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As was the case in all Elizabethan grammar schools, Latin was the primary language of learning. Although Shakespeare likely had some lessons in English, Latin composition and the study of Latin authors like Seneca, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace would have been the focus of his literary training.Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not write in Old or Early English. Shakespeare’s language was actually Early Modern English, also known as Elizabethan English – much of which is still in use today.Smith was “fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Hebrew.” Scholars unafraid of the truth have shown that Shakespeare was fluent in these first four languages; others have claimed a knowledge of Hebrew as well. 2. Smith was considered “a master of ‘style and grace of language. ‘” The name Shakepeare should suffice …
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What languages did Shakespeare study?
As was the case in all Elizabethan grammar schools, Latin was the primary language of learning. Although Shakespeare likely had some lessons in English, Latin composition and the study of Latin authors like Seneca, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace would have been the focus of his literary training.
What other language did Shakespeare speak?
Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not write in Old or Early English. Shakespeare’s language was actually Early Modern English, also known as Elizabethan English – much of which is still in use today.
How many foreign languages was Shakespeare familiar with?
Smith was “fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Hebrew.” Scholars unafraid of the truth have shown that Shakespeare was fluent in these first four languages; others have claimed a knowledge of Hebrew as well. 2. Smith was considered “a master of ‘style and grace of language. ‘” The name Shakepeare should suffice …
How many languages was Shakespeare translated into?
Other popular plays in translation include Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s works overall have been translated into more than 100 languages.
Did Shakespeare write in different languages?
William Shakespeare has knowledge of seven languages and usually made direct quotes in other languages directly in the plays that he wrote. It is incredible that he had a vocabulary of 24,000 words, the most for any writer, then and now.
Why is Shakespeare language unique?
As well as inventing completely new words, he used existing words in inventive ways, for example he was the first person to use ‘friend’ as a verb, as well as ‘unfriended’ (Twelfth Night) and from ‘gloom’ he invented the word ‘gloomy’ (Titus Andronicus).
How do you say I in Shakespearean?
Shakespeare’s Pronouns
The first person — I, me, my, and mine — remains basically the same. The second-person singular (you, your, yours), however, is translated like so: “Thou” for “you” (nominative, as in “Thou hast risen.”) “Thee” for “you” (objective, as in “I give this to thee.”)
Is Middle English still spoken?
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) was a form of the English language spoken after the Norman conquest (1066) until the late 15th century.
Which is the world’s most spoken language?
- English (1,132 million speakers) Native speakers: 379 million. …
- Mandarin (1,117 million speakers) …
- Hindi (615 million speakers) …
- Spanish (534 million speakers) …
- French (280 million speakers) …
- Arabic (274 million speakers) …
- Bengali (265 million speakers) …
- Russian (258 million speakers)
What are 10 words that Shakespeare invented?
- Bandit. Henry VI, Part 2. 1594.
- Critic. Love’s Labour Lost. 1598.
- Dauntless. Henry VI, Part 3. 1616.
- Dwindle. Henry IV, Part 1. 1598.
- Elbow (as a verb) King Lear. 1608.
- Green-Eyed (to describe jealousy) The Merchant of Venice. 1600.
- Lackluster. As You Like It. 1616.
- Lonely. Coriolanus. 1616.
Did Shakespeare really invent words?
William Shakespeare is credited with the invention or introduction of over 1,700 words that are still used in English today. William Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems, and his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language.
Did Shakespeare know Greek Latin?
When we examine what Ben Jonson actually said, as opposed to what we think he said, we will realize that not only did Shakespeare know both Latin and Greek, and that Ben Jonson never said he didn’t, but that Shakespeare’s knowledge of Greek is evident in one of the most famous passages he ever wrote.
What was the longest word that Shakespeare used in his plays?
Honorificabilitudinitatibus comes from a Medieval Latin word that roughly translated means “the state of being able to achieve honors.” Shakespeare uses the word only once in all of his works—in Love’s Labor’s Lost.
Does Shakespeare translate well?
And the fact is that Shakespeare is well loved in many countries, suggesting that his works do translate well, whether or not those translations keep all the aspects of the English version.
What is the strangest language Shakespeare’s work has been translated into?
5. Translated into Klingon. Among the 80 languages Shakespeare’s works have been translated into, the most obscure must be the constructed language of Star Trek’s Klingon.
Did Shakespeare speak Italian?
