Dramas and Sonnets of William Shakespeare Vol. 1 is helpful to every learner of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) who, doubtless, saw himself as merely another professional man of the theatre who moved almost casually from play-acting to playwriting. And indeed, he was very much a man of his time, a man of the Elizabethan theatre, who learnt to exploit brilliantly the stagecraft, the acting, and the public taste of his day. It happens very rarely in the history of literature that a craftsman who has acquired perfect control of his medium, masterly ease in handling the techniques and conventions of his day, is also a universal genius of the highest order, combining with his technical proficiency a unique ability to render experience in poetic language and an uncanny, intuitive understanding of human psychology. Man of the theatre, poet and expert in the human passions, Shakespeare has appealed equally to those who admire the art with which he renders a story in terms of the acted drama or the insight with which he presents states of mind and complexities of attitude or the unsurpassed brilliance he shows in giving conviction and a new dimension to the utterances of his characters through the poetic speech he puts in their mouths. It is a remarkable combination of qualities. Yet he was no poetic genius descending on the theatre from above, but a working dramatist who found himself in catering for the public theatre of his day.
