William Shakespeare
If scholars agree on any one idea, it is that William Shakespeare is considered the greatest playwright to have ever lived.
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 26th, 1564. By the age of 20, Shakespeare became a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men Company of Theatrical Players. We have a marriage record to Anne Hathaway, and a birth record for a set of twins. By the 1590s he was both writing and acting, although he never attended university. By the late 1580s, he moved to London, England. By 1597, he authored 15 plays, including the romance Romeo and Juliet. He is also known as being a highly skilled businessman. He built the famous Globe Theater in 1959. He made shrewd real estate investments as an entrepreneur. He knew how to sell his work and make a profit for his investments. He was part of the Chamberlain’s Men, which later changed to the King’s Men.
Shakespeare’s works are categorized by his Histories, Romances, Tragedies, Comedies, Tragic Comedies, and Sonnets. The phrases in his works are so common that people get mixed up and can’t tell whether they came from the Bible or Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Middle Period produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, and Macbeth. His Later Period produced Lear, Cleopatra, and The Tempest. He produced 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and several narrative poems in his lifetime. Google searching William Shakespeare produces 43,900,000 results. The month of April is internationally known as Poetry Month because of Shakespeare’s date of birth. He added over 3,000 words to the English language, marking him the greatest agent besides King James I in standardizing English.
Most of all, William Shakespeare explored the human condition in his works. He had a knack for understanding emotion and feeling. He did not shy away from telling great stories of complexities of the psyche and the expression of passion and desire. He charters into family dynamics, love relationships, disguise, magic, humor, social class, friendship, enemies, war, patriotism—essentially every theme common to humankind is represented in his works. The specific details of Shakespeare’s life are quite lacking. To this day, no one has consensus regarding the events of his death. There is even controversy among scholars over his authorship. Regardless, William Shakespeare remains one of the most influential figures in human civilization.
Here is an example from King Lear of the pronunciation and spelling of his original works of the stage version of western speech:
Good Gentleman goe your gate, let poore volke passe: and chud haue been zwaggar’d out of my life, it would not haue bene zo long by a vortnight: nay come not neere the olde man, keepe out cheuore ye, or ile try whether your costard or my bat be the harder, chill be plaine with you. Shakespeare, King Lear, IV. vi (2nd Quarto, 1619)
Like Spencer, Shakespeare also contributed his own version of the sonnet form to the English language.
Out of his 154 sonnets, this is one of his most well-known:
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
So we can see, Shakespeare remains the most forceful agent of standardization in the English language. Many of our common cliches come from his works. The majority of contemporary pieces of literature and film make allusions to his works also. Here is list of all many common phrases people say that come from his works:
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 26th, 1564. By the age of 20, Shakespeare became a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men Company of Theatrical Players. We have a marriage record to Anne Hathaway, and a birth record for a set of twins. By the 1590s he was both writing and acting, although he never attended university. By the late 1580s, he moved to London, England. By 1597, he authored 15 plays, including the romance Romeo and Juliet. He is also known as being a highly skilled businessman. He built the famous Globe Theater in 1959. He made shrewd real estate investments as an entrepreneur. He knew how to sell his work and make a profit for his investments. He was part of the Chamberlain’s Men, which later changed to the King’s Men.
Shakespeare’s works are categorized by his Histories, Romances, Tragedies, Comedies, Tragic Comedies, and Sonnets. The phrases in his works are so common that people get mixed up and can’t tell whether they came from the Bible or Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Middle Period produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, and Macbeth. His Later Period produced Lear, Cleopatra, and The Tempest. He produced 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and several narrative poems in his lifetime. Google searching William Shakespeare produces 43,900,000 results. The month of April is internationally known as Poetry Month because of Shakespeare’s date of birth. He added over 3,000 words to the English language, marking him the greatest agent besides King James I in standardizing English.
Most of all, William Shakespeare explored the human condition in his works. He had a knack for understanding emotion and feeling. He did not shy away from telling great stories of complexities of the psyche and the expression of passion and desire. He charters into family dynamics, love relationships, disguise, magic, humor, social class, friendship, enemies, war, patriotism—essentially every theme common to humankind is represented in his works. The specific details of Shakespeare’s life are quite lacking. To this day, no one has consensus regarding the events of his death. There is even controversy among scholars over his authorship. Regardless, William Shakespeare remains one of the most influential figures in human civilization.
Here is an example from King Lear of the pronunciation and spelling of his original works of the stage version of western speech:
Good Gentleman goe your gate, let poore volke passe: and chud haue been zwaggar’d out of my life, it would not haue bene zo long by a vortnight: nay come not neere the olde man, keepe out cheuore ye, or ile try whether your costard or my bat be the harder, chill be plaine with you. Shakespeare, King Lear, IV. vi (2nd Quarto, 1619)
Like Spencer, Shakespeare also contributed his own version of the sonnet form to the English language.
Out of his 154 sonnets, this is one of his most well-known:
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
So we can see, Shakespeare remains the most forceful agent of standardization in the English language. Many of our common cliches come from his works. The majority of contemporary pieces of literature and film make allusions to his works also. Here is list of all many common phrases people say that come from his works:
- Parting is such sweet sorrow (Romeo and Juliet)
- Nothing can come of nothing (King Lear)
- Method in the madness (Hamlet)
- The world’s mine (my) oyster (Merry Wives of Windsor)
- I am constant as the Norther Star (Julius Caesar)
- The green eyed monster (Othello)
- A pound of flesh (Merchant of Venice)
- Cruel to be kind (Hamlet)
- Double double toil and trouble (Macbeth)
- Good riddance (Trolius and Cressida)
- He hath eaten me out of house and home (Henry the Fourth)
- I will wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello)
- Knock knock, who’s there? (Macbeth)
- Masters of their fate (Julius Caesar)
- One fell swoop (Macbeth)
- Pomp and circumstance (Othello)
- Strange bedfellows (The Tempest)
- The be all and the end all
- To be or not to be (Hamlet)
- To thine own self be true (Hamlet)
- Too much of a good thing (As You Like It)
- We have seen better days (As You Like It)