by Kevin Burton
I feel bad that I haven’t read anything by Shakespeare all the way through. Don’t know why I feel that way.
The next person who asks me if I have read Shakespeare, will be the first. So it doesn’t really matter.
Ask me in public, “Shakespeare or Steely Dan” and I will launch into “each artist in his time and in his context commanded a certain mastery of the zeitgeist, which we can appreciate in terms of blah, blah, blah….”
Ask me in private and its Deacon Blues all the way!
Anyway you don’t have to read Shakespeare, go out and find him and read him. Shakespeare will find you.
“You can, in fact must, get a taste of Shakespeare just by being a speaker of English.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust says he coined about 1700 words. Chances are you will trip verbally over one or two today, whether you try to or not.
This is a list of phrases the folks at Dictionary Scoop have compiled:
1 Salad Days
Thinking back on your youth can be a bit of a double-edged sword: one might enjoy reminiscing about our heyday and carefree years, but we might also end up remembering those embarrassing moments when inexperience got the best of us. In any case, the beauty of the phrase “salad days” lies in its ability to encompass both the comfort and the naivete of youth.
Shakespeare coined this expression in the first act of Antony and Cleopatra, when the Queen of the Nile looks back on her relationship with Julius Caesar saying, “My salad days, / When I was green in judgment….”
“While it is true that Shakespeare’s original meaning for the phrase was about youthful inexperience, currently, “salad days” is more commonly used to refer to someone’s prime.
2 A laughing stock
To be the butt of an innocent joke or prank is usually harmless. When done in good fun, it’s good to laugh at ourselves. Having said that, to be the laughing stock is an entirely different matter: This expression means to be subjected to general mockery or ridicule, most of the time at one’s expense.
The Bard knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote this line in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In the play, Sir Hugh Evans advises Dr Caius, “Pray you let us not be laughing stocks to other men’s humors.”
What’s so effective about this phrase is that it conjures up the image of medieval stocks, wooden restraining devices usually used for public embarrassment. In that sense, the ridicule of being the laughing stock could be considered equivalent to being publicly displayed for humiliation.
3 Green-Eyed Monster
No, we are not talking about The Hulk here, unless Marvel’s city-wrecking superhero is now fueled by jealousy instead of anger. “Green-eyed monster” alludes to both a physical manifestation of jealousy (as some sort of unmanageable creature) or someone who is so overridden by this nasty feeling that they lose control of themselves. Shakespeare used this expression in his play Othello : In it, the double-faced advisor Iago tries to make Othello doubt the faithfulness of his wife, and warns him, “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.”
4 Wear My Heart on My Sleeve
“ To wear your heart on your sleeve” is a fairly common expression nowadays, and it is used to describe displaying intimate feelings openly to someone. While there is some debate as to where this expression comes from, the first recorded use comes (once again) from Othello. Curiously, a phrase as honest and sincere as this one comes from the duplicitous villain Iago, who says, “But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”
It is worth noting that the sleeve used here may not necessarily refer to a piece of cloth that covers our arm. Some linguists believe that the expression might originate from medieval jousting, where knights would wear a token of a lady of the court on their arm armor, known then as a sleeve.
5 Wild Goose Chase
Contrary to popular belief, this expression does not come from chasing wild geese (or from the substantially scarier image of being chased by them). It refers to a type of horse race practiced in Elizabethan times, where a group of riders would follow and try to keep up with a single rider galloping ahead of them. The name comes from the shape the formation takes since it is similar to the pattern taken by geese in flight.
Shakespeare used this expression in Romeo and Juliet, where the character of Mercutio compares an exchange of jokes between Romeo and himself to a “wild goose chase” race. Mercutio states, “Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou / hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I / have in my whole five.”
Tomorrow, five more Shakespearian phrases.
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