SHAKESPEARE & WEBSTER

Suppose, you are given a volume of  "The Complete works of Shakespeare".

Alongwith it you also get a Webster's dictionary and the giver tells you that IF you do not understand the meaning of any word in Shakespeare's writings you may check-up the meaning in this dictionary.

Suppose also that you get a nice piece of green or red velvet cloth and wrap the Shakespeare's works in that cloth and keep it on some high place and never open it but just read the Webster's dictionary, hoping to understand Shakespeare thru it.

What will you gain out of this exercise? You may live and die like a Brahaman for seven times but you will NEVER get to know what the Great Author is telling you. What beautiful stories are in that volume, you will never know. What beautiful passages both prose and poetry are in these, you will never know.

If your language is English you will get Shakespeare in its original form. But as the complete works have been translated in many languages of the world you may get it in your own language be it Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, French, German etc. But in all these cases you will "have to read" Shakespeare to have a  “feel" of the author's mind and the beautiful message he has tried to convey thru his writings.

Shakespeare's basic theme in almost all his stories is the "nature of man", his actions and re-actions, his machinations, his treachery, his generosity.

In short, you must read the author's original work in ANY language that you understand and then only, repeat then only you will need a dictionary to further elaborate the writer's message. Keeping aside the "Original Works" and fiddling only with the dictionary will get you nowhere.

QURAN & HADITH :- The same analogy may be applied to the Holy Quran and Hadith. You will hear great people say that Hadith is a 'dictionary' of the Quran and you can NEVER understand the Quran without the Hadith. Granted. But will you get anywhere by just reading the "dictionary" and keeping the ORIGINAL nicely tucked away in some high place in red or green velvet?

I leave the answer to you, with a request to remember me in your prayers.

Servant of Allah,

May, 2002
Rabi-ul-Awwal, 1423 AH

For more information on the Quran please refer to the articles "ISLAMISATION" and "RAIN AND REVELATION"

back to top