Shakespeare may or may not have been able to read Italian, but he was able to use Italian sources for many of his plays because they had often been translated.
What education did William Shakespeare have?
Shakespeare’s education is a matter of speculation because no school records have ever been found, but it is likely that he attended the local grammar school, King’s New School, which emphasized a liberal arts education.
What words did Shakespeare add to the English language?
- Bandit.
- Critic.
- Dauntless.
- Dwindle.
- Elbow (as a verb)
- Green-Eyed (to describe jealousy)
- Lackluster.
- Lonely.
How is Shakespeare’s language different to ours?
Semantic Changes in English Since the Time of Shakespeare
Language change can happen in various aspects, including semantics, pronunciation, and grammar. There are a lot of words that have changed their meaning over time. It is because of these semantic changes that we have difficulty understanding Shakespeare.
Shakespeare’s Education and Childhood
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Shakespeare’s Language: A Guide To Early Modern English✔️
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Shakespeare’s English
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Shakespeare, Smith and Cecil – politicworm
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How many languages did William shakespeare speak? – Answers
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Shakespeare’s Language: A Guide To Early Modern English✔️
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Did Shakespeare Speak Middle English? – englishraven.com
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Shakespeare’s Language
Contrary to popular belief, Shakespeare did not write in Old or Early English. Shakespeare’s language was actually Early Modern English, also known as Elizabethan English – much of which is still in use today.
Old English, Middle English, Modern English
Before exploring the wonderful depths of Shakespeare’s English, it is important to understand what exactly Old, Middle, and Modern English are and when they were/are spoken.
Old English is the earliest recorded form of the English language. It was spoken throughout England as well as in parts of Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It first came to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century. The first recorded Old English writing comes from the middle of the 7th century.
The Old English period ended after the Norman Conquest of 1066. With the growing influence of Anglo-Norman, the language evolved into what is known today as Middle English.
Here is an example of Old English (of which there were four distinct dialects):
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum; Si þin nama gehalgod to becume þin rice gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
These are the first lines of The Lord’s Prayer in Old English. With just a glance at the text, it’s obvious how different this English is from the Modern English spoken today and in Shakespeare’s time.
Here is an example of the same passage in Middle English:
Oure fadir that art in heuenes, halewid be thi name; thi kyndoom come to; be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene.
In the 14th century, after the Great Vowel Shift (a series of changes in pronunciation), that Early Modern English, or New English, came into being.
Here is how the lines would’ve been written when Early Modern English was first becoming the standard in Shakespeare’s time:
Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdome come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heauen.
This is very different to Old or Middle English, but not too different to today’s English, right?
Shakespeare’s English
The Early Modern English language was around 100 years old when Shakespeare was writing his plays. All major documents were still written in Latin, and over the course of his lifetime, Shakespeare contributed approximately 1,700 to 3,000 words to the English language.
Shakespeare had an immense vocabulary that stretches to four times that of the average well-educated man by some records. His version of English was spoken and written until around 1690, when it shifted into what is fully recognizable today as Modern English.
Take a look at this famous passage of Shakespeare’s language from Romeo and Juliet:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
In these lines, Romeo Montague is talking to Juliet Capulet, professing his desire to kiss her while at the same time comparing his lips, through a metaphor, to “pilgrims.”
Shakespeare’s use of language goes beyond simple storytelling. His works have endured because of the creative, never before seen ways that be combined words and used figurative language. Take a look at Juliet’s response:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
Shakespeare uses puns, similes, metaphors, and allusions all within this section of the play. It is one of three sonnets embedded in Romeo and Juliet and is one that is most evocative. He manages to convey Romeo’s interest, his concern that his advances are too forward as well as Juliet’s innocent, and yet flirtatious, perceptive.
Here is one more quote from the play, from Act III Scene 2:
O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest – A dammed saint, an honourable villain!
Juliet speaks these lines as a reaction to the news that Romeo killed her cousin Tybalt. She’s at once outraged and confused. Shakespeare uses oxymorons when Juliet calls Romeo a “feind angelical” (fiendish angel) and a “Beautiful tyrant.” He’s shown a side of himself that surprised her. In conclusion, Juliet marvels that his body, which she calls a “gorgeous palace,” could hold “deceit” or evil.
This is one of the best short passages to read when considering how Shakespeare used language. It shows the similarities and differences in Early Modern English and Modern English that is spoken today. At the same time, it also shows his skill with language, something that can’t ever be overstated.
