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Words, Words, Words 2321 Views
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Description:
Your favorite hip hop artist's bumpin' slang may be off the chain, but no one has left a mark on the English language quite like Shakespeare did. The man deserves his own dictionary. Ya feel us, homeskillets?
Transcript
- 00:00
Words, Words, Words, a la Shmoop. Ever wonder why so many people consider Shakespeare
- 00:09
to be the greatest writer of the English language?
- 00:12
It wasn't because he was so prolific, producing comic, tragic, and historical plays, as well
- 00:17
as poetry.
- 00:18
It wasn't because his works deal with the full spectrum of human emotions.
Full Transcript
- 00:21
It wasn't because he authored plays where characters drop like flies.
- 00:26
Nope. The reason why every English department in the country has a shrine dedicated to Shakespeare…
- 00:32
…is because the Bard of Avon had a gift for words.
- 00:36
Words, words, words. Shakespeare knew them backwards and forwards, and he used them in
- 00:40
a variety of ways.
- 00:41
For instance, he was famous for giving his characters dramatic speeches.
- 00:45
There’s the Saint Crispin's Day Speech in Henry V, where the title character rouses
- 00:51
his tired troops to kick French butt and take French names at the Battle of Agincourt.<<adj-in-court>>
- 00:57
Shakespeare’s sonnets, too, contain beautiful, poetic language that has appealed to romantics
- 01:02
for centuries.
- 01:03
His Sonnet 116, where he writes that “love is not love which alters when its alteration
- 01:09
finds”…
- 01:09
…was a central piece of dialogue in the 1995 film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility,
- 01:15
starring… Severus Snape and Professor Trelawney. Most incredibly, Shakespeare's gift for words
- 01:21
allowed him to create thousands of words and phrases that we still use today.
- 01:25
Now, we know what you're thinking: anyone can come up with a new word or phrase.
- 01:29
Didn't American soldiers during World War Two add FUBAR, SNAFU, and TARFU to the lexicon?
- 01:35
Didn't a BBC political satire invent the word “omnishambles?”
- 01:40
While it's true that new words and phrases regularly make their way into the English
- 01:43
language, the sheer number of Shakespeare's contributions is incredible.
- 01:49
Have you ever been “critical” or even a little “obscene”?
- 01:53
Have you ever thought that your “manager” wasn't very “fashionable?”
- 01:57
All Shakespeare words. That guy really knew how to string letters together.
- 02:01
Phrases, too, were a Shakespearean specialty, and you've probably used many of his creations
- 02:06
in everyday conversation.
- 02:08
Have you ever played “fast and loose” with the truth, like the time you told your
- 02:12
math teacher that the dog ate your homework?
- 02:15
Do you eat Thanksgiving dinner with your “flesh and blood”? Hopefully you don't eat them
- 02:21
for Thanksgiving. There are laws about that sort of thing.
- 02:26
“Fast and loose”, “flesh and blood”, “green-eyed jealousy”, “devil incarnate”,
- 02:31
“foul play”, and “one fell swoop”… all coined by Shakespeare.
- 02:35
So next time you think your Shakespeare-loving English teacher is living in a “fool's paradise”...
- 02:40
...think again. It's pretty much a “foregone conclusion” that you're quoting Shakespeare,
- 02:44
and that's… “the long and short of it”.
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