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Shakespeare: A New Biography THE world does not have concrete traces of Shakespeare’s life, and those that we have bring across a man with glaring contradictions. We who adore his tragedies and comedies cannot remain indifferent to his life. But the scant information about him leaves much to be desired and one is amazed by the huge gap between the quality of his drama and the abysmally low and ordinary life he lead. The Shakespearean scholar, Stephen Greenblatt, describes these details as "abundant but thin", depicting a man "who grew wealthy but sued for paltry sums, a literary genius who seems never to have written a letter—or owned a book". I wonder if we will ever be satisfied with the existing biographies, which, though interesting, are far from definitive. More or less we are in possession of literature on this genius which leaves much to speculation and conjecture. The man who wrote Hamlet will always remain an enigma.
Two things particularly stand out in this biography: first, the author’s love for Shakespeare, that finds expression in the separate chapters devoted to the great bard’s family members: the father, the mother, the wife (under the chapter "Marriage") and the daughters; second, the recognition that Shakespeare was a gentle soul with understanding and compassion for all he met and worked with, and that he was driven centrally by family values: "What Shakespeare did in 1586 could be done only by a person wholly committed to his family and entirely dedicated to doing great deeds in life. No records are needed to know that the nobility of Shakespeare’s spirit; his work, both in words and deeds, speaks for itself." The great deeds in question constituted writing earnestly and conducting himself in life with sincere commitment to friends, fellow actors and family members. Dahiya has addressed the question of myths surrounding Shakespeare with adequate care. In each case, the argument is presented with reference to essentials based on available records. If one is looking for flights of fancy here, one would indeed be disappointed. The guesswork spread over the entire book takes help instead from those scholars who have done meticulous research on the life and times of Shakespeare. In the account, we also come across intelligent markers picked up from Shakespeare’s texts to assert veracity of detail. Thus, it is that Prince Hamlet is brought in at a few places to throw light on unidentifiable and mysterious occurrences in Shakespeare’s life. In the same manner, quotations from Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Ben Jonson, Thomas Hardy, etc., have been used to clarify positions about Shakespeare and the relevance of his writing to later periods. The highpoint of the book is its likely appeal to the Indian reader. In many respects, Shakespeare’s formative period had vital links with the English peasantry. In England, the labouring masses of the villages and small towns cherished principles of simplicity and frugal living. These clashed with ways of the emergent middle-class as well as aristocrats who set store by knowledge, scholarship and classical learning. Many a time, Shakespeare was targeted for his uncharismatic standing in educated circles. Dahiya has dealt with this issue sharply and in fact explained the quality of Shakespeare’s writing in terms that are genuine and intense. In the times when Shakespeare lived, complexities of the existing phenomena could be grasped only when the individual perceiver was distanced from the privileged sections. In the specific case of the dramatist, this aspect helped immensely. However, our views of
the Bard will always be shaped by the contingencies of the evidence
that reaches us, and research on his life and his times will always
remain a venture of scholarship and intellectual curiosity. Professor
Dahiya has indeed achieved in his book enough to take us closer to the
phenomenon called Shakespeare, especially as it punctuates our world
with characters, language and imagery that have slipped into our
common idiom and our collective imagination. And who says biographies
are boring? The imposing flamboyance of a personality like Shakespeare’s
is enough of an aid to any attempt at such a project that will always
remain open-ended and compelling. A biography on him is, therefore,
inevitably of interest.
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Bhim
S. Dahiya, an educationist and literary critic, has made a creditable
attempt at writing an insightful biography of Shakespeare that is full
of observations, attempting to answer the questions that researchers
on Shakespeare have raised from time to time. Moreover, it offers a
storehouse of information on Shakespeare’s life and his surroundings
in the 16th and 17th centuries. For Dahiya himself, "The ...
entire effort has been ... to put together all the bits and pieces the
scholars have gathered about Shakespeare the man, and shape them into
an interesting story of his life." The biography is to be taken
as an account of interest both for the scholar and those who don’t
know their "Othello" from their "Pericles".