Othello And King Lear: A Comparison Essay, Research Paper

Othello and King Lear: A comparison

If Shakespeare was alive today it is certain that there would be a lot

written about him. We would read reviews of his new plays in newspapers,

articles about his poetry in the literary papers, and gossip about his love life

and his taste in clothes splashed across the glossy magazines. His views about

everything under the sun, from the government to kitchen furniture, would

probably appear regularly in the colour supplements. His face would be familiar

on television talk shows, his voice well-known from radio broadcasts. There

would be so much recorded evidence about his life and his opinions that it would

not be hard to write about him.

Shakespeare, however, lived some four hundred years ago in the reign of

Queen Elizabeth I, when there was no tele-vision or radio, nor even any

newspapers as we know them today. Although he was respected as an important

person in his own lifetime, nobody ever thought of writing about him until well

after his death. And Shakespeare did apparently not believe in keeping a diary

either. So it is largely by luck that the little evidence we have, such as the

entry of his birth in the parish register, has survived at all.

And yet, by looking carefully at contemporary pictures, by reading

contemporary accounts, it is possible to get a good idea of how the boy whose

birth is recorded in the Stratford register of 1654 grew up into the man who

wrote such famous plays still known all over the world, as we type.