What is good... SHAKESPEARE

Shakespeare and his language influence

"William Shakespeare's influence extends from theatre to literature to present day movies and to the English language itself. Widely regarded as the greatestwriter of the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist, Shakespeare transformed English theatre by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through characterization, plot, language and genre. Shakespeare's writings have also influenced a large number of notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville and Charles Dickens. Finally, Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the history of theEnglish-speaking world after the various writers of the Bible, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages.

The use of English among scholars, lawyers, public officials and other authors of public written documents rose under the primary influence of the printing press. Until the end of the fifteenth century, most oral communication was conducted in English, whereas most written communication was done in Latin. The mass production and widespread distribution of books tipped the scales in favor of the vernacular. As more people began to read, writers noticed that English had become a practical means of reaching the public. A rise of nationalism also contributed to the rise of the vernacular. As England ascended as a force in European politics, first with Henry VIII and then with Elizabeth I, educators and writers began to associate the English language with English values and national pride. A need to change the structure and vocabulary of the language began to arise.

Changes in English at the time

Early Modern English as a literary medium was unfixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison to Greek and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux. WhenWilliam Shakespeare began writing his plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration, diplomacy and colonization. By the age of Elizabeth, English had become widely used with the expansion of philosophy, theology and physical sciences, but many writers lacked the vocabulary to express such ideas. To accommodate, writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare expressed new ideas and distinctions by inventing, borrowing or adopting a word or a phrase from another language, known as neologizing. Scholars estimate that, between the years 1500 and 1659, nouns, verbs and modifiers of Latin, Greek and modern Romance languages added 30,000 new words to the English language.

Influence on the English language

The influence of Shakespeare on the English language, both spoken and written, has been debated and opinions have varied over the centuries.

Shakespeare’s contribution to the expansion of the English language was commented on as early as 1598, when commentator Francis Meres, applauding English literature in relation to the classics, placed Shakespeare among the writers who had dignified the language. Later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, critics and scholars began to doubt whether Shakespeare had a significant effect on the expansion of English vocabulary. This is mainly based on the neoclassical image of him as a poor Latinist. In the early twentieth century, there was an overreaction to this, so that one critic credited William Shakespeare with having coined nearly 10,000 words, though some critics wonder how his audience could have understood his plays if they were full of words of which nobody had ever heard.

Influence on literature

Shakespeare is cited as an influence on a large number of writers in the following centuries, including major novelists such as Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner. Examples of this influence include the large number of Shakespearean quotations throughout Dickens' writings and the fact that at least 25 of Dickens' titles are drawn from Shakespeare, while Melville frequently used Shakespearean devices, including formal stage directions and extended soliloquies, in Moby-Dick. In fact, Shakespeare so influenced Melville that the novel's mainantagonist, Captain Ahab, is a classic Shakespearean tragic figure, "a great man brought down by his faults." Shakespeare has also influenced a number of English poets, especially Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge who were obsessed with self-consciousness, a modern theme Shakespeare anticipated in plays such as Hamlet. Shakespeare's writings were so influential to English poetry of the 1800s that critic George Steiner has called all English poetic dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."

Influence on the English language

Shakespeare's writings greatly influenced the entire English language. Prior to and during Shakespeare's time, the grammar and rules of English were not fixed. But once Shakespeare's plays became popular in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the standardization of the English language, with many Shakespearean words and phrases becoming embedded in the English language, particularly through projects such as Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language which quoted Shakespeare more than any other writer. He expanded the scope of English literature by introducing new words and phrases, experimenting with blank verse, and also introducing new poetic and grammatical structures."