China will be organising a month-long festival of musical plays based on the stories penned by William Shakespeare to mark the 400th death anniversary of the Bard of Avon.
The news came as a surprise to me because China is a place where English is less spoken.
However, Shakespeare’s writings and plays are so good and timeless that they have been reaching every corner of the world even after four centuries of his death. It is not only China. People in many other countries are also under the magical spell of his plays as generation after generation read them in original or their adapted versions in their native languages.
One thing I have noticed is that his plays are very realistic. People feel connected to the characters while reading those stories and start imagining as if those incidents are taking place in their surroundings.
Be it the famous love story Romeo Juliet in which two lovers are separated due to the enmity between their families, or Twelfth Night that portrays the confusion that occurs when dealing with twins, his stories always had a connection to the common people. Maybe this is the reason why his stories are popular even after 400 years of conception.
During these four centuries, his writings came to us in different forms, like plays, books or movies. For example, his famous play Macbeth inspired the Indian filmmaker, Vishal Bhardwaj, who later made popular film Maqbool based on it. Similarly his other movies, Haider and Omkara, were based on Hamlet and Othello respectively.
There have been many famous poets and writers before as well as now, but no other playwright, poet or author has matched the popularity of William Shakespeare. He had a different standard.
Thinking about his timeless popularity, I have realised that it is important for a writer to set the plot of his story in a manner that appeals to the masses if he wants to make it evergreen and universal. No one can be compared to him.
(Published in The Gulf Today on January 9, 2016)
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