Romeo And Juliet Essay

SHOULD SHAKESPEARE BE REALLY CONSIDERED AS THE GREATEST LITERARY SAINT?

In his own time William Shakespeare was considered as merely one among many talented playwrights and poets but since the 17th century he is considered the greatest saint of literary world. But, everyone who achieves something is criticized at some point of time. So, Shakespeare was also not able to stay untouched from the negative criticism which makes the world doubt that was he really the “GREATEST”. No one could be the greatest writer of all the time. No one in today’s world is the GREATEST writer or the literary saint. Time has not been finished so we could not determine him as the greatest because still the writers are emerging

He read Shakespeare in Russian, German and English but he never found in any translation or any edition the view that could convince him that the Bard of Avon was anything more than a bombastic hack. Tolstoy once said that,” I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful aesthetic pleasure, having read one after the another regarded as his best: ”King Lear, ”Romeo Juliet,” “Hamlet,” and “Macbeth”, not only did I feel no delight but I felt an irresistible repulsion tedium and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by whole of the civilised world. In order to testify myself I several times recommended reading Shakespeare in every possible form, in Russian, in English and in German.” He further says that everytime he re-read Shakespeare and felt the same feelings with even greater force, this time – however not of bewilderment, but of firm indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of the great genius which Shakespeare enjoys and which compels other writers to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent