Shaker furniture Furniture designed for the religious colonies of Shakers founded in the U.S. in the last quarter of the 18th century. The Shakers’ designs reflected their beliefs that good craftsmanship was in itself an act of prayer and that form should follow function, an attitude that anticipated the concept of Functionalism a century later. Constructed of pine or other inexpensive wood, each item was fashioned solely to serve its intended use and was devoid of decoration. Interest in Shaker furni¬ ture and other Shaker crafts revived in the 20th century, after most Shaker colonies had dissolved, and imitations are now widely produced.
Shakespeare, William (baptized April 26, 1564, Stratford-upon- Avon, Warwickshire, Eng.—d. April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon) Brit¬ ish poet and playwright, often considered the greatest writer in world literature. He spent his early life in Stratford-upon-Avon, receiving at most a grammar-school education, and at age 18 he married a local woman, Anne Hathaway. By 1594 he was apparently a rising playwright in Lon¬ don and an actor in a leading theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later King’s Men); the company performed at the Globe Theatre from 1599. The order in which his plays were written and performed is highly uncertain. His earliest plays seem to date from the late 1580s to the mid- 1590s and include the comedies Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night ’s Dream ; his¬ tory plays based on the lives of the English kings, including Henry VI (parts 1, 2, and 3), Richard III, and Richard //; and the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The plays apparently written between 1596 and 1600 are mostly comedies, including The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It, and histories, including Henry IV (parts 1 and 2), Henry V, and Julius Caesar. Approxi¬ mately between 1600 and 1607 he wrote the comedies Twelfth Night, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure, as well as the great trag¬ edies Hamlet (probably begun in 1599), Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear, which mark the summit of his art. Among his later works (about 1607 to 1614) are the tragedies Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens, as well as the fantastical romances The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest. He probably also is responsible for some sections of the plays Edward III and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Shakespeare’s plays, all of them written largely in iambic pentameter verse, are marked by extraordinary poetry; vivid, subtle, and complex characterizations; and a highly inventive use of English. His 154 sonnets, published in 1609 but apparently written mostly in the 1590s, often express strong feeling within an exquisitely controlled form. Shakespeare retired to Stratford before 1610 and lived as a country gentleman until his death. The first collected edition of his plays, or First Folio, was pub¬ lished in 1623. As with most writers of the time, little is known about his life and work, and other writers, particularly the 17th earl of Oxford, have frequently been proposed as the actual authors of his plays and poems.
shakti or sakti Vsh9k-te\ In Hinduism, the “creative energy” inherent in and proceeding from God. It is exemplified by the female principle, the female reproductive organs, or the goddess Shakti, wife of Shiva. As energy, shakti is viewed as the merging of powers emanating from male gods, and it is possessed by each person. In Tantric Hinduism, the god¬ dess Shakti is associated with the lowest of the chakras, lying dormant within the body as a coiled serpent (Kundalini) that must be aroused to reach spiritual liberation by uniting with Shiva at the top of the head. See also Shaktism.
Shaktism or Saktism Vshok-.ti-zoirA Worship of the supreme Hindu goddess Shakti. Together with Vaishnavism and Shaivism, it is one of the major forms of Hinduism practiced today. Particularly prominent in Ben¬ gal and Assam, Shaktism takes various forms depending on conceptions
Ben Shahn, 1966.
© KARSH FROM RAPHO/PHOTO RESEARCHERS-EB INC.
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Shaka, lithograph by W. Bagg, 1836.
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of Shakti. In popular worship she has many names, and some scholars consider most female deities in Hinduism to be various manifestations of her. Shakti is worshiped and cultivated as a power that can lead to spiri¬ tual liberation. Shaktism is inseparably related to the system of practices for the purification of mind and body that are grouped under Tantric Hin¬ duism.
shakuhachi V.sha-kii-'ha-cheV Japanese end-blown bamboo flute. Its notes are produced by blowing across the open upper end, resulting in a distinctively breathy tone. It has five fingerholes. The shakuhachi is of great antiquity; it has been widely played as a solo instrument and in small ensembles, especially with the koto and samisen (a fretless lute).
shale Any of a group of fine-grained, laminated sedimentary rocks con¬ sisting of silt- and clay-sized particles. Shale constitutes roughly 60% of the sedimentary rock in the Earth’s crust. Shales are commercially impor¬ tant, particularly in the ceramics industry. They are a valuable raw mate¬ rial for tile, brick, and pottery and constitute a major source of alumina for portland cement. In addition, advances in recovery methods may one day make oil shale a practical source for liquid petroleum.
shale oil Synthetic crude oil that is extracted from oil shale by pyroly¬ sis, or destructive distillation. The oil obtained from oil shale cannot be refined by the methods that have been developed for crude oil, however, because shale oil is low in hydrogen and contains large amounts of nitro¬ gen and sulfur compounds. To be made usable, shale oil must be hydro¬ genated and then chemically treated to remove the nitrogen and sulfur, a process too expensive to make shale oil commercially competitive with crude oil. See also kerogen, petroleum.
shallot Mildly aromatic herbaceous plant {Allium ascalonicum) of the lily family, probably of Asiatic origin, used to flavour foods. Closely related to the onion and garlic, the shallot is a hardy perennial with short, small, cylindrical, and hollow leaves; lavender to red flowers in a compact umbel; and small, elongated, angular bulbs. Much like garlic, the bulbs develop in clusters on a common base. The leaves are sometimes eaten when green. The so-called shallot marketed extensively as green spring onions is in fact a form of onion.
shaman Vsha-monX Person who uses magic to cure the sick, divine the unknown, or control events. Both men and women can be shamans. Sha¬ manism is classically associated with certain Arctic and Central Asian peoples, but today the term is applied to analogous religious and quasi¬ religious systems throughout the world. As medicine man and priest, the shaman cures illnesses, directs communal sacrifices, and escorts the souls of the dead to the other world. He operates by using techniques of ecstasy, the power to leave his body at will during a trancelike state. In cultures where shamanism occurs, sickness is usually thought of as soul loss; it is thus the shaman’s task to enter the spirit world, capture the soul, and rein¬ tegrate it in the body. A person becomes a shaman either by inheritance or by self-election. See also animism.
Shamash \'sha-,mash\ In Mesopotamian religion, the god of the sun, who, with his father, Sin, and the goddess Ishtar, was part of an astral triad of divinities. As the solar god, Shamash was the heroic conqueror of night and death, and he became known as the god of justice and equity. He was said to have presented the Code of Hammurabi to the Babylonian king. At night he served as judge of the underworld. The chief centres of his cult were at Larsa and Sippar.