The basic thesis of Stephen Marche’s How Shakespeare Changed Everything becomes obvious very early on (as in, it is expressed in the title). According to this fun, lyrically written and well-researched book, here are just ten of the many ways that Shakespeare changed everything: 1. He gave us a lot of new words
Shakespeare's Career. Read about William Shakespeare's early career as he built his reputation in London. Thou art the ruins of the noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times. Shakespeare’s reputation was established in London by 1592.
In some cases, Shakespeare may have coined the terms; in others he may have been the first to put them into the written record. According to Stephen Marche, author of “How Shakespeare Changed Everything,” the playwright utilized various linguistic techniques to create new words.
That group of actors, then limited to just men, quickly rose to fame and prominence in London. Shakespeare wrote many plays and also acted his characters out onstage. Many enjoyed watching and reading his plays and poems, which lead to Shakespeare earning respect and financial success from his career as a playwright.
Shakespeare thought sexual repression was for the birds. His plays are bawdier than anything the Farrely Brothers have devised and, while his own rowdy Globe Theatre crowds ate it up (they were all drunk anyway), future generations found it necessary to censor the Bard substantially. Bell’s Shakespeare from 1773, the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed on the English stage, contained only 2/3 of the original material.
In March of 1860, Schieffelin released a mere sixty starlings into the Central Park air as a part of his effort to introduce every bird mentioned in Shakespeare to North America. Scientists estimate that the descendants of this and another small 1891 Schiefflin-released flock now number in the area of 200 million. 4.
Tolstoy on Shakespeare reveals, unequivocally, that Tolstoy did not merely lack delight in Shakespeare’s work, he derived from it, “irresistible repulsion and tedium” and found the literary world’s reliance on and reference for Shakespe are to be “a great evil – as is every untruth.”. Yowza. 10.
He named a lot of babies. Simpson, Biel and Rabbit, just to name a few. The name “Jessica” first appears in Shakespeare. The original Jessica was Shylock’s daughter in The Merchant of Venice. 5. He cleared the path for Freud. Shakespeare thought sexual repression was for the birds.
Five months later, on April 14, 1865, JWB would put on a more impactful performance at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, as a real-life Brutus, assassinating the leader of a nation. 3. He inadvertently caused a pigeon problem.
Just say some words real quick and you’ll probably say one he coined – nearly 10% of his 20,000-word vocabulary was new to his audiences. You may consider yourself quite fashionable or softhearted. You may consider this post to be lackluster. But you couldn’t consider any of those things to be those ways if Shakespeare hadn’t made up the words for you.
Many scholars do believe , however, that The Double Falsehood does, indeed, contain elements of a play originally crafted by Shakespeare. If you want to celebrate the Bard's Birthday in style, don't forget you can up the Shakesperience with one of our Shakespeare Soiree Printable Party Kits! literature. FACEBOOK 0.
That heartfelt response is, perhaps, Shakespeare’s most astonishing achievement. Four hundred years on, his unique gift to our culture, language and imagination has been to universalise the experience of living and writing in late 16th-century England and to have become widely recognised, and loved, across the world as the greatest playwright.
Shakespeare’s double life, as both an English and a universal artist (poet and playwright), begins with the First Folio of 1623. His friend Ben Jonson, addressing “the Reader”, initially says that “gentle Shakespeare” is the “soul of the age”, placing him firmly in a metropolitan context, as “the wonder of our stage”.
The 1623 First Folio was the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP. Shakespeare was a writer who always seemed to be able to do what he wanted with the language, marrying Anglo-Saxon, continental and classical traditions in a weave of poetry and storytelling.
Despite having forever changed English life, language and culture, at home and abroad, Shakespeare remains an enigma. His work is a mirror on which we can reflect themes of love and hate, war and peace, freedom and tyranny, but the man himself is mysterious.
