One of the very few plays that can stand with those of Shakespeare in terms of life, energy, language and the instigation of thought is Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which despite its reputation as a frivoulous comedy, was a very serious play indeed and actually one of the most direct challenges to the power structure of its time ever written. It achieved this in an ingenious manner - a plot that seems so ridiculous and superficial that it well hides the serious comments that the characters make, in apparently casual asides, about the class system and so forth. Of course Wilde didn't fool everybody, unfortunately, and it seems quite obvious in retrospect that his open criticism of the powers of the day were the cause of his two-year sentence to hard labour (and the destruction of his health), which had nothing to do whatsoever with any alleged "crimes" committed in his personal life. It occurred to me while reading a most interesting essay on Twelfth Night ("Twelfth Night, Gender and Comedy", by R.W. Maslen, reprinted in the edition on the play from Harold Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages series), that Wilde probably took his cue at least partially from Shakespeare, who often hid commentary of a serious nature in comedic settings. One example in Twelfth Night is of course the role of the fool, Feste, which functions as a tonic to the madness of virtually every other character in the play (with the possible exception of Viola).

Maslen's essay made another point regarding the relation of Wilde to Twelfth Night, and to the sonnets, as well. Rather than try to summarize, I'll quote it (despite its length): "Oscar Wilde supposed that the boy addressed in Shakespeare's sonnets could have been an actor, and there's something profoundly satisfying about the supposition. Boy actors represented a way out of an artistic dilemma created by Elizabethan views on women. Since women were not allowed to perform on the public stage, boys took the female roles in plays. And in doing so they drew attention to the possibility that gender itself might be a matter of performance. As the antitheatrical polemicists pointed out, men could be, or could become, effeminate, and the boy actor's craft showed just how easy it was to accomplish this particular form of gender-bending. Shakespeare's 'master-mistress' in the sonnets, and Viola/Caesario in Twelfth Night, are bodies in transit through time, altering as they move and attracting men and women alike. In them fantasies of maleness and femaleness intersect and mingle, making possible all sorts of relationships - sexual and nonsexual - that were not officially sanctioned within Elizabethan culture. Hence the polemicists profound unease about the effect of comedy on its audiences."

Has any other art form had more transformative influence on human society than comedy? I think we can safely guess what Wilde and Shakespeare would answer.

Here's a question: Why is it so often assumed that the sonnets are autobiographical? Couldn't a series of poems be as fictional as a play? It strikes me that writing 154 sonnets on intensely personal subjects would be a very demanding experience. The fact that he didn't write any others (that we know of) could be taken as evidence in either direction, I suppose, but my own feeling is that the sonnets were another grounded and well-researched work of invention. We'll never know, of course - perhaps I'm wrong and there were some events from his life in these poems, but really it's somewhat beside the point. As they tell us all the way through, it's the lines on the page that last, and grow.

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this, but the most interesting Shakespeare audition that I've ever heard of was also the simplest: The director would assign each actor to read one of the sonnets. That was it. Because all of the skills required to interpret a part are exactly those needed to properly read a sonnet. In fact, reading poetry (despite its incorrect reputation) is actually a highly creative activity. It requires intellect, emotion and practice - the more we do it, the easier it gets. Also, the plays themselves (as I've said before) are best understood as large-scale poems - so assigning the interpretation of a small-scale one is probably the best way to measure a Shakespearean actor's skills. Ready to try one? Here's Sonnet 17:

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say 'This poet lies:

Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

So should my papers yellow'd with their age

Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage

And stretched metre of an antique song:

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.