William Shakespeare - the father of English literature
Shakespeare's works: classification and chronology
The Language of Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) - 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.
Words and phrases from Shakespeare's writings have become part of the English language and are used by all.
Shakespeare. By that time England had become a powerful state, but there was not much change for the better in the life of the English people and the power of money grew stronger. Shakespeare saw these contrasts and showed them in his works.
All the writing of Shakespeare deal with love, life and death and these universal themes get beautiful touch by him. His poetry and dramas reflect that he had extraordinary knowledge of human psychology. Therefore, his characters have become memorable in the field of literature.
Shakespeare explored poetry and drama but it is drama that brought fame for him. Even his dramas are poetically crafted. Poetry is inseparable from his writing. He has given immortal lines. “To be or not to be” is oft quoted line from “Hamlet” that is reflected in a modern man who is caught in the same idea of perplexity.
This work is relevant because with its help we can learn more about Shakespeare's influence not only on English literature but language.
Chapter 1. William Shakespeare - the father of English literature
1.1 Shakespeare's place in English drama of 16th century
16th century was the period of rapid literature development in England. Suppressive French influence on state sphere and culture was negotiated. National typography developed violently. Also many temporal and turned books appeared during that period. Bible's translation into English was of great importance.
There were two trends aught to the problem of regulatory language among the 16th century writers. Edmund Spenser was the representative of first trend and William Shakespeare - of second one.
Edmund Spenser is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and is considered one of the greatest poets in the English language. Though Spenser was well read in classical literature, scholars have noted that his poetry does not rehash tradition, but rather is distinctly his. This individuality may have resulted, to some extent, from a lack of comprehension of the classics. Spenser strove to emulate such ancient Roman poets as Virgil and Ovid, whom he studied during his schooling, but many of his best-known works are notably divergent from those of his predecessors. The language of his poetry is purposely archaic, reminiscent of earlier works such as The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer and II Canzoniere of Francesco Petrarca, whom Spenser greatly admired.
Spenser was called a Poets' Poet and was admired by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, among others.
During Shakespeare's lifetime, the English language experiences a significant growth spurt in both the number of words and the variety of syntactical structures in which words can be employed. While writers are bringing numerous words from Latin into English, they are also experimenting with syntax to achieve the accuracy and the expressive range of lost inflections. This freedom of experimentation is unhampered by established systems of rules and usage that might confine the range of meaning of individual words or that might restrict the ways in which words are combined and ordered.
Shakespeare thus writes not only in a linguistically rich field, but also in an age where there is little grammatical strictness. Like dictionaries, grammar books were written for (and associated with) foreign languages rather than English.
The most striking feature of Shakespeare is his command of language. It is all the more astounding when one not only considers Shakespeare's sparse formal education but the curriculum of the day. There were no dictionaries; the first such lexical work for speakers of English was compiled by schoolmaster Robert Cawdrey as A Table Alphabeticall in 1604. Although certain grammatical treatises were published in Shakespeare's day, organized grammar texts would not appear until the 1700s. Shakespeare as a youth would have no more systematically studied his own language than any educated man of the period.
Despite this, Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000 words into the language. His vocabulary, as culled from his works, numbers upward of 17,000 words (quadruple that of an average, well-educated conversationalist in the language).
Shakespeare has had a huge influence on the English language. Some people today reading Shakespeare for the first time complain that the language is difficult to read and understand, yet we are still using hundreds of words and phrases coined by him in our everyday conversation.
Here are some of the most popular Shakespeare phrases in common use today[15]:
