The influence of Shakespeare on everyday English

Hi. This is Gill at www.engvid.com, and today, we're going to be looking at the way William

Shakespeare, the English playwright and poet, has influenced everyday English today. He

wrote a lot of plays and quite a lot of poems, and some of the lines from those poems and

plays have been used in the English language because they were very influential. So...

And the way he said things was just very good at expressing something. It may have been

that people around him were saying all these things, and that it was just... He was the

one to put them down in print, but looking back through all the old books, Shakespeare

was the first person to mention all of these. These are just a few examples. He was the

first person to put these actual phrases and words into print. So maybe he heard other

people saying them, but he was the one who wrote them down. Okay? So, let's have a look

through the list.

So... Oh, and there are his dates just to show you how long ago he lived. He was born

in 1564, died in 1616, so a long, long time ago. So it's quite amazing, really, that some

of what he wrote is actually used in the English language today. So let's have a look.

So, first of all: "a sorry sight". Okay? So, if you see somebody walking along and they...

Maybe they've been caught in the rain or something, or they've fallen over into the mud and they've

got all their clothes dirty, the look terrible, they haven't eaten for two days and they look

absolutely awful, you could say: "That poor man, he is a sorry sight." "Sorry" meaning

sort of sad. You feel sorry for him, looking at him. He looks really dishevelled, very

dirty, tired, hungry. "A sorry sight". Okay.

Next one: "wearing your heart on your sleeve". Okay? Now, this is your sleeve and here is

your heart. Your heart is inside here. But if you wear your heart on your sleeve, this

is a kind of a metaphor, or an idiom, an expression for showing how you're feeling. Not hiding

your feelings, but making it clear how you feel. So maybe if you've fallen in love with

somebody and instead of sort of keeping it to yourself and keeping it a secret, you sort

of make it quite obvious to them, probably in a very embarrassing way. But if you make

it very obvious to them that you... That you love them, you're wearing your heart on your

sleeve. Okay? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, so worth a try if you think so,

but I don't know. Okay, so that's what that means. Right?

"In a pickle", if you're in a pickle, you're in trouble. And "pickle" is a kind of preservative

in a jar. So it's like vinegar or something, which preserves food. So, "vinegar". Sometimes

you get little onions in vinegar, and they're called pickled onions. Okay? You can buy them

in the supermarket. So, if you're in a... If you, personally, are in a pickle, it means

you're in a lot of vinegar, which isn't a very nice place to be. So that's real trouble.

You don't want to be in a lot of vinegar. So: "in a pickle", that's what that means.

So you have to get out of it as quickly as possible. So it means in trouble.

Okay, next one: "there's method in my madness", and if you've heard of Hamlet, this comes

from that play. Hamlet pretends to be mad. He's not really mad, but he's pretending to

be mad for a certain reason, which I won't explain now; it would take too long. You'll

notice a lot of m's because Shakespeare is very poetic, and you get a lot of sound patterns,

the same letter repeated, which makes it a stronger phrase because of that. "There's

method in my madness" means you may be behaving in a very strange way, but there's a good

reason for it. You have a method. There is a reason for behaving like that, which hopefully,

it will all work out in the end. But for Hamlet, it didn't really work out. But I'll leave

you to find out about that if you don't already know. So he pretends to be mad for his own

reasons, but he's not really mad. Okay. Right?

So, next one: "too much of a good thing"... So, you can say: "You can have too much of

a good thing", and I'm sort of thinking about chocolate. Okay? Which I think about a lot.

Chocolate, to me, is a good thing, but you can have too much of it. Okay? And have a

heart attack or something if you eat too much. So you can have too much of a good thing,

so don't overdo it. Everything in moderation. Okay?

Just a little bit of what you like,

a little bit of chocolate or whatever it is you like, but not too much because you can

have too much of a good thing. Right.

Next one: "to break the ice". This doesn't mean literally if the pond has frozen over,

there's ice on top, you go and break it, break the ice to get through to the water underneath.

This is a metaphor for getting to know people. If you go to a meeting and there are people

that you haven't met before and you're all a bit uncomfortable because you're not quite

sure what to say, if somebody then makes a joke and everybody laughs, and people start

to feel happier, and more friendly, and more relaxed - that's... That joke has broken the

ice. Okay? Sometimes you might go to a workshop or a seminar where people are discussing things,

and often, at the beginning you have something called an "icebreaker". All right?

That's the same idea, the icebreaker for people to start to feel comfortable with each other.

Okay, so next one: "catch a cold". Now, to catch a cold is when you [sneezes] and your

nose is streaming, and you've got a sore throat. And, oh, a cold or the flu or something. So:

"to catch a cold". To me, it sounds very normal. I mean, you catch a ball as well, but to catch

a cold. Maybe before this was written down, people said: "To get a cold". I don't know.

Maybe even the word "cold" wasn't used, but Shakespeare was the first person to write

it down. Okay.

Next one: "full circle". If you come full circle, maybe you're out in the country somewhere

going for a walk and you get a bit lost, but you keep walking. And you think you're going

in a straight line, but what actually happens is you've been going around in a circle, and

when you get back to where you started, you say: "We've come full circle." Okay?

Next one: "A heart of gold". If someone has a heart of gold, it means they're a very kind

person. Okay? Gold being a valuable metal. "A heart of gold" means a really good person.

Okay?

If someone is "hot-blooded", they can get angry very quickly, or they get into fights,

that sort of thing. Their blood that is in their veins and arteries is hot, not... Well,

it is hot anyway, but if they're hot-blooded, it means they have a strong temper; they can

get angry easily and get into fights.

"Housekeeping", again is the... Shakespeare was the first person, apparently, to put this

word in print, and it means as you probably know: looking after the house, cleaning, cooking,

keeping things tidy, dusting, all the housekeeping that needs to be done to keep the place nice.

If you say: "It's Greek to me", it means you don't understand something. If you're reading

a book, it may not literally be in Greek, but you can say: "It's Greek to me", meaning:

"I don't understand it", because most people, unless they are Greek or have studied Greek,

will not understand Greek. Okay.

"Seen better days". If something has seen better days, like a chair, if you have a favourite

chair that you sit in but you've had it for maybe 20 years and it's not new anymore, it's

a bit worn, a bit maybe not very clean looking - you can say: "This chair has seen better

days." Okay.

And then, finally, you may have heard this term: "star-crossed lovers". It comes from

the play Romeo... Romeo and Juliet, which is one of the most famous of Shakespeare's

plays. They are star-crossed, because they are very unlucky. Very bad things happen to

them, so they don't live to a very old age, because they have a bad... Bad fortune, bad

luck. So: "star-crossed lovers", the stars