Prose and Verse in Shakespeare’s Plays
The previous passage is an example of prose dialogue, something that Shakespeare’s characters often speak in. There is no rhyme or meter in the lines.
There are moments in which Shakespeare shifts into verse to write dialogue though. This is usually when a member of the upper class, or a noble, is talking. He uses blank verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter. This refers to the number of beats per line and the arrangement of the stresses. An iamb is one metrical foot. It contains two beats, the first of which is unstressed and the second stressed. When a line is in iambic pentameter, it contains five of these metrical feet.
Sometimes Shakespeare would use another technique, known as syncope, to remove vowels and change the pronunciation of words to fit in the pattern. For example, these lines from A Midsummer Nights’ Dream, spoken by Oberon:
Fetch me that flow’r; the herb I showed thee once:
In these lines, the word “flower” is pronounced with a single syllable.
Rarely, Shakespeare used something known as trochaic verse. This metrical pattern appears in “magical” passages, such as in Macbeth when the three witches transition into trochaic tetrameter for these famous lines:
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble
This helps emphasize their otherworldliness, the fact that these women are quite different from any of the other characters in the play.
Shakespeare, Smith and Cecil
Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun
That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others’ books,
These earthly godfathers of heaven’s light,
That give a name to every fixéd star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know naught but fame;
And every godfather can give a name.
…………………………Love’s Labors Lost: Act I, Scene 1
So spoke Shakespeare through the voice of Berowne, so sincerely that we might take it for his own sentiment. Yet Shakespeare himself can hardly escape being labelled a scholar. As so many commentators have shown––whether or not they have accepted their own abundant proofs––his work reveals a writer fluent in Latin and classical Greek (Greenwood 93, 98), in contemporary French (Henry V:III.3, Shaheen 361) and Italian (Grillo 125-6); one who had read and remembered a great deal of history, both the history of his own nation (Bullough 3.xi, Shaheen 360) and that of ancient times (Cantor 10); and although his plays didn’t always reflect history exactly as it happened, much must be allowed for the purposes of drama.
Shakespeare was familiar with the Bible, in particular, the Geneva Bible (Shaheen 39, Stritmatter Dust), as well as The Book of Common Prayer (51). He was familiar with the works of ancient philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero (Baldwin 412). He was familiar with the ancient Greek dramatists as with the Romans Plautus, Juvenal, Cicero and Virgil (Churton Collins as qtd. in Greenwood 93, 98-9); with Terence and Seneca, (Muir 18, 255-7); with his Continental contemporaries, Ronsard (Lewis 170), Ariosto (Grillo 129), and Tasso (131). He was highly trained in techniques of rhetoric (Joseph 44-5).
He was so highly trained in the Law that, as a matter of course, he communicated easily in metaphors couched in abstruse legal terminology (Greenwood 375-6). He knew a great deal about astronomy, or rather, astrology, which he referred to often, always in ways that showed expertise, even when he was making fun of it, or more often, of a character’s ignorance. In terms of life experience, his knowledge of horticulture reflects the experience of one who has done (or observed) a great deal of gardening (Spurgeon 45-6).
He knew a great deal about the process of distilling (medicines, perfumes and liqueurs); images based on distilling come almost as frequently to his mind as gardening terms. His knowledge of music is reflected in his many metaphors based on musical ideas, references to harmony and images of playing instruments; songs play an important part in his comedies. His frequent use of terms and imagery from hawking show more than a little personal experience with that specialized sport of the nobility.
But this is simply the material he had to work with. Beyond the material is the way he used it. The often wildly creative use to which he puts his knowledge of languages strongly suggests that it came to him at an early age, as music came to Mozart and drawing came to Picasso from their fathers, as the use of the mallet and chisel came to Michelangelo from the stonecutters with whom he lived as a boy. This because, as with these other geniuses, he had absorbed it in his earliest days (Winner 288-290).
This knowledge fed a fascination with words, from the science of linguistics on the one hand to the magic of poetry on the other; words, with their sound and beyond their sound, their music. When he needed a word that didn’t exist in English, he’d take one from Latin or Greek and make an English word of it, often by replacing the foreign ending with an English ending, always with a musician’s ear, a poet’s ear, the sound as much in mind as the meaning.
And what do we see when we examine the education of Edward de Vere? The education we have traced for Shakespeare offers every one of these quite specific requirements.
