Art and Culture 60
Shakespeare's Use of Genre's
-For the Uncensored!
William Shakespeare has become, or throughout his entire posthumous career, always been controversial. Even in the fight to ban William Shakespeare, it proves his relevance as a writer grows more by the year. What William Shakespeare has proven is that a career doesn’t always have to be acknowledged in the writers lifetime. But Shakespeare, born in April 1564 England, wasn’t afraid of looking into the depths of the human soul. Julius Caesar looks into the last twenty four hours, as the conspirators all join together in taking down Julius Caesar. Of course, people on the right could say, “I don’t want politics in my art” and the left would have no idea what politics is, let alone a vagina. According to Shakespeare’s Staging, “Sir Philip Sidney in his Apology for Poetry, in which broad theatrical applications were also laid down for the Unities of Time, Place and Action. These assertions evolved into the strict rules of Neoclassicism, limiting plots to one day, one location, and a single unified action.”[i]
The power of Shakespeare is that he didn’t stick to one story, and created new genres. Julius Caesar falls into the drama category. Shakespeare wrote, according to a New Oxford English Dictionary, wrote, “blank verse and include comedies, historical plays, the Greek and Roman plays, enigmatic comedies, the great tragedies, and the group of tragicomedies with which he ended his career. He also wrote more than 150 sonnets, which were published in 1609, as well as narrative poems.” [ii]
What saved Shakespeare is that his use of classifications like comedies, tragedies, proved his ability to weave in and out of deep subjects from Julius Caesar, to comedies like A Midsummer’s Night Dream, that talked about a marriage between two warring families, as a Bard was charmed by a fairy, turning him into a rabbit. Shakespeare has proved that his legacy survived not only through the written word, but through genres that would help classify different literary subjects.
William Shakespeare was an enigma, but controversy is not some dirty word. Controversial doesn’t mean you are marked by God for killing your brother, like Cain did Abel. Controversy has become a Scarlett Letter, as aptly titled by Nathaniel Hawthorne, to represent someone who is diseased. Who can’t be cured. The entertainment world used to embrace controversy, even creating great art out of controversy. But it’s part of an artist’s life whether or not you intend it to be. Whether in life or death. Controversy is, in its basic form, asking questions. It’s as simple as “Why did Shakespeare use the play as his form” or “why did he feel the need to write about a black man, like Othello, and what drove his character to his end” as this has created more questions than answers. Othello has probably healed race relations than any progressive art could ever do in a person’s life. Sometimes you’re not only laughing when you’re crying, as John Irving, author of World According to Garp, said, in a way.
To be honest, the plays are the answer. And putting it into two categories, helps create his way through literary circles. It hasn’t stopped writers from considering William Shakespeare as one of the most influential writers of his day. William Shakespeare’s use of genre’s has helped create a plethora of stories that are now part of the staple of modern life.
What defines Shakespeare’s genres is that Shakespeare saw the birth of a the modern era. Salman Rushdie states in a Newstatesman article, “How Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule book” on April 10th, 2016, “modern in a way that most of the modern masters would recognize, the one creating plays that are highly aware of their theatricality, of being staged; the other creating fiction that is acutely conscious of its fictive nature, even to the point of inventing an imaginary narrator,”[iii] as this could have set up the ghost story too.
There are people who only categorize by genre. Just because a genre book has science fiction elements in a work doesn’t mean they have nothing to say or there won’t be politics in it. Shakespeare was so great at weaving stories that would interest people, but also create a scene that would embellish the playwrights life.When a society loses its literacy, it loses in time and place and confuses what a genre is.
[i] “Shakespeare’s Staging” https://shakespearestaging.berkeley.edu/topics/genres. Found 01/01/2022.
[ii] That’s more than any Millennial could accomplish. They would rather spend there time on Tiktok than spend a day on writing a book.
[iii] https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2016/04/salman-rushdie-how-cervantes-and-shakespeare-wrote-modern-literary-rule-book.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 19 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Phoenix. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Our Freedom Book https://www.ourfreedombook.com/thereallouistbruno17. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His next series, City of Sand is out now:https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/city-of-sand/hardcover/product-rke9jz.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, as well. Subscribe as well so you can get my articles in your inbox every time. Every little bit helps in the war against Big Tech. Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and also get updates sent to your email, so you can tell substack what’s worthwile. If you share my work, this page could be, as Hyman Roth from the Godfather Part 2 said, “We could be bigger than US Steele.” You too, can make a difference as well, as you guys help me continue to write great articles and reviews.
Good read!