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“Where words are scarce,
they’re seldom spent in vain.”
Samuel Johnson called him “the poet of nature,” and
his characters, “the genuine progeny of common
humanity.” John Dryden called him the poet with “the
largest and most comprehensive soul.” But in his own
day, Shakespeare was primarily an entertainer, not to
mention something of a mogul: he wrote the plays, acted
in them, and owned a stake in the theatre where they
were performed.
He grew wealthy on their success but had no interest
in preserving them for posterity: only half his plays were
published during his life, and only half of those bore his
name as author. But we’d have lost a great deal if his
tragedies, comedies, and histories had been lost: not only
some of the most enduring characters in the language—
think Hamlet, Falstaff, Romeo, and Juliet—but much of the
language itself. Shakespeare is credited with coining some
1,700 words currently in common usage, not to mention
scores of expressions and phrases.
A few writers can be recognized by their last name
alone, but only one is recognized by a single word, and
he’s it: the Bard. |
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William Shakespeare
(1564–1616) |
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