The Shakespeare-Smith connection
Here are some of the qualities presented by Mary Dewar as those of Sir Thomas Smith, a few of which we examine in more detail elsewhere. Smith was:
commonly regarded as the greatest legal mind of his day;
regarded as a superb teacher;
a master of oratory and rhetoric;
a writer who frequently used dialogue as a device in his treatises;
one for whom hunting and hawking were favorite pastimes;
“mercurial, rash, and impetuous”;
“subject to nervous prostration and melancholy”;
one who often wrote to relieve anxiety;
one who “read widely in the poets and had a tendency to break into . . . verse himself”;
a secular person; though a committed Protestant, in practise more inclined to turn to philosophy than to religion for answers;
a great Platonist;
a passionate gardener with a love of roses;
fascinated with making medicines by means of distilling the juices of plants;
interested in all medical techniques;
one who had a professional’s knowledge of astrology;
author of the first English document promoting the colonization of “undeveloped” lands;
fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Hebrew, owner of a personal library of 400 plus books
a “master of style and grace of language”;
“a brilliant and facile” writer; a “voluminous” writer;
one who wrote anonymously, to shape policy, not for personal fame.
one whose name became separated from his works.
Now let’s compare Smith’s qualities as expressed by the foregoing with what we know about Shakespeare:
Smith was “considered the greatest legal mind of his day.” Lawyers have written at length about Shakespeare’s intimate knowledge of the law.
Smith was “regarded as a superb teacher.” Our culture prizes Shakespeare as much for his wisdom as for his ability to entertain us.
Smith was “a master of oratory and rhetoric.” Scholars have written about Shakespeare’s mastery of rhetorical techniques, most obviously his constant use of metaphor.
Smith was “a writer who used dialogue as a device in his treatises.” Dialogue is, of course, the primary medium of Shakespeare’s works.
Smith was “mercurial, rash, and impetuous,” as are many of Shakespeare’s protagonists, particularly the early ones like Hotspur, Hal, Falconbridge, and Mercutio. Smith was “subject to nervous prostration, melancholy,” like Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth.
Smith was “one who often wrote to relieve anxiety.” Shakespeare speaks frequently of the inability to sleep, while of his tendency to write poetry nothing need be said. The Sonnets reflect his need to write to “unpack” his heart.
Smith was one who “read widely in the poets and had a tendency to break into . . . verse himself.” Shakespeare was, well, enough said.
Smith was “a secular person; though a committed Protestant, in practise more inclined to turn to philosophy than to religion for answers.”
Scholars have argued at length over Shakespeare’s personal beliefs, but the fundamental rationale is always the philosophy of the Greek stoics.
Smith was “a great Platonist.” Shakespeare’s debt to Plato is common knowledge.
Smith was “one who greatly enjoyed hunting and hawking.” Imagery from hunting and most particularly of hawking fill the works of Shakespeare.
Smith was “a passionate gardener with a great love of roses.” Shakespeare seems to know as much about plants and horticulture as a professional gardener; his love of roses is revealed in almost everything he wrote;
Smith was “fascinated with making medicines by means of distilling the juices of plants”––images taken from the process of distilling are frequent in Shakespeare’s works.
Smith was “interested in advanced medical techniques.” Books have been written about the fact that Shakespeare’s writing seems to reflect the highest levels of medical knowledge of his time (Davis 45-59);
Smith had “a professional’s knowledge of astrology.” Shakespeare’s knowledge of astronomy and astrology was never at fault.
Smith “wrote the first English document promoting the colonization of ‘undeveloped’ lands.” Shakespeare addressed the same issues (from a very different perspective) in The Tempest;
Smith was “fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Hebrew.” Scholars unafraid of the truth have shown that Shakespeare was fluent in these first four languages; others have claimed a knowledge of Hebrew as well. 2
Smith was considered “a master of ‘style and grace of language.’” The name Shakepeare should suffice.
Smith owned “a personal library of over 400 books that covered every possible topic.” Shakespeare had a tremendously broad and ecclectic fund of the kind of knowledge that can only come from books, knowledge that he drew on for everything he wrote, particularly when seeking a metaphor;
Smith was “a ‘brilliant and facile’ writer.” Again, the name is enough.
