I feel that Shakespeare is a very sophisticated and complex person who thinks very deeply. Undeniably, he also has a great command in the English language, and is capable of weaving the language into beautiful poems. Shakespeare has a deep understanding of the human mind and behavior. This is evident in the first poem, King Lear. King Lear is a tragedy about the cruelty of human nature, which includes the treacherous, selfish and wicked behavior of Man, but focuses mainly on the ungratefulness of unfilial children. King Lear is probably one of the best plays Shakespeare ever wrote. It reveals every hidden aspect of the evil nature of Man and leaves the reader in deep thought with its tragic end. Shakespeare is also rather philosophical, and loves literature a lot. The very fact that he compared the seven stages of a man to different scenes of a play is already evidence enough to reveal his poetic self. Shakespeare being philosophical can be seen from his viewing of life as a play, and the world as a stage. Being purely based on a person's point of objective, philosophy can have several loopholes sometimes, and Shakespeare also generalized the life of a man, although we know that this is not entirely true, for not everyone leads the same life. Thus it is obvious that Shakespeare's comparing a man's life to a play is purely philosophical, evident of his deep thinking. From all the below poems, especially in the third poem, one can tell Shakespeare's complex nature. The third poem was probably written when Shakespeare was in love, but even then, it is not too easy to tell so. The third poem also reveals that he is poetic.
Three poems (from poets.org):
King Lear (Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!)
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!
As You Like It
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
