 Hey friends, I am back again with my lecture on William Shakespeare. In the last video I have already discussed two very important plays by William Shakespeare namely Two Gentlemen of Verona and Comedy of Errors. Why are these two plays important and why should you read these plays I have already mentioned in the video. So if you have not watched the video then do go and check that video. In this video I am going to take another important plays and we will be having a discussion on what makes these plays important and what are the important things that you must remember about these plays if you are preparing for UGC net English literature. So the first play is Mary Wives of Winster. Now Mary Wives of Winster is important because it has a character called Falstaff. Falstaff is a fat knight and he is a kind of a comic character which also featured in Shakespeare's earlier plays Henry IV part 1 and Henry IV part 2. In both the plays Henry IV part 1 and 2 he was a very mischievous character and Queen Elizabeth loved Falstaff and asked Shakespeare that you should write a play with centers on or around Falstaff. So Shakespeare wrote this play on the request of Queen Elizabeth I. Now we find that two plots are there in this play. The first plot is the conflict between Falstaff and two wives of Winster. Wives of Winster, Winster is a place and Mary Wives because they are very happily married and Falstaff tries to seduce them or tries to woo them. And the name of these two wives are Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. So Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are two women whom Falstaff tries to love and Falstaff tries to you know woo. But these two plays tricks on Falstaff which makes the play very comic. Another set of story which is going in this play is the relationship of Anne Page and three suitors. Suitors are people who would like to marry Anne Page. So three suitors namely Fendin, Dr. Khyos and Slendor. So these are the three suitors, one likes Anne Page's mother and one likes Anne Page's father. And the third is Fendin, he is in love with Anne Page and Anne Page also loves him back and later at the end we find that Fendin marries Anne Page and this is how the play ends happily. There is a beautiful line in this play and I am sure that people who are very very particular about time and discipline would love this line. The line is better three hours soon than a minute late. So better three hours soon than a minute late. This is a line from William Shakespeare's famous play Mary Wives of Windsor. The next important play is Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar is a historic play because it is quite related to the historical event which happened way back in Rome during the Roman civilization when Julius Caesar was the Roman leader. The play talks about how Julius Caesar being a very powerful ruler or a very powerful leader, he was leading the country and because Rome was a republic and the conspirators or the people of the opposition party did not like Julius Caesar getting so much fame and so much appreciation, they decided that just because Julius Caesar is a threat to the country and to the power because of which he is gaining so much respect and so much fame they decided that they would kill Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar's best friend Brutus joined the conspirators and that is what makes the play tragic because Brutus is the one who stabbed Caesar and when Caesar saw Brutus stabbing him he just said his last words air to Brutus and this is what makes the play tragic and we can see that Brutus who is not the central character of the play gets four times more lines to speak in the play than Julius Caesar. So he speaks four times more line than what Julius Caesar speaks in the play. What is also important about this play is that Hamlet in the play Hamlet, Polyneus has given a reference to Julius Caesar because he says that I enacted Julius Caesar I died at the capital I was killed at the capital Brutus killed me this is the line by Polyneus in Hamlet so we can see how Julius Caesar is referred in Hamlet as well. Another important thing about this play is that when Shakespeare was writing this play he wrote a very very beautiful speech which was spoken by Mark Antony and the speech began with the famous line friends Romans and countrymen lend me your ears. So if you are not aware of this speech then do go and check this speech it's a beautiful speech where he says that Brutus was an honorable man and he kind of contradicts his own statement he's praising Brutus in the speech but contradicts it by telling all the Roman people that it is because of Brutus that we have lost a great leader like Caesar okay so we can see the skill of rhetorics in Mark Antony and he becomes a famous orator like all the famous orators in the world they definitely go and check the speech by Mark Antony. Another important thing that you must remember is that there was a question in December 2005 where they asked that it's Greek to me this line is from which play of William Shakespeare and the line is from Julius Caesar so it's Greek to me is a line from Julius Caesar you must remember that. The next play that we are going to talk about in this video is as you like it now as you like it is a very very famous play by William Shakespeare and it is famous because it is a pastoral comedy it features these two beautiful and really close friends namely Rosalind and Celia now both of these close cousins they disguise themselves as men so Rosalind takes the identity of Gimmet and Celia disguises as Elina. Now there are so many things which keeps on going throughout the play and I would not be able to discuss about the plot in detail in this video but I would like to tell you certain important things that you must keep in mind if you're preparing for net exam The first important thing is that the title of Thomas Hardy's book or Thomas Hardy's novel under the Greenwood tree comes from as you like it so the title has been taken from Shakespeare's as you like it. The second important thing that you must remember that there's this famous line which is there in this play and the line is all worlds are staged and all men and women are merely players so this poem comes from as you like it. The setting of the play is also important because it was asked once in net exam the setting is in France so the play is set in France other than that you should also keep in mind one very important thing there's a character called Jack in this play and this character is very funny because he keeps on mourning throughout the play on the slaughter of a deer so he's a person who is very emotional and he's a kind of comic character but then he also thinks about mortality and life and philosophy so he is a very very important character when you look at the play as you like it so you must remember these important things and if you get time do go and read the summary of as you like it you will love it it's a pistol comedy very comic very fun and it also talks about life and how people are getting materialistic and how everybody is unaware of the acts that they are committing so before we in this video I would like to talk about another important work by William Shakespeare which is Anthony and Cleopatra. Anthony and Cleopatra is a work which talks about Mark Anthony's love affair with the Queen of Egypt named Cleopatra and we also have a very tragic scene at the end of the play where Cleopatra is killed by the help of poisonous snake which are transported to her in a basket of figs so she's killed by the help of poisonous snakes this is very important to remember other than that two important things that you must remember about this play is that this play has been an inspiration for John Dryden's all for love so all for love was based or was an adaptation of Anthony and Cleopatra the other thing that you must remember is that it has been taken the plot has been taken or the plot has been inspired from Thomas North's translation of Plutarch lives so this is another important thing that you must keep in mind because this has been asked several times in net that Shakespeare's play are being inspired by so they're inspired by Thomas North's translation of Plutarch life this you must keep in mind so with that I end this video there are a lot of other Shakespeare's play which we cover in our online course in detail I take up 27 plays out of 37 plays I discuss 27 plays out of which 12 play are explained in detail whereas the other plays are just talked about in you know in brief because there are certain references that you must remember about those places so this is how I complete the entire work of Shakespeare and the total duration of the audio lecture is five and half hours in which I cover the entire Shakespearean legendary genre so this is how I complete the course if you are interested to join my course then you can go to my website www.arpathakarva.com you'll find a list of all the important writers there which we cover in our online course you can have a look at the list and if you like it then you can definitely join my course other than that do subscribe to this channel because we post videos every Saturday and every Sunday for UCC net aspirants to help them in their preparation of the exam if you have not followed me on the social media platform then do it now because we post go-net quiz every day and we post some really nice quotes on literature which will help you to keep yourself motivated and which will obviously boost your net preparation like my social media pages not follow them then do it right now so that from tomorrow every time I post a quiz I post an update you get notified so with that I end this video thank you so much so with that note I end my video happy learning and keep loving literature