REMARKS ON SOME OF THE PLAYS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE

BY

ISSAN CHUNEER BANORJEA

(Sub. District Inspector of Jungypore.)

Shakspeare has excelled all the dramatic poets that ever wrote in the variety of characters. Every being that is introduced into his poem acts a part which would have been suitable to no other person. It was an interesting epoch in the history of England when the great bard careered with a full flush of effulgence surrounded by a galaxy of stars if not equally brilliant, still not without lustre.

Of all the authors I have a very high respect and ardent veneration for Shakspeare whose name stands high in the literature of his country. The whole career and literary fame of the great poet, have long inspired in me a strong desire to bring to light all the beauties that are to be found in the writings of this ancient author.

Unequal as I deem myself to the task, yet at the time of the publication of my dramatic work on the first part of the life and death of Hector I have partially fulfilled my long cherished desire by laying before an indulgent public a rapid sketch of the beauties in the writings of an author who has done honor to the English Nation and who stood foremost in the van of civilization at the time of Her Gracious Majesty I mean Elizabeth one of the wisest sovereigns that had ever reigned in England. Then was the time when the nation was just emerging from the rude state of barbarism, and wakening into intellectual life that Shakspeare's drama become flourished. Men were eager to receive instruction and the theatre afforded it in a most eminent degree.

With giant strength the poet overcame all the difficulties in his way and pursued the one end of his life for which he devoted the most part of his existence, even Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth gave kind reception upon the dramatic work of the poet whose genius was rapidly advancing day by day.

Past was the number of those who assembled at the theatre to witness the plays of the poet being acted there, and there were not a few who blessed his memory for raising them from the lowest depths of society, into which they were sunk. Thus in an extreme degree the theatre widened the sphere of usefulness, which greatly constituted to the expansion of English intellect.

Such was the career of an extraordinery man who with the wonderful aid of nature with which God has endowed him moved in the poetical world! By the mere force of his epithets, by glowing exaggerations to which he was long accustomed he produced a work which the world had ever seen.

With

wonder and sympathy the people

looked upon the great and eminent author of the

dramatic world, who was not only an ornament of Great Britain but must be truly styled to be an ornament of the whole world and indeed to do justice to the great poet, it must be confessed that none in Europe could stand equal to him, since he so worthily represented the dignity of great Kalidass who in the time immemorial-in the early age of the world adorned the court of mighty Vicramaditya who is entitled to the appellation of the Father of Sanscrit literature.

In the same manner shall we always style Shakspeare to be the father of English literature, he had looked without concern, at every change in the poetical horizon, whether it partended a storm or a little strong wind, and none but a poet like Shakspeare would have been able to rise so high as to be beyond the reach of thought and meditation. Loud was the voice of praise upon the great achievement of the author from every part of Europe. The sun of Britain at once rose to a meridian from which he was never found to haste to a setting although death had in proper time removed him from this transitory world to