He penned plays in verse with great ease
But just his rivals to displease
Greene called him upstart crow
And reading him, even Marlowe
Raised eyebrow

Playwright and actor in theatre
Shrewd observer of human nature
In shylock he portrays minority psyche
Callow youth’s indecision,
In Hamlet’s to be not to be

His songs as fresh as morning dew
Telling secrets of life in lines a few
‘Friends, Romans and countrymen’
Remains, till date, rhetoric’s rare specimen

It’s true, he had jealous rivals and adversaries
But, then he had equally great contemporaries
Eventually he surpassed established wits
And outsmarted even University Dramatists
It’s true,
Lear-Othello-Macbeth are pessimistic plays
But aren’t his sonnets sanguine as sunrays?