English Literature students too (who may have read the original plays), cannot claim familiarity. Most of them are caught up in famous critical interpretations of the work rather than the work itself!

A popular joke that used to do the rounds in our literature classes truly illustrates the state of Shakespeare studies in colleges in India and abroad. The joke was–if Shakespeare were to attend classes on Shakespeare, he would be the only one to fail the year end examination as he would be bewildered with the interpretations of his text!

Having said all this, what kind of introduction to Shakespeare is this post going to offer? Well, to use the cliched phrase, let us begin at the beginning and re-introducte/introduce (as the case may be) ourselves to the bard and his works in very general terms.  Perhaps with the next posts we can worm our way into the heart of the bard?

Shakespeare was a man who understood mankind. He understood the impulses of the people around him in near absolute terms. In fact, his plays underline the universal truth that “human nature never changes”.  Love, hate, anger, jealousy, lust, greed, betrayal (and all the shades of emotions in between) spring forth with the force and energy of yore in the hearts of men and women eternally. So, why should the characters in his plays be any different? He represented man (and woman) as he found him (her).

Therefore, it is not surprising that Shakespeare’s comedies are tragically comic and his tragedies are comically tragic! He laughs at the follies of men and is saddened by the consequences of their folly.  Antonio or Bassanio provoke tense laughter as the audience waits with bated breadth for the looming tragedy–consequent upon their “humanness”–to manifest and miraculously find a resolution.  A Lear or a Macbeth evoke sympathetic pain as their emotions carry them beyond reason and  they descend to the level of being comically tragic as their bizzare responses to the situation and their worldview borders on madness.

Has the foregoing commentary on the bard made you any wiser? I am sure it has not!  So what must be done?  Watch this page for further inputs!

–Dr.Vanitha Vaidialingam, Phd, IRS(retd)

We, belong to a generation (with plenty of overweights), where eating means just tasting and swallowing or cramming into the mouth and swallowing while we rush to keep an appointment or race back to our work place. Leisurely eating is an impossible luxury that we can indulge in once in a while or not at all.  So, when there is no leisure for food, where is the time for thought?  Since we do not chew our food to liquidity and think through things till clarity emerges, the phrase should be rubbed out of existence?

Perhaps, this is the reason why we do not have “room for thought” too?  We are so rushed for time that we act before we think.  One of the recent Indian blockbusters has the hero demonstrate this trend in a classroom.  He, with due deligence, opens a heavy tome and seemingly copies some words on to the board. All nonsense of course! He urges the class to find the meaning of the words in thirty seconds and says the clock ticks now. Not a single soul pauses to think.  They drag out their copies of the text and begin frantically searching for the word in the glossory and the body of the text book to no avail till the time ticks out and the hero proves his point. Isn’t that how we behave in real life too?

Therefore, it is not surprising that terms like  “thinking out of the box” or “within the box” are popular phrases of today. Those who think out of the box are valued and highly marketable people who are expected to chew the cud and create the “thoughts” that others can cram and swallow “without a thought”.  “Thinking within the box” is also encouraged as it helps focus attention on what we are doing rather than on what we should be doing.

Well, having said all this, it is time to pause and let you chew on the cud and recall the phrase “food for thought” from the –ahem–depths of obscurity it is fast descending into.