusion was pretty tough since it was extremely rough and arduous to find reliable sources. Luckily I was able enough to come across the most amazing article that dealt with my questions/ concepts. The author of this article was absolutely brilliant! Even though the article was a bit redundant and endless, I perfectly understood every single aspect of it and of the play. Imagine what I would have done, if I hadn’t found it!