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His writing leaves you space to inhabit each character and scope to interpret their words, synthesizing your life with theirs. Whoever plays Hamlet reinvents the part anew. This is why Shakespeare means something different to every generation, and why he is never out of place in any age.
Although Shakespeare writes of politics, he is not political; there is no side to an argument he has not taken and disrupted with equal brilliance. He did not merely record history; he created it.
Shakespeare’s embellishments are often remembered as history. That is because he drives at the heart of who people are; not merely as monarchs and politicians, but as human beings, ambitious, indecisive, flawed.
Shakespeare’s new-fangled words include, well, ‘new-fangled’ as well as ‘bedazzled’, ‘birth-place’, ‘cold-blooded’, ‘cold-hearted’, ‘eyeball’, ‘fortune-teller’, ‘puppy-dog’, ‘shooting star’, ‘unreal’ and ‘well-read’ to name but a few. Phrases attributed to him include ‘Blinking idiot’, ‘Brave new world’, ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’, ‘In my heart of hearts’, ‘Jealousy is the green-eyed monster’, ‘Neither rhyme nor reason’, ‘Own flesh and blood’, ‘Too much of a good thing’ and ’What’s done is done’.
The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’
ISABELLA
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O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.
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In The Taming of the Shrew, he coins the phrase ‘break the ice’ to describe the loosening of a stilted social situation,
One of the passages to which he alludes most often is I Corinthians 2:9, a preference that reflects his seeming reluctance to venture much about the nature of God in his work: ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man what God has in store for those who love Him.’
it is worth noting here that ‘wherefore’ means ‘why’, not ‘where’ – as in ‘why are you Romeo Montague, and thus forbidden to fraternize with me, a Capulet?’ JULIET O Romeo, Romeo! – wherefore art thou Romeo?
have defended the title of something by arguing that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.
‘The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool’. These words from Touchstone, the fool in As You Like It
I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
More speaks these lines to quell a rioting crowd swelling with anti-immigration sentiment. SIR THOMAS MORE Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise Hath chid down all the majesty of England. Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage, Plodding to th’ ports and coasts for transportation, And that you sit as kings in your desires, Authority quite silenced by your brawl, And you in ruff of your opinions clothed. What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught How insolence and strong hand should prevail, How order should be quelled.
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CAESAR Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
If she dares trust me with her little babe, I’ll show’t the King, and undertake to be Her advocate to th’loud’st. We do not know How he may soften at the sight o’th’child: The silence often of pure innocence Persuades when speaking fails.
