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Part I Greek Introduction

Those of us who speak English as our native tongue can count a nue that is understood by more people in more parts of the world than any other [Chinese has e scale only in eastern and southeastern Asia] and it is therefore the language that is most nearly an open door to all peoples

Its enorive it un-equaled richness and flexibility andIts hospitality to idioives it a colorful and dramatic quality that is without peer

But inal, the writings of William Shakespeare, a h all the history of English literature and who, in the opinion of e

Indeed, so important are Shakespeare's works that only the Bible can coht Shakespeare has said soourselves thinking in his terms (There is the story of the woman who read Hamlet for the first tune and said, "I don't see why people ad but a bunch of quotations strung together")

I have a feeling that Shakespeare has even acted as a brake on the develop so rapidly that the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, written shortly before 1400, had becolishmen of Shakespeare's time Yet now, after three and a half centuries, Shakespeare's plays can be read quite easily and with only an occasional archaic word or phrase requiring translation It is ale so much as to render Shakespeare incomprehensible That would be an unacceptable price to pay for change

In this respect, Shakespeare is evenJames version of the Bible is, of course, only a translation, although a supre to prevent newer translations into lish Indeed, such newer translations exist

How, though, can anyone ever drealish"? That would do, perhaps, if one were merely interested in the contents of Shakespeare (It is, by analogy, in the contents of the Bible that we are interested, not in its exact syllables)

But who can bear to have nothing more than the contents of Shakespeare's plays? What translation, even lish into another form, could possibly reproduce the exact music and thunder of Shakespeare's syllables, and without that-

Yet in one respect Shakespeare recedes from us no matter how faithfully we follow the very syllables he uses He wrote for all time, yes (whether he knew it or not), but he also wrote for a specific audience, that of Elizabethan Englishave its less educated individuals the horseplay and slapstick they enjoyed, and he gave its more educated individuals a wealth of allusion

He assurounded in Greek and Roy and history, since that was part (and, indeed, almost the whole) of the classical education of the upper classes of the tiland's own history and with the geography of sixteenth-century Europe

Modern Auely aware of Greek , they are even less aware of those parts of English history hich Shakespeare deals

This is not to say that one cannot enjoy Shakespeare without knowing the historical, legendary, or round to the events in his plays There is still the great poetry and the deathless swing of his writing -And yet, if we did know a littlewas about, would not the plays take on new direater enjoyment?

This is what it is in my mind to do in this book

It is not my intention to discuss the literary values of the plays, or to analyze theical point of view Others have done this far beyond any poor capacity I ht have in that direction