Smith was “a ‘voluminous’ writer.” However brilliant, thirty-eight plays and two hundred poems is actually rather slim for a lifetime of work, but almost as many more works may well be added to the canon once it is possible to attribute to him the early works written in his style, once the limitations of the Stratford biography have been removed.
Smith was “one who wrote anonymously; who wrote, not for personal fame but to influence events and policy,” as did “Shakespeare” if, as we believe, he hid his true identity behind pen names and stand-ins.
Smith’s name became separated from his works, as did the author of the Shakespeare canon.
Cecil’s library
Scholars have long recognized in Shakespeare a number of sources, both classical and contemporary, that would have been difficult of access for most Elizabethans. We have seen already that de Vere couldn’t have been closer to the actual writing of Shakespeare’s most frequently used source, his uncle Arthur Golding’s version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We also know that at age nineteen he purchased several important Shakespearean sources for himself, Plutarch, the Geneva Bible and Cicero. As Smith’s student from age four to twelve and Cecil’s ward from twelve to twenty-one, he would have had access to many, if not most, of the other sources listed by such Shakespeare scholars as Geoffrey Bullough, Kenneth Muir, and J.A.K. Thomson.
In articles published in the De Vere Society Newsletter and The Oxfordian, Eddi Jolly lists a number of titles from Cecil’s immense library, titles of works that scholars over many years have determined were among the sources for Shakespeare’s poems and plays (10-12). Among the books she lists that were owned by Cecil that have been determined to have been sources for Shakespeare are: Plutarch’s Lives and his Moralia and Appia, both sources for Antony & Cleopatra; Boccaccio’s Decameron, a source for Cymbeline; Amadis de Gaule for A Winter’s Tale; Cinthio’s Hecatommithi for Measure for Measure; Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Cardinal Contareno’s The Commonwealth and Government of Venice for Othello; Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia, Seneca’s Hercules Furens and his Hippolytus for Macbeth.
Cecil also owned books by those contemporaries of Shakespeare that traditional scholars see as sources, Bedingfield’s translation of Cardan’s Comforte (Hamlet); Gascoigne’s The Supposes (Taming of the Shrew); Golding’s Metamorphoses (Romeo & Juliet, Venus and Adonis, etc.); Robert Greene’s Pandosto (A Winter’s Tale); Thomas Lodge’s Truth’s Complaint (Richard II); Munday’s Zelauto: The Fountain of Fame (The Merchant of Venice). Cecil also owned copies of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (Jolly “Library” 13).
The older books would have been available to de Vere from the age of twelve on, for even after he’d left Cecil House his father-in-law’s library would still have been available to him. The greater likelihood, of course, is that, as the Earl of Oxford, he would have owned many of these books himself, although records of his own library are lost, as is so much about him. (The Folger does have two from Oxford’s own library: his Geneva Bible, embossed with his crest, and Guicciardini’s Historia d’Italia.) The important point is that, during his formative years, many if not most of the books that all agree were the sources for Shakespeare’s greatest plays were readily available to Edward de Vere.
Fun international facts about Shakespeare
By Laura Estill, Eric Johnson
Which Shakespeare play has been translated into 75 languages? How many times does the word ‘love’ appear in the complete works? As we celebrate Shakespeare Week, Professor Laura Estill of the World Shakespeare Bibliography (WBS) and Eric Johnson of the Folger Shakespeare Library unearth some unusual facts about the great English writer.
Shakespeare’s plays are set in many locations, some of them fictional
Europe, Africa and the Middle East are all settings for Shakespeare’s plays, as you can see on this interactive map. His plays are set in 12 countries, with cities in what is now Italy being Shakespeare’s favourite backdrop. Some plays, such as The Tempest, take place in entirely fictional worlds. The only comedy to be set in the UK is The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Shakespeare took phrases from other languages
For instance, ‘fat paunches make lean pates’ was originally a Greek and Latin proverb by St Jerome. Shakespeare’s ‘Greek to me’ could also be from a similar phrase in Latin, a language which Shakespeare could read.
The word ‘love’ appears 2,191 times in the complete works
The number is based on the 1864 Globe Edition – the amount could vary slightly from edition to edition. Altogether, there are 28,829 unique word forms in all of Shakespeare’s works, and 12,493 occur only once. You can find more text statistics as Open Source Shakespeare.
Since 1960, there have been publications and productions of Hamlet in more than 75 languages
These languages even include Klingon, Esperanto, and Interlingua. Other popular plays in translation include Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s works overall have been translated into more than 100 languages.
