Engels thinks that the European Renaissance is ‘a need for giant but also created a giant – in thinking ability, passion and character, in the versatile and knowledgeable in the era of giants.
’ Shakespeare is the ‘giant’ of England drama in the period of European Renaissance. William Shakespeare, the splendid dramatist and poet of the England Renaissance, was called ‘the father of British drama’ and ‘the Zeus of human literature’s Olympus hill’, Ben Jones called him ‘the soul of the times’ and Marx called him is ‘ one of the greatest geniuses of mankind’.Shakespeare was a great writer who has mighty insight and foresight to guide people to know human’s value, dignity and strength through his works. Furthermore, he represents equal status of women and individuality liberation as a crucial part of thinking of humanism in his works, creatively. As a ‘drama’, Shakespeare describes in full for his love of males and females, the predestine fate of human and vitae’s entanglement; as ‘literature’, the posy and wording of Shakespeare composed by abundant fancy, keen feels and supernatural parable.It makes people impressive; as ‘art’, Shakespeare’s desire for the truth, exploration for aesthetics and mould of characters are the same as the famous artists.
Consequently, he moulds a variety of typical characters – Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and King Lear, Kaiser and Othello, King Henry and King John. Certainly, the characters showed in two genders – male and female, and he uses the gender to make his plays affluent.The famous British critic Samuel Johnson says: “This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.Shakespeare’s plays can be read hundreds of times without any boredom because they were refined from the life. King Lear and Hamlet are two of Shakespeare’s famous tragedies which represent the importance of masculinity and femininity to the theme. The play, King Lear, opens with King Lear making his decision to divide his kingdom among his three daughters – Goneril, Regan and Cordelia.
Then, he foolishly gives his kingdom to the scheming two oldest daughters and estranges himself from the youngest daughter who loves him.Cordelia, then, marry the King of France as his Queen and leaves her home. After Lear gives up the throne, he is driven out of the house by Goneril and Regan. The one who was a king becomes a tramp in the street. Cordelia head the army of France to invade after she gets the message of her father and reunites with Lear.
However, they lose the battle and Cordelia is killed. Lear watches the corpse and howls with pain at his loss of Cordelia. Lear, unable to take further pain, dies.
