After three months or so, I am reading something of my interest. After last night's submission, I got a chance to breath and read some literary work. As always, I resorted to Oscar Wilde whom I consider one of the finest writers of the past few centuries.
I am reading his essay on importance of costumes in drama. He mainly talks about how Shakespeare described the costumes and masks of his characters to the utmost accuracy and detail.
Take a look at this sentence. "... But with the stage, how different it is. The ancient world wakes from its sleep and history moves as a pageant before our eyes, without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an encyclopaedia for the perfection of our enjoyment. "
I somehow always believe that the whole life is a drama. And this world is a stage, we all being actors. Compare it with every characteristics of drama. As Wilde says, the drama is always an elaborate depiction of what is written in the book. In life's case, the drama of life is an elaborate depiction of what is there in the 'book of life'. We can assume every person's life to be a biography written by God. And then when the time comes, this biography is performed on the stage of this world.
And the more interesting part is, all these biographies being performed interact with each other and make a complete play. And this play is so very interesting. The more you are involved in some events of life, the more you enjoy musing about them in retrospect. Some parts of your life, you can actually re-live when you think about them in your quietest of moments.
We all are actors and the God is the writer director of the drama. But one stark difference between the life and drama is that in a drama, all the actors have known the script a priori. And they know what is going to happen in the subsequent scenes. God's drama is much supirior in this respect. In the drama of life, noone knows what is going to happen to their character in the subsequent scenes. And this makes it so much more interesting.
Such uncertainty bring about the most natural 'acting' possible from the characters. The contemporary drama directors should actually try this strategy. Do not give the script to the actors. Just tell them the immediate sequence and make them act accordingly. In this setup, the actors will have no prejudice towards the coming sequences and will be most focused on the current scene.
Or thinking in reverse direction, how would it be, if God gave us the entire script and asked us to act accordingly? How would it be to act all your life knowing that you are acting. We all act even now, but we just don't acknowledge our behaviour as acting. If we knew what is going to happen in future, in other words, if we had the script of the drama called life, then everyone would be acting.
The world would become so unnatural and appallingly boring. Imagine a boy acting to be in love when he knows that his love is not going to last for ever. Imagine a farmer acting to be anticipating the rains for his harvest when he knows that it will be a famine this year. Imagine a soldier bidding goodbye to his fiancee and promising her to return soon when he knows that his 'role' will compel him to die in the 'war scene'. I would actually say it is not only boring but it is sad.
Another interesting aspect in comparison comes to my mind and that is re-takes. Imagine having re-takes in our lives. If you make a mistake, the director - God will give you another chance to correct it. Will it be good? Will it be bad? What will happen to the consciences of people if they know that they will have a second chance always? Will they be less judicious in their behaviour? Will they be less burdened? But again, one similarity here is that an actor learns from his mistakes in the previous scenes and becomes more careful in his subsequent scenes. Life also teaches lessons at every step. We learn from past and correct our mistakes in future.
Going back to Shakespeare's style of writing, he assumed the most ornated and elaborate stage setup available while writing. Therefore we see many complaints in the literature form the directors of such drama that it was extremely difficult to recreate the magic of Shakespearian dramas on the stage. God is one step ahead than Shakespear. He not only assumes the grand stage for performance, he creates it too. Now think about this, would God have created the stage and then written this drama called life? Or once the God wrote this drama, then he created the stage and selected actors?
If given a chance, would you take up a different role in this drama? Or would you like someone else in your life to take a different role? Would you ask God to change your part of the role slightly?
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1 comment:
Some things to ponder abt 1) Don't u think that God wrote the book is a lil fatalistic and defies the fact that man is the master of his own destiny ?? 2) Now a completely contrary view of this is that wat our existence is in a matrix like world and that what we do is controlled by some one and it so happens that we are all actually acting like puppets??
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