What did William Shakespeare want people to understand from his plays ?
Answers
Shakespeare teaches many things by making us obvious spectators of human behavior. He wrote people very well, their struggles, flaws, mistakes, loves, insanity, kindness. His characters reflect the world of people we all eventually meet. Like in king leer, we all know people that suck up and lie to get what they want and those who tell the truth that feel they should deserve honor but get rejected. Hamlet is the suffering teenager often seem in modern society when parents divorce. Romeo and Juliet taught that the first fickle romance hour is ever changing. A lot of the stories involve betrayal and misunderstandings that lead to tragedy before they are revealed and if that isn’t the most realistic thing in the world…. There are layers and complications in every characters life, there is stubbornness shown as a sign of love (Much Ado) heartbreaking trickery in Othello. Every story tells you about the people of the real world, nothing more realistic and prolific. Shakespeare wrote these stories where we can foresee different scenarios that we come across and learn from his characters mistakes.
Of course - he was writing for mass entertainment, and people came crowding into the theatres. Okay, many of his plays were first performed at Court, but theatres like the Globe (no, not the present one - that is a reconstruction built in the 1990s, but based on what is known of the theatres of Shakespeare's day), the Rose, the Theatre (that was its name) and others were extremely popular with ordinary people, who could come in as groundlings (who stood in the open space around the stage) for the price of a penny, or else could pay a little more for a seat and a cushion. You can go to the modern Globe and enjoy just this kind of experience today, though I have to say prices have gone up a bit in the past 400 years.Ordinary people in Shakespeare's day didn't talk to each other in iambic pentametres, so obviously the language of everyday life wasn't quite the way it is in most of his plays. But people were more accustomed to listening intently then, and they would not have had the difficulties with much of Shakespeare's language that people do now, because it was their language as well. And much of it would have been easier for them because many of the references and jokes that go straight past us would have made perfect sense to his contemporaries. So yes, certainly they could understand his plays - they wouldn't have packed the theatres to watch them if they hadn't.