William Shakespeare, 1564-1616: An English Poet and Playwright Part I

Source: Voice of America Special English
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William Shakespeare, 1564-1616: An English Poet and Playwright

I'm Steve Ember.And I'm Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.

Today, we tell about one of the most influential and skillful writers in the world. For more than four hundred years, people all over the world have been reading, watching and listening to the plays and poetry of the British writer William Shakespeare.

JULIET: "Ay me!"

ROMEO: "She speaks:

O, speak again, bright angel!"

JULIET: "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I'll no longer be a Capulet."

You just heard part of a famous scene from a movie version of "Romeo and Juliet." This tragic play remains one of the greatest, and perhaps most famous, love stories ever told. It tells about two young people who meet and fall deeply in love. But their families, the Capulets and the Montagues, are enemies and will not allow them to be together. Romeo and Juliet are surrounded by violent fighting and generational conflict. The young lovers secretly marry, but their story has a tragic ending.

"Romeo and Juliet" shows how William Shakespeare's plays shine with extraordinarily rich and imaginative language. He invented thousands of words to color his works. They have become part of the English language. Shakespeare's universal stories show all the human emotions and conflicts. His works are as fresh today as they were four hundred years ago.

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William Shakespeare was born in fifteen sixty-four in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. He married Anne Hathaway at the age of eighteen. The couple had three children, two daughters and a son who died very young. Shakespeare moved to London in the late fifteen eighties to be at the center of the city's busy theater life.

Most people think of Shakespeare as a writer. But he was also a theater producer, a part owner of an acting company and an actor. For most of his career, he was a producer and main writer for an acting company called the King's Men.

In fifteen ninety-nine Shakespeare's company was successful enough to build its own theater called the Globe. Public theaters during this time were usually three floor levels high and were built around a stage area where the actors performed. The Globe could hold as many as three thousand people. People from all levels of society would attend performances.

The poorer people could buy tickets for a small amount of money to stand near the stage. Wealthier people could buy more costly tickets to sit in other areas.

Often it was not very important if wealthy people could see the stage well. It was more important that they be in a seat where everyone could see them.

It was difficult to light large indoor spaces during this time. The Globe was an outdoor theater with no roof on top so that sunlight could stream in. Because of the open-air stage, actors had to shout very loudly and make big motions to be heard and seen by all. This acting style is quite different from play-acting today. It might also surprise you that all actors during this period were men. Young boys in women's clothing played the roles of female characters. This is because it was against the law in England for women to act onstage.

Shakespeare's theater group also performed in other places such as the smaller indoor Blackfriars Theater. Or, they would travel around the countryside to perform. Sometimes they were asked to perform at the palace of the English ruler Queen Elizabeth, or later, King James the First.

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Shakespeare is best known for the thirty-nine plays that he wrote, although only thirty-eight exist today. His plays are usually divided into three groups: comedies, histories and tragedies. The comedies are playful and funny. They usually deal with marriage and the funny activities of people in love. These comedies often tell many stories at the same time, like plays within plays.

"Much Ado About Nothing" is a good example of a Shakespearian comedy. It tells the story of two couples. Benedick and Beatrice each claim they will never marry. They enjoy attacking each other with funny insults. Their friends work out a plan to make the two secretly fall in love.

Claudio and Hero are the other couple. They fall in love at once and plan to marry. But Claudio wrongly accuses Hero of being with another man and refuses to marry her. Hero's family decides to make Claudio believe that she is dead until her innocence can be proved. Claudio soon realizes his mistake and mourns for Hero. By the end of the play, love wins over everyone and there is a marriage ceremony for the four lovers.

Shakespeare's histories are intense explorations of actual English rulers. This was a newer kind of play that developed during Shakespeare's time. Other writers may have written historical plays, but no one could match Shakespeare's skill. Plays about rulers like Henry the Fourth and Richard the Third explore Britain's history during a time when the country was going through tense political struggles.