Freud thought Shakespeare “the greatest of poets” and was always ready with apt quotations from the collected works. His recognition of the unconscious took Shakespeare’s fascination with the mind of man to a new level and he scattered the poet’s insights throughout his own psychoanalytic writing. Freud ’s stock-in-trade – duplicity, envy, desire, and conscience – is all grist to Shakespeare’s mill, from “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face” to “the stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired”. When Richard III is facing his downfall, he declares: “Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devis’d at first to keep the strong in awe.”
Typically, Shakespeare seems to have left the stage with scarcely a backward glance. He simply retired to Stratford, collaborated a bit with a few former associates, got drunk with some old friends and died, having bequeathed his “second-best bed” to Anne Hathaway, his wife.
In 1961, the film of the production became a worldwide hit. Other great classical composers who loved Shakespeare include Berlioz ( The Tempest ), Mendelssohn ( Midsummer Night’s Dream ), and Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, both inspired by Romeo & Juliet.
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An ambitious and entertaining new book by Esquire columnist Stephen Marche explores the many, often unsuspected ways in which the great playwright shaped just about every facet of contemporary culture.
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Although it can be difficult to attribute the origination of a precise word to a specific person, the Oxford English Dictionary credits William Shakespeare with the first-use citations of approximately 1,600 words—from “bedazzle” to “fashionable” to “watchdog”—more than by any other writer. The master of wordplay also contributed dozens of other phrases that remain a part of our everyday language. In some cases, Shakespeare may have coined the terms; in others he may have been the first to put them into the written record.
Eyeball. Shakespeare commonly created words such as “eyeball” by marrying together two existing words. In “The Tempest” Prospero instructs the spirit Ariel: “Go make thyself like a nymph o’ the sea: be subject to no sight but thine and mine; invisible to every eyeball else.”.
Shakespeare had earlier referred to “green-eyed jealousy” in “The Merchant of Venice,” perhaps employing the color because seventeenth-century writers equated a green complexion with illness. 2. Critic. In “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” the lovesick Berowne laments his past judgmental behavior and refers to himself as “a critic, nay, ...
In “Henry IV,” Shakespeare uses the skimming of cream from milk to describe someone of weak character. When Hotspur condemns a nobleman for failing to support his rebellion against the king, he proclaims, “I could divide myself and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skim-milk with so honorable an action!”. 6.
In “King Lear,” the title character refers to “hot-blooded France.”. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the widow Constance in “King John” berates the emotionless Limoges as a “cold-blooded slave.”. 5. Skim milk. In “Henry IV,” Shakespeare uses the skimming of cream from milk to describe someone of weak character.
Among the hundreds of Shakespeare’s enrichments to the popular lexicon are the following 10 words and phrases: 1. Green-eyed monster. In “Othello,” the arch -villain (another word credited to Shakespeare) Iago warns the title character: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
The master of wordplay also contributed dozens of other phrases that remain a part of our everyday language. In some cases, Shakespeare may have coined the terms; in others he may have been the first to put them into the written record.
However, despite enjoying local fame and popularity, Shakespeare did not gain worldwide attention until after his death in 1616.
In addition to writing plays, Shakespeare wrote poems on subjects like love, immortality and beauty.
Shakespeare joined Lord Chamberlain's Men, an English company of theatrical players during the late 1590s. That group of actors, then limited to just men, quickly rose to fame and prominence in London. Shakespeare wrote many plays and also acted his characters out onstage.
People continue performing Shakespeare's plays around the world, and they have been translated into every major language. In total, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays, more than 150 sonnets and a myriad of poems. ADVERTISEMENT.
Even 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare’s influence is profound. But is it right to say that he changed everything? That's the assertion Stephen Marche makes in his book How Shakespeare Changed Everything. In the book, Marche catalogs Shakespeare’s influence on (among other things) sex, language, psychology, and starlings.
Shakespeare Documented Explore the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the Shakespeare's life in a groundbreaking digital exhibition.
MICHAEL WITMORE: Even 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare’s influence is profound. But is it right to say that he changed everything? Stay tuned. From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I’m Michael Witmore, the Folger’s director. Stephen Marche is an essayist who lives in Toronto.