Famous people shakespeare

§ A laughing stock (The Merry Wives of Windsor);
§ A sorry sight (Macbeth);
§ As dead as a doornail (Henry VI);
§ Eaten out of house and home (Henry V, Part 2);
§ Fair play (The Tempest);
§ I will wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello);
§ In a pickle (The Tempest);
§ In stitches (Twelfth Night);
§ In the twinkling of an eye (The Merchant Of Venice);
§ Mum's the word (Henry VI, Part 2);
§ Neither here nor there (Othello);
§ Send him packing (Henry IV);
§ Set your teeth on edge (Henry IV);
§ There's method in my madness (Hamlet);
§ Too much of a good thing (As You Like It);
§ Vanish into thin air (Othello).
In many cases, it is not known if Shakespeare actually invented these phrases, or if they were already in use during Shakespeare's lifetime. In fact, it is almost impossible to identify when a word or phrase was first used, but Shakespeare's plays often provide the earliest citation.
The strength of Shakespeare's plays lies in the absorbing stories they tell, in their wealth of complex characters, and in the eloquent speech - vivid, forceful, and at the same time lyric - that the playwright puts on his characters' lips. It has often been noted that Shakespeare's characters are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, and that it is their flawed, inconsistent nature that makes them memorable. Hamlet fascinates audiences with his ambivalence about revenge and the uncertainty over how much of his madness is feigned and how much genuine. Falstaff would not be beloved if, in addition to being genial, openhearted, and witty, he were not also boisterous, cowardly, and, ultimately, poignant. Finally, the plays are distinguished by an unparalleled use of language. Shakespeare had a tremendous vocabulary and a corresponding sensitivity to nuance, as well as a singular aptitude for coining neologisms and punning.
Shakespeare is cited as an influence on a large number of writers in the following centuries, including major novelists such as Herman Melville[9], Charles Dickens[4], Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner[8]. Examples of this influence include the large number of Shakespearean quotations throughout Dickens' writings[4] and the fact that at least 25 of Dickens' titles are drawn from Shakespeare[6], while Melville frequently used Shakespearean devices, including formal stage directions and extended soliloquies, in Moby-Dick[7]. In fact, Shakespeare so influenced Melville that the novel's main antagonist, Captain Ahab, is a classic Shakespearean tragic figure, “a great man brought down by his faults”[1]. 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”.
1.2 Shakespeare's works: classification and chronology
The chronology of Shakespeare's plays is uncertain, but a reasonable approximation of their order can be inferred from dates of publication, references in contemporary writings, allusions in the plays to contemporary events, thematic relationships, and metrical and stylistic comparisons. His first plays are believed to be the three parts of Henry VI; it is uncertain whether Part I was written before or after Parts II and III. Richard III is related to these plays and is usually grouped with them as the final part of a first tetra logy of historical plays[13].
After these come The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus (almost a third of which may have been written by George Peele), The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and Romeo and Juliet. Some of the comedies of this early period are classical imitations with a strong element of farce. The two tragedies, Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, were both popular in Shakespeare's own lifetime.
After these early plays, and before his great tragedies, Shakespeare wrote Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King John, The Merchant of Venice, Parts I and II of Henry IV, Much Ado about Nothing, Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. The comedies of this period partake less of farce and more of idyllic romance, while the history plays successfully integrate political elements with individual characterization. Taken together, Richard II, each part of Henry IV, and Henry V form a second tetra logy of historical plays, although each can stand alone, and they are usually performed separately. The two parts of Henry IV feature Falstaff, a vividly depicted character who from the beginning has enjoyed immense popularity.
The period of Shakespeare's great tragedies and the “problem plays” begins in 1600 with Hamlet. Following this are The Merry Wives of Windsor (written to meet Queen Elizabeth's request for another play including Falstaff, it is not thematically typical of the period), Troilus and Cressida, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus.
On familial, state, and cosmic levels, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth present clear oppositions of order and chaos, good and evil, and spirituality and animality. Stylistically the plays of this period become increasingly compressed and symbolic. Through the portrayal of political leaders as tragic heroes, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra involve the study of politics and social history as well as the psychology of individuals.
It is not easy to categorically say whether a Shakespeare play is a tragedy, comedy or history because the Shakespeare blurred the boundaries between these genres. For example, Much Ado About Nothing begins like a comedy, but soon descends into tragedy - leading some critics to describe the play as a tragi-comedy.
His plays generally fall into four categories[12]:
1. Pre-1594 (Richard III, The Comedy of Errors);
2. 1594-1600 (Henry V, Midsummer Night's Dream);
3. 1600-1608 (Macbeth, King Lear);
4. Post-1608 (Cymbeline, The Tempest).
At some point in the early 1590s, Shakespeare began writing a compilation of sonnets. The sonnet was arguably the most popular bound verse form in England when Shakespeare began writing. Imported from Italy (as the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet), the form took on a distinctive English style of three distinctively rhymed quatrains capped by a rhymed couplet comprising 14 total lines of verse. This allowed the author to build a rising pattern of complication in a three-act movement, followed by the terse denouement of the final two lines. Conventional subject matter of the Elizabethan sonnet concerned love, beauty, and faith.
Shakespeare as a poet could hardly have ignored the sonnet as a verse form. He appears to have written a sequence of them, dedicated to a “Master W.H.,” and the sequence as a whole appears to follow a loose narrative structure. Of the 154 sonnets, there are three broad divisions [14]:
§ Sonnets 1-126, which deal with a young, unnamed lord, the “fair youth” of the sonnets.
§ Sonnets 127-152, which deal with the poet's relationship to a mysterious mistress, the “dark lady” of the sonnets.