ISLAMABAD: Renowned performer Zia Mohyeddin gave a presentation on ‘Why is Shakespeare, Shakespeare’ at the Serena Hotel on Friday during a fundraiser for The Citizens Foundation (TCF).

Supporters of The Citizens Foundation Chairperson, Asma Rashid Khan said TCF is a non-for-profit which has been building and running schools since 1995 and currently has a network of 1,441 schools across the country.

Mr Mohyeddin began with a couplet by Iqbal which goes, Tujh ko jab deeda-i-deedar talab ney dhoonda, taab-i-khursheed mein khursheed ko pinha dekha. [When the eye wished to see you and looked, it saw the sun hidden in its own brilliance].

He then presented excerpts and passages from the works of Shakespeare to discuss what makes Shakespeare unique and masterful.

“These plays that were written hundreds of years ago still resonate with people today. He is always in sympathy with human nature. Shakespeare crystallised thoughts into unforgettable sayings – such as what’s done is done, what the dickens is his name, budge an inch, fill’d with the milk of human kindness, along with numerous others”.

The magnificence of Shakespeare’s plots lie in the succession of episodes that mark the development of the story and the development of characters, he said.

Shakespeare’s unique way of ensuring that there is no completely comic resolution finds form in As You Like It.

Mohyeddin declaimed the monologue, All The World’s a Stage, describing the seven stages of man, ending with sans everything.

Interspersing the excerpts with anecdotes, Mohyeddin shared how as an undergraduate in England, his professor taught As You Like It in a truly grotesque manner.

Mohyeddin talked about the tragic Julius Caesar and the misguided political idealism, portrayed by the Bard through Brutus the idealist, Caesar the egoist and Antony the opportunist.

Repeating the masterful political oratory of Antony’s, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears ; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,” Mohyeddin brought to life the moment when a revolution takes an inconceivable turn.

For a period after Shakespeare, his work was in decline with lesser playwrights coming to the fore. During the Restoration he was looked down upon for not having followed the Aristotelian dictates for what a play should look like – it should be written entirely in verse, with a cast of no more than seven or eight characters and adhering to the three unities: a single plot, the tragedy should have a single location and it should span no more than a day.

Zia Mohyeddin has his decades of experience in performing arts, with a career that includes acting, directing, writing, broadcasting, and a wide range of aesthetic disciplines. While in England, he had the opportunity to play leading parts in theatre and film with actors such as Dame Judi Dench, Michael Caine, Sir Sean Connery, Leo McKern, Peter Ustinov and Tim Roth, earning an accolade from the drama critic of the Guardian, who wrote, ‘British actors should learn from Zia Mohyeddin how to read Shakespeare’s prose’.

Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2018