Shakespeare was good at his chosen profession – head and shoulders above his contemporaries. In a time that produced a great number of fine writers, he produced the best work. Christopher Marlowe wrote beautiful, heroic verse and Ben Jonson had a clever, satirical wit but neither of these could match Shakespeare in his ability to write about anything to which he turned his hand. He sometimes collaborated with other writers in the town but his greatest plays and poems, the work for which he is remembered and revered, was all his own. He knew what made people tick, he knew what made them laugh and he knew how to make them feel patriotic and proud; he understood politics; and he knew how the world was opening up through voyages of exploration. All of this understanding he brought into his plays. His words and phrases were unlike anything that had been written in the English language before. They gave it dynamism: the power to express everything. The people with whom he worked knew this. When the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays was published in 1623, several writers contributed introductory poems praising his talent and recognising the immortality of his work. Leonard Digges ended his piece with:
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
But crowned with laurel, live eternally.
And Ben Jonson, while joshing that his old rival ‘hadst small Latin and less Greek’, wrote:
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time.
Digges and Jonson were right. They may just have intended to help the publisher sell their former colleague’s work and so indulged in a little hyperbole, but they must also have realised that Shakespeare had been something special. They sensed even then that his work was ageless.
Twenty-five years after Shakespeare died Britain was engulfed by the Civil War and the Puritan Revolution. Plays and play-going were frowned upon and the lively brilliance of the Elizabethan stage was forgotten as more sober matters preoccupied the rulers of the nation. After the Restoration in 1660, Shakespeare once more found himself admirers, although he had to take his place among the new writers who were jostling for favour in a London which was coming back to life once more. The theatre had come under the influence of classical convention. Aristotle’s ‘three unities’ of time, place and action were brought back into fashion: a play should have only one plot and should take place over twenty-four hours in the same place. That was hardly Shakespeare. His huge imagination was incapable of being bound by rules. John Dryden, one of the greatest writers in Britain at the end of the seventeenth century, spotted this and acknowledged Shakespeare’s pre-eminence, although he also wrote entirely new versions of some of his plays, constructed along classical lines. All For Love, or The World Well Lost is his take on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Less capable hands than Dryden’s also tinkered with Shakespeare’s work. In 1681 Nahum Tate – the author of, among other things, the words of the carol ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night’ – produced a version of King Lear with a happy ending: Edgar and Cordelia get married and the old king is restored to his throne. In the London of Charles II nothing was allowed to get in the way of a good time.
Shakespeare’s language
Shakespeare’s influence on the English language can still be heard or read today. Here are fifty expressions still in use after he first used them in his plays 400 years ago.
‘A sorry sight’ – Macbeth, Macbeth
‘All that glisters is not gold’ – Prince of Morocco, The Merchant of Venice
‘All’s well that ends well’ – Helena, All’s Well That Ends Well
‘At one fell swoop’ – Macduff, Macbeth
‘Bated breath’ – Shylock, The Merchant of Venice
‘The ‘be-all and end-all’ – Macbeth, Macbeth
‘Be cruel … to be kind’ – Hamlet, Hamlet
‘Brave new world’ – Miranda, The Tempest
‘A charmed life’ – Macbeth, Macbeth
‘Come full circle’ – Edmund, King Lear
‘Dog will have its day’ – Hamlet, Hamlet
‘Eaten me out of house and home’ – Hostess Quickly, Henry IV, Part 2
‘Elbow room’ – John, King John
‘Fair play’ – Hector, Troilus and Cressida
‘For ever and a day’ – Biondello, The Taming of the Shrew
‘Foregone conclusion’ – Othello, Othello
‘Foul play’ – Gloucester, King Lear
‘The game is up’ – Belarius, Cymbeline
‘Good men and true’ – Dogberry, Much Ado About Nothing
‘Good riddance’ – Patroclus, Troilus and Cressida
‘Greek to me’ – Casca, Julius Caesar
‘Green-eyed monster’ – Iago, Othello
‘Heart’s content’ – Henry, Henry VI, Part 2
‘I have not slept one wink’ – Pisanio, Cymbeline
‘In my heart of heart’ – Hamlet, Hamlet
‘I will wear my heart upon my sleeve’ – Iago, Othello
‘Into thin air’ – Prospero, The Tempest
‘The lady doth protest too much’ – Gertrude, Hamlet
‘Lay it on ‘with a trowel’ – Celia, As You Like It
‘Love is blind’ – Jessica, The Merchant of Venice
‘Milk of human kindness’ – Lady Macbeth, Macbeth
‘More fool you’ – Bianca, The Taming of the Shrew
‘Murder most foul’ – Ghost, Hamlet
‘My own flesh and blood’ – Shylock, The Merchant of Venice
‘My salad days’ – Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra
‘Pomp and Circumstance’ – Othello, Othello
‘Pound of flesh’ – Shylock, The Merchant of Venice
‘Seal up your lips and give no words but mum’ (giving us the saying ‘Mum’s the word’) – Hume, Henry VI, Part 2
‘Send