Great classics on the 23rd April

This time they are my 1st and 2nd year ESO students the ones who write about those great English classics and stories everybody knows about: Romeo and Juliet, Oliver Twist, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, The Jungle Books...

To be or not to be Shakespeare, 450 years on

"After God, Shakespeare has created most", said 19th c. novelist Alexandre Dumas. Indeed, the Bard of Avon has traditionally been considered as the greatest playwright of all time, with a skill of language unequalled and a profound understanding of the human nature.

Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night´s Dream... are part of our collective cultural inheritance but, was this actor and sharer in an outstanding theatre company, a newcomer in London with humble provincial origins and without much education, the real author of these masterpieces?

The scarce details of his life have been analysed under countless microscopes and several literary critics and scholars have taken the international world of Shakespeare by storm with the idea that the universal genius was another. At the heart of his authorship controversy, three names:

Christopher Marlowe? Also on his 450th birth anniversary this year, he represented the first true voice of Rennaissance in that Tudor England. He was regarded as their best poet and playwright when he was supposedly stabbed to death, very young, in a tavern brawl. Being a spy for the crown, he might have faked his own death and, hidden, could have gone on writing signing with another name.

Theatre patron Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford? At that time it was deemed socially unacceptable for a noble man to be involved in such a a low art as writing, and he might have used a pseudonym. Unlike Shakespeare, he had travelled to Italy, where many of these paramount plays are set, and had enough experience in law and politics to write about it with such complex brilliance.

Essayist Francis Bacon? It´s been affirmed that the philosophical ideas promulgated throughout all these plays reflect the personal opinions of this Cambridge graduate, one of the creators of empiricism. Furthermore, there are ciphers, coded messages about politics, and similarities in style and terminology to the rest of his work.

Thus, to be or not to be Shakespeare, that is the question for some skeptics. Nevertheless,  what is undeniable is that these plots and characters are as alive today as they were when they were originally staged during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. We humans still experience love, loyalty, betrayal, loss, forgivenes, revenge, jealousy, lust, thirst for power... and we still have so much to learn... Definitely, it'd be a lovely option to turn to some of these plays, once again, during these summer holidays, and reflect upon these universal human values and concerns.

On a 23rd of April

It was on a 23rd  of April that Shakespeare (1564) and Lolita´s author, Nabokov (1899), were born; that the Romantic poet Wordsworth died (1850); and, above all, in a year very easy to remember, 1616, that two of the greatest literary giants, Cervantes and Shakespeare, are said to have died. For that reason, this day has been designated as the World Book and Copyright Day by UNESCO.

It is not so important if research has shown that it was not the very same day when The Quixote´s author and the English bard passed away. Cervantes´ death date was based on the modern Gregorian calendar, while Shakespeare´s on the old Julian one, still being used in England at that time. Neither is it significant if the World Book Day is celebrated a few weeks earlier in the UK and in Ireland -on the first Thursday of March- because on the 23rd of April Saint George´s Day has priority.

What really matters is that, at least during these days, a world tribute is paid to books, its authors and the laws that protect them. One of the aims is to encourage everybody to discover and appreciate the sheer pleasure that reading can entail.

Bookcrossing, recitals, literary competitions, prizes, authors signing their work, British children dressing up as their favourite storybook characters... But what about that growing number of infrequent readers? I'm not sure if this worlwide celebration  succeeds in engaging them. If any, this year, they may take advantage of the bookstores discounts today and buy a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude to decorate their livingroom.

Shakespeare & Company Bookshop in Paris

"On a cold windswept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books in the window, and photographs of famous writers both dead and living. The photographs all looked like snapshots and even the dead writers looked as though they had really been alive"

                                                                   Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

These lines depict Sylvia Beach´s Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, a haven for all English speaking writers in Paris during the interwar period and a gathering place for regulars like Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce. With the German occupation of the city it was closed down, but a few years later, an American bohemian, George Whitman, would open another bookstore with the same name and the same ideals. It continued to be a free boarding house for aspiring and penniless writers and the new owner went on playing host to well known authors like Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett or the Beat poets W. Burroughs and A. Gingsberg. Whitman´s daughter runs it today, still managing to hold on its original principles.

I´ve recently visited it for the first time and I can assure you it´s worth it: on the floor, piles of second-hand books stacked there because there is no room left on the ancient wooden bookshelves; on the walls, old photos, drawings and newspaper cuttings yellowed by the years; an old typewriter, a piano waiting to be played, worn-out velvet armchairs for sitting and reading... An incredible place to hang out for those instilled with a deep and passionate respect for literature.

Take note! Facing Notre Dame Cathedral, on the left bank of the river Seine... It had to be situated in the legendary literary Latin Quarter..

Poetry is necessary

"We don´t read and write poetry because it is cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for."     
Professor Keating, Dead Poets´ Society                                                           

I wish there were more literature teachers like Keating, someone who used poetry to inspire their students to seize the day, carpe diem, to suck out all the marrow of life, as Thoreau put it. He talked to these teenagers about Whitman, Byron, Tennyson,  Shakespeare... encouraging them to struggle to make their dreams come true.

Poems are made of the deepest secrets of the soul that need to come out. They tell about identity, discovery, survival, mortality, feelings, hopes, loss... things of primary interest to everybody in this uncertain world.