From 2005 to 2014, there have been seven professional productions of Shakespeare and Shakespearean adaptations in Arabic.
Romeo and Juliet has been performed in 24 countries in the last ten years
The WSB lists the following countries across five continents: US, UK, Germany, Korea, France, Canada, Italy, Japan, Australia, Austria, Poland, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, Belgium, Estonia, Czech Republic, Israel, Spain, Ukraine, Cuba, Mexico, and Romania.
The play has been performed in multiple languages, including English, German, Spanish, Korean, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Finnish, Russian, Dutch, Estonian, Czech, Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Romanian.
These performances include musicals, ballets and puppet shows.
Shakespeare has inspired lots of films in Hollywood, Bollywood, and beyond
Western films:
West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins) – Romeo and Juliet
Kiss Me, Kate (George Sidney) – The Taming of the Shrew
Forbidden Planet (Nicholas Nayfack) – The Tempest
My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant) – Henry IV parts 1 and 2
Gnomeo and Juliet (Kelly Asbury) – Romeo and Juliet
Looking for Richard (Al Pacino) – Richard III
Bollywood:
Omkara, Maqbool, Haider (all by Bhardwaj) – Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet
Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela (Sanjay Leela Bhansali) – Romeo and Juliet
Japan:
Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa) – Macbeth
Ran (Akira Kurosawa) – King Lear
Since 2000, there have been Shakespeare movies or TV shows made in…
…Japan, India, France, Argentina, Germany, Thailand, Italy, China, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Tibet, The Netherlands, Japan, Vietnam, Israel, Chile, Estonia, and Brazil. To these, we can add English-speaking countries Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and the UK.
The first performances of Shakespeare in the Middle East were in the late 19th century
According to Graham Holderness: ‘Shakespeare entered the Arab world in the late 19th century as theatre; that is, the plays were translated and adapted specifically to form the repertoire of dramatic companies in Egypt and other Arab countries. Hamlet was first performed in Egypt around 1893.’
Shakespeare invented lots of expressions that we still use today
Here’s a selection of popular expressions; you can find lots more at BBC America.
‘Heart of gold’ (Henry V)
‘Wild-goose chase’ (Romeo and Juliet)
‘Faint-hearted’ (Henry IV part I)
‘Brave new world’ (The Tempest)
‘Break the ice’ (The Taming of the Shrew)
‘For goodness’ sake’ (Henry VIII)
‘Foregone conclusion’ (Othello)
‘Love is blind’ (The Merchant of Venice)
The most popular name from a Shakespeare play used today is Olivia
That’s according to the list of most popular US and British baby names in 2014. Olivia is the name of a character in Twelfth Night. Shakespeare was the first person to use the name with this spelling.
Oliver (As You Like It), Harry (Hotspur, Henry IV, and characters in other plays), Isabella (Measure for Measure) and William (As You Like It) are also popular today. Shakespeare didn’t invent these names but they are enduringly popular.
The stories told in most of Shakespeare’s plays are not original
Shakespeare’s primary source materials were English and Latin works: histories, plays, and poems.
For the histories (and King Lear and Cymbeline), Shakespeare relied heavily on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He also used Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and other books by historians (called ‘chronicle histories’). For the Roman history, he relied on Plutarch’s Lives.
Romeo and Juliet is based on an Italian folktale, which Shakespeare read in translation.
Some plays he took directly from classical sources, like The Comedy of Errors, which he took from Plautus’s The Brothers Menaechmus and simply added an extra set of twins (the servants, Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse). He took many plot elements from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, which can be found in Titus Andronicus, Midsummer Night’s Dream and other plays.
For other plays, we conjecture there are lost sources, such as an earlier version of Titus Andronicus and Hamlet. Sometimes, he rewrote earlier plays, as we think was the case with Hamlet (the missing play is called the Ur-Hamlet) and as he did with King John, which he reworked from an anonymous play called The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England; King Lear is based on The Chronicle History of King Leir.
The British Council has supported the production of a film version of Sarah Frankcom’s critically acclaimed stage production of Hamlet, which recently enjoyed a sell-out run at The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in 2014 and stars Maxine Peake as Hamlet (pictured above). The film will be shown in nearly 300 UK cinemas on 23 March 2015, with some encore screenings to follow.
The British Council will screen this film internationally in non-English speaking countries in 2016 as part of its Shakespeare on Film touring collection.
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