Portraits of Human Virtue in Shakespeare: The Sterling and the Sublime

Joshua J. John

Research Scholar, (Ph.D) Karunya University, Coimbatore

Keywords: virtues, fortitude, forgiveness, humility, love, compassion, courage, endurance, divine, mercy, the meek, the pardoning, wisdom sterling- sublime.


Abstract

Shakespeare stands poet par excellence and remains unparalleled in the literary history of poetry.  continual suffering had made him say the prayer of saints. Had not shakespeare suffered like that such poetry would not have been produced. The generative, creative gifted poet had left no stones unturned in order to record the human drama of life. The bright, the colourful, the fashionable, the passing and the fleeting, the pleasure and the   pain, the unknown to the known, the familiar and the vague, a collection of the historical and  prediction of the futuristic still to happen, a wisdom unfathomed to the simple and foolish  It is a storehouse of the nuggets of gold,   a treasure chest  of  a pristine chamber of the noble and the sublime which  portrays the impeccable virtues.


References

Rowse, A. L. (1963). William Shakespeare: A Biography. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-06-013710-X

Harold Bloom (2006). Shakespeare Through the Ages: King Lear, p. xii.

Gross, John, ‘Shakespeare’s Influence’ in Wells & Orlin 2003, 641–2.

‘William Shakespeare Featured Article’. The genealogist.co.uk. Retrieved 19 March 2014.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Sixteenth/Early Seventeenth Century, Volume B, 2012, pg. 1168

Shakespeare, William (1914), The Oxford Shakespeare: the Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Bartleby.com (2000) ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, retrieved 22 June 2007.

Carlyle, Thomas (1907), Adams, John Chester, ed., On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, ISBN 1-4069-4419-X,OCLC 643782.

Russ, Shakespeare: An Anthology of criticism and Theory, 1945–2000, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-23488-8.

Wood, Manley, ed. (1806), The Plays of William Shakespeare with Notes of Various commentators, I, London: George Kearsley, retrieved 27 December 2013.

Shapiro, James (2005), 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-57121480-0.

Rowe, Nicholas (1709), Gray, Terry A., ed., some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespeare (published 1997), retrieved 30 July 2007.

Kermode, Frank (2004), The Age of Shakespeare, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, ISBN 0-297-84881-X

Dutton, Richard; Howard, Jean (2003), A companion to Shakespeare’s Works: The Histories, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-22633-8.

de Sélincourt, Basil (1909), William Blake, London: Duckworth & co.

Craig, Leon Harold (2003), Of Philosophers and Kings: Political Philosophy in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “King Lear”, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ISBN 0-8020-8605-5.

-[- (2005a), Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art: collected Essays, New York: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-35278-9.

Bradley, A. C. (1991), Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, London: Penguin, ISBN 0-14-053019-3.

Bate, Jonathan (2008), The soul of the Age, London: Penguin, ISBN 978-0-67091482-1.