Greatest of Them All - Part 2

Welcome to Celebrate Creativity - Episode 458 - The Greatest of Them All, Part Two

“In Episode 1, we followed Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon to the bustling streets and theatres of London, watching him experiment with history, tragedy, and love. But the story doesn’t stop there. From these early works, Shakespeare climbed higher, perfecting his craft and tackling the deepest questions of humanity.

Take Hamlet, for instance. Here is a prince torn between revenge, morality, and his own inaction. With the simple, yet profound, words ‘To be, or not to be…,’ Shakespeare captures a question that has haunted humans for centuries: what does it mean to act, and what does it mean to live? In King Lear, he explores family, power, and madness, peeling back the layers of human pride and vulnerability. In Othello, we watch jealousy and manipulation destroy trust, while Macbeth examines ambition, guilt, and the blurred lines between fate and choice. In each play, characters are no longer symbols or types—they are fully human, with thoughts, fears, and contradictions that mirror our own.

That’s like a musician dropping three platinum albums in twelve months. Shakespeare wasn’t just producing — he was redefining what theater could be.

This is the run that still leaves critics gasping: the great tragedies. Between about 1600 and 1608, he wrote Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. It’s the Shakespeare equivalent of The Beatles going from Help! to Sgt. Pepper in a handful of years.

Transcript

Welcome to celebrate creativity - episode 458 - the greatest of them all, part two

“In Episode 1, we followed Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon to the bustling streets and theatres of London, watching him experiment with history, tragedy, and love. But the story doesn’t stop there. From these early works, Shakespeare climbed higher, perfecting his craft and tackling the deepest questions of humanity.

Take Hamlet, for instance. Here is a prince torn between revenge, morality, and his own inaction. With the simple, yet profound, words ‘To be, or not to be…,’ Shakespeare captures a question that has haunted humans for centuries: what does it mean to act, and what does it mean to live? In King Lear, he explores family, power, and madness, peeling back the layers of human pride and vulnerability. In Othello, we watch jealousy and manipulation destroy trust, while Macbeth examines ambition, guilt, and the blurred lines between fate and choice. In each play, characters are no longer symbols or types—they are fully human, with thoughts, fears, and contradictions that mirror our own.

That’s like a musician dropping three platinum albums in twelve months. Shakespeare wasn’t just producing — he was redefining what theater could be.

This is the run that still leaves critics gasping: the great tragedies. Between about 1600 and 1608, he wrote Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. It’s the Shakespeare equivalent of The Beatles going from Help! to Sgt. Pepper in a handful of years.

Hamlet (1600–01): A revenge tragedy that refuses to be just revenge. Hamlet thinks too much, talks too much, and still fascinates us four centuries later. He’s basically the first emo protagonist.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

And when the character of Hamlet goes to a graveyard and runs across what he believes is the skeleton of a former servant

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Othello (1603–04): A love story poisoned by jealousy. Add Iago, one of literature’s great villains, and you have a play that feels chillingly modern. In Othello, jealousy and manipulation take center stage.  Iago warns, ‘O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’ With just a few words, Shakespeare captures the destructive power of envy and the ease with which human trust can be undone.

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood;
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d the rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again.
It must needs wither: I’ll smell it on the tree.
Ah balmy breath, that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.
Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after. One more, and this the last:
So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep,
But they are cruel tears: this sorrow’s heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love.

King Lear (1605–06): Shakespeare takes the family drama — “dad won’t retire gracefully” — and turns it into an apocalypse of madness, storm, and betrayal. It’s brutal, and yet staggeringly beautiful.  In this play, Lear laments, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’—a line as biting and memorable as the emotions it conveys. In the storm, Lear is exposed to both nature and his own vulnerability, demonstrating Shakespeare’s ability to merge external and internal chaos into drama.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!

Macbeth (1606): The shortest tragedy but maybe the punchiest — ambition, witches, murder, guilt. It’s a psychological thriller before the genre even existed.  Ambition and guilt dominate Macbeth, a man consumed by prophecy and desire. Lady Macbeth cries, ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say!’—a single line summing her torment and the moral collapse at the heart of the tragedy.

The following section is a brief soliloquy from Macbeth regarding a hallucination that he is seeing regarding of a dagger.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
                                    [a bell rings]. Endless streets bells
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not,; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

And Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy where she bemoans her guilt

Out, damned spot: out, I say. One; two. Why
then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord,
fie, a soldier and afeared? What need we fear? Who
knows it when none can call our power to account?
Yet who would have thought the old man to have
had so much blood in him?

The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?
What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more
o’that, my lord, no more o’that. You mar all with
this starting.

Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Oh, oh, oh.

Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look
not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he
cannot come out on’s grave.

To bed, to bed: there’s knocking at the gate. Come,
come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done,
cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.

What makes this period dazzling is how Shakespeare shifts gears. One year it’s a philosophical soliloquy in Denmark; the next, a bloody coup in Scotland. His plays start looking less like entertainment and more like x-rays of the human soul.

And yet, he never abandoned comedy.  In comedies and romances, he plays with love, wit, and identity. In Twelfth Night, he immediately invites us into a world of desire, folly, and playful deception. Mistaken identities, clever wordplay, and poetic imagery reveal his playful, humane side.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

And

Much Ado About Nothing 

I cannot be said to be a flattering
honest man, it must not be denied but I am a
plain-dealing villain. I am only trusted with a muzzle.
If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty,
I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be
that I am, and seek not to alter me.

Such works are witty, musical, enchanting. He could pivot from tragedy to comedy like a performer changing masks, which, of course, he literally did. Shakespeare wasn’t just writing for the Globe; he was also acting in those plays.  He even ended his bitter sweet comedy The Tempest with lines that have been said to be Shakespeare's farewell to the stage

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have ’s mine own,
Which is most faint. Now ’tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,  
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

By the early 1600s, his company had new royal patronage — they became the King’s Men, performing for King James himself. Imagine being upgraded from your local indie stage to the royal court overnight.

And yet, Shakespeare was not only a tragedian. His later comedies and romances—Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Tempest, Measure for Measure—reveal a playful, witty, and profoundly humane mind. Mistaken identities, clever wordplay, and poetic imagery invite audiences to laugh, reflect, and marvel at the inventiveness of language itself. In these works, he shows us both the folly and the joy of human nature, with insights that are still fresh today.

Language, of course, was his greatest tool. He invented words, twisted phrases, and created turns of speech that still enrich English centuries later. He showed that words could capture the complexities of thought, the subtleties of emotion, and the depths of experience. Shakespeare didn’t just tell stories; he shaped the way we speak, think, and understand ourselves.

His influence radiates outward: literature, theatre, psychology, even popular culture. Countless writers, playwrights, and filmmakers have followed the paths he blazed. And yet, more than fame or technique, it is the universality of his insight—the ability to illuminate the human heart—that makes him immortal.

From the provincial streets of Stratford to the heights of the Globe, from the early thrill of Richard III to the towering genius of Hamlet and King Lear, Shakespeare climbed the ladder of human imagination and brought us along with him. In every character, every line of verse, every twist of plot, we see not just a playwright, but a profound observer of life itself—a man whose words continue to speak across time, reminding us that, in the end, we are all part of the same story.”
And in The Tempest, the character of Prospero muses, ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ In one short line, Shakespeare reflects on life, illusion, and the fleeting nature of human endeavor, reminding us why his words continue to resonate.

Throughout these plays—tragedy, comedy, romance—Shakespeare mastered character, language, and the art of storytelling. He invented words and phrases that still shape English today. He created characters so real we recognize ourselves in them. His influence reaches literature, theatre, film, and the very way we think about human nature.

From the provincial streets of Stratford to the heights of the Globe, from the early thrill of Richard III to the towering genius of Hamlet and King Lear, Shakespeare climbed the ladder of human imagination and brought us along. In every character, every line of verse, every twist of plot, we see not just a playwright, but a profound observer of life itself—an individual whose words continue to speak across time, reminding us that, in the end, we are all part of the same story.”

In conclusion, when we talk about creativity, Shakespeare stands as one of the brightest examples in human history. But why is he so important, so influential, even hundreds of years after his death? The answer lies not only in the stories he told, but in the way he told them, and the way he saw the world.

Shakespeare’s creativity was multidimensional. He invented words and phrases, reshaped language, and found new ways to express thought and emotion. He took familiar stories—history, myth, folklore—and transformed them, giving them life, psychological depth, and universal resonance. His plays are full of invention: complex characters, layered plots, ingenious wordplay, and profound insight into human nature.

He also blurred the lines between genres, mixing comedy and tragedy, history and romance, the poetic with the dramatic. In doing so, he expanded what theatre could be, creating works that entertain, educate, and provoke reflection simultaneously. His creativity wasn’t just artistic—it was intellectual, moral, and emotional. He invited audiences to think, feel, and see the world differently.
And that is why Shakespeare remains a touchstone for writers, performers, and thinkers: he demonstrates the power of creativity to illuminate life, to explore the full spectrum of human experience, and to speak across centuries. In every character, every line of verse, he shows that creativity is not just making something new—it’s about seeing, understanding, and connecting in ways that endure.”

His genius wasn’t just in the stories he told, but in the way he told them. He invented words, reshaped language, and found new ways to express thought, feeling, and the complexities of human nature. He took history, myth, and folklore and transformed them into mirrors of our own experience, showing us the richness and tragedy, the humor and folly, of being human.

So as we celebrate creativity, we celebrate Shakespeare—not only for the plays he wrote, but for the imagination, insight, and human understanding that shine from every line. Hundreds of years later, his work still teaches us, moves us, and inspires us to see the world—and ourselves—anew.”

Sources include: Sources Include:  the complete works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare, oh shit  Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov, \Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom, and Shakesfear and How to Cure It, an unpublished manuscript by Ralph Cohen.