Many Shakespearian tragedies are about conflicting family loyalties or a character seeking to punish others for the wrongful death of a loved one. "Hamlet" tells the story of the son of the king of Denmark. When Hamlet's father unexpectedly dies, his uncle Claudius becomes ruler and marries Hamlet's mother. One night a ghostly spirit visits Hamlet and tells him that Claudius killed his father.

Hamlet decides to pretend that he is crazy to learn if this is true. This intense play captures the conflicted inner life of Hamlet. This young man must struggle between his moral beliefs and his desire to seek punishment for his father's death. Here is a famous speech from a movie version of "Hamlet." The actor Laurence Olivier shines in this difficult role.

HAMLET: "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?"

Shakespeare also wrote one of greatest collections of poems in English literature. He wrote several long poems, but is best known for his one hundred and fifty-four short poems, or sonnets. The English sonnet has a very exact structure. It must have fourteen lines, with three groups of four lines that set up the subject or problem of the poem. The sonnet is resolved in the last two lines of the poem.

If that requirement seems demanding, Shakespeare's sonnets are also written in iambic pentameter. This is a kind of structure in which each line has ten syllables or beats with a stress on every second beat.

Even with these restrictive rules, the sonnets seem effortless. They have the most creative language and imaginative comparisons of any other poems. Most of the sonnets are love poems. Some of them are attacks while others are celebrations. The sonnets express everything from pain and death to desire, wisdom, and happiness.

Here is one of Shakespeare's most famous poems. Sonnet Eighteen tells about the lasting nature of poetry. The speaker describes how the person he loves will remain forever young and beautiful in the lines of this poem.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Next week, we will explore the many ways that Shakespeare's work has influenced world culture over time. This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Barbara Klein.

Buckminster Fuller, 1895-1983: Building Designer, Inventor, Poet

Source: Voice of America Special English

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I'm Phoebe Zimmermann. And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA.  Today we tell about an unusual man who had many abilities.

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Building designer. Engineer. Inventor. Thinker. Poet. Not five people. Just one: Richard Buckminster Fuller.  "Bucky" Fuller, as he was known, was one of the most unusual thinkers of the twentieth century. His aim in life was to make the human race a success in the universe.

Bucky Fuller spent most of his life searching for new ideas. He also searched for unusual connections between existing ideas. He described himself in these words: "A complete, future-thinking design-science explorer."

Fuller believed deeply in technology. Through technology, he said, people can do anything they need to do.

R. Buckminster Fuller died in nineteen eighty-three at the age of eighty-seven. During his long life, he discussed his idea about technology and human survival. He called his idea "dymaxion." It came from three words. Dynamic, meaning a force. Maximum, meaning the most. And ion, which is an atom or group of atoms with an electrical charge.

Fuller explained the word dymaxion as a method of doing more with less. Everything he did was guided by this idea. He designed a dymaxion car, a dymaxion house, and a dymaxion map of the world. But he probably is known best for another invention -- the geodesic dome. A geodesic dome is a round building made of many straight-sided pieces.

Talking about R. Buckminster Fuller means using strange words. This is because Fuller himself invented words to describe his ideas and designs. His designs were way ahead of his time. They still are.

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R. Buckminster Fuller was born in Milton, Massachusetts, in eighteen ninety-five. Bucky could not see clearly, because his eyes did not point straight ahead. So, his world was filled with masses of color without clear shapes.

When he was four years old, he got eyeglasses to correct the problem. Suddenly, he could see the shapes of people's faces. He could see stars in the sky and leaves on the trees. He never lost his joy at the beauty he discovered in the world.

As a child, Bucky Fuller questioned everything. He was a very independent thinker at an early age. His refusal to accept other people's ideas and rules continued as he grew older. One result was that he never completed his university studies. He was expelled two times from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He thought his time was better spent having fun than studying.

Yet Bucky Fuller was very serious about learning. He proved this when he joined the American Navy during World War One.

In the navy, he learned all about navigation, mathematics, mechanics, communications and electronics engineering. He loved this world of modern technology. Soon after he joined the Navy, he designed new rescue equipment. It helped save the lives of some pilots during training. Fuller's good Navy record won him a short-term appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was there he first developed two ideas that were important for the rest of his life.

While studying warships, Fuller realized that they weighed much less than buildings, yet were able to do much more. He decided better designs could also help humans do more, using fewer materials.

In nineteen seventeen, Bucky Fuller married Anne Hewlett. Their daughter, Alexandra, was born about a year later. Bucky was a very emotional man, as well as an intellectual one. He loved his little daughter. She was the wonder of his world. Then Alexandra became very sick. The medicine to cure her had not been invented yet. She died at the age of four.

Bucky Fuller blamed himself, although he had done everything he could to save her. His sorrow overcame him. He began to drink too much alcohol. Yet he continued to work hard.

Fuller was head of a company that made a light-weight building material. He was not a successful businessman, however. And the company began to fail. He was dismissed by the owners.  It was nineteen twenty-seven. His wife had just given birth to another baby girl. They were living in Chicago, Illinois. He had no job and no money. He felt he was a complete failure.

Bucky Fuller walked through the streets of Chicago along lake Michigan. He stood silently on the shore. He considered killing himself. Then, as he explained later, he realized he did not have the right to kill himself. He said he had felt something inside him that day. He called it the Greater Intelligence or God. It told him he belonged to the universe. So Bucky Fuller decided to live. And he would live the way he thought best. He promised to spend his remaining years in search of designs that could make human existence on Earth easier. This began his great creative period.

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Fuller's first design was the dymaxion house. It was not built at the place it would stand. It was built in a factory, then moved. It did not cost much to build. And it did not look like a traditional house in America. Its roof hung from a huge stick in the center. Its walls were made of glass. It contained everything needed for people to live. Power came from the sun. Water was cleaned and re-used.

Fuller then designed and built the dymaxion car. It looked a little like the body of an airplane. It had three wheels instead of four. It could go as fast as one hundred eighty kilometers an hour. It carried up to twelve passengers.

Several companies were interested in building and selling Fuller's house and car. But his designs were so different, so extreme, that banks were not willing to lend money for the projects. So the dymaxion house -- which could have provided low-cost housing for everyone -- was never built. And the dymaxion car -- which could have provided safe, pollution-free transportation using little gasoline -- was never produced.

Bucky Fuller did not give up his idea of doing more with less. He had an idea for another building design. It would provide the most strength with the least amount of material. He began looking for the perfect shape.

Fuller found it in nature. It appeared in the shapes of organic compounds and metals. The main part of his design is a four-sided pyramid. To create a building, many pyramids are connected to each other. The connecting piece has eight sides.

Together, these two shapes create a very strong, light-weight rounded structure. The structure can be covered with any kind of material. And it can stand without any supports inside. Fuller named this structure the geodesic dome. It covers more space with less material than any other building ever designed.

After a number of experimental geodesic domes were built, industry began to understand the value of the design. Today, there are about one hundred thousand different large and small geodesic domes in use around the world. However, no one yet has acted on one of Fuller's ideas for the geodesic dome.

There are no limits to the size of a geodesic dome. So Fuller proposed using them over cities or over areas that had severe weather. A geodesic dome that size would make it possible to have complete control over the environment inside it.

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Most of Bucky Fuller's inventions did not earn him much money. A lot of what he did earn he spent travelling around the world. He told anyone who would listen about his ideas for human life on this planet.  He called the planet "Spaceship Earth." Humans, he said, are astronauts on Spaceship Earth. They are travelling one hundred thousand kilometers an hour around the sun. He said the Earth is like a large mechanical device that will survive only if people living on it know how to operate it correctly.

People must live on Earth just as astronauts live in a spaceship. They must use their supplies wisely, and re-use them. Buckminster Fuller said humans are able, through planning and wise use of natural supplies, to feed and house themselves forever.

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This VOA Special English program, PEOPLE IN AMERICA, was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano. It was produced by Lawan Davis. Our studio engineer was Sulaiman Tarawaley.  I'm Phoebe Zimmerman. And I'm Steve Ember.  Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of America.