The central themes of William Shakespeare’s works are the basic human emotions that
have attained timelessness. Human emotions such as lust, jealousy, ambition, greed, betrayal,
and revenge are overarching negative feelings which are experienced by every man
irrespective of the era he belongs to. The historical stories exemplify how these negative
feelings ruin even the noble people. According to Bradley (2005), “These emotions are found invariably with Shakespeare’s tragic heroes—Othello’s jealousy, King Lear’s pride,
Macbeth’s ambition, Romeo and Juliet’s lust, lead them to end their lives”. The great
Hindu philosopher and theologian, Adi Sankaracharya says, “kama krodascha lobhascha
dehe thishtanthi taskarah jnana ratno-paharaya tasmat jagrata jagrata” [desire,
anger and delusion—these three dacoits which are residing inside a man will loot the
jnana-ratna (gem of spiritual wisdom) and will deprive the precious gem of selfawareness
and place man in ignorance. Therefore, oh man, oh sadhaka, jagrata, jagrata.
Beware, beware]. The six inner enemies are called Arishadvargas in Indian philosophy,
where ari means enemy, shad means six and varga means factions: kama (lust), krodha
(anger), lobha (greed), moha (delusion), mada (pride), and maatsarya (jealousy). Even
the western philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, stated that these negative emotions
play a dangerous and destructive role in one’s life. Moreover, from a psychological
perspective “emotions emerge from within, and are at times partially constituted by the
dynamics of an agent’s ongoing interaction with evolving social contexts” (Krueger, 2014).
This paper tries to study the character’s inner emotion where he loses discrimination
between right and wrong, and also the commonalities between a few famous Shakespeare’s
characters and Indian mythological figures, proving that human beings share certain
emotions. Of course, literary works reflect contemporary society, but a few gain universality
and timelessness; among them are Shakespeare’s works and Indian mythological stories.
They are replete with various characteristics of man: how moral weakness can possess
the mind and lead it to annihilation; and the question of ‘moral choice’ in all issues and
circumstances. In particular, Shakespearean characters like Othello, Romeo and Juliet,
Macbeth, King Lear, Brutus, etc. are noble in nature, yet are destroyed by their own
emotional actions which often lead to destruction of those close to them as well. Here
rises a question: What are those emotions? Undoubtedly, the characters become prey to
internal emotions: Arishadvargas (inner enemies).
|
