Monday, April 25, 2016
'Shakespearification' obscures the other literary and cultural treasures of 1616
theconversation.com: This year marks 400 years since the publication of the first volume of poet and playwright Ben Jonson’s collected texts, the first complete English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, by poet and translator George Chapman, and the Political Works of King James I, arriving a few years after the King James Bible. Little would contemporaries have guessed that 400 years later these momentous works would be eclipsed by a death in Warwickshire – one William Shakespeare.
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It is odd to think that the authors writing in Shakespeare's shadow were not actually in his shadow at all in contemporary times. Shakespeare's is a self perpetuating universality, wherein because his works achieved such worldwide recognition, they continue to be taught in that same legacy of worldliness. We as an international culture do not recognize or emphasize other works and authors from that same time because we already have one that works so well; or rather, we have The One. And though I have seen other contemporary works studied and brought forward, all too often they merely appear or are used to contextualize Shakespeare's works, rather than being evaluated and analyzed on their own standalone merit. The use of Shakespeare for profitability's sake is also worrisome, as the true inherent value and meaning of his works is often overlooked in favor a romanticized notions of the Bard. We must strive for a truer and broader picture of the time.
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