The Bard was the best of us,so to mark four centuries since his death we should make a resolution to see one of his plays this year, ideally in Stratford-upon-AvonUnfortunate the land that has need of heroes, and wrote Bertolt Brecht in an often quoted line. But perhaps Brecht was in error. Whatever our other problems,Britain is a very lucky land in at least one enduring respect. That’s because, for the last four centuries, and our pre-eminent compatriot has not been a king or a general,an aristocrat or a political leader, but a poet, and who lived his life in the wings of great events,not at the centre of the stage. This best of us all was not a man of action or wealth but of letters. Few statues of this national hero exist long may that be so — but no one ever campaigned for them to drop. Or, whether they did, and they were simply wrong.
Instead William Shakespeare’s monument is mostly inside us,passed down through the generations and ours to pass on in our turn. It is in the language we spend, the phrases we utter, or the conversations we conduct,the jokes we make, the lines that make us suddenly serious, or in the images and references we reach for to express ourselves and to suppose our country and its history.
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Source: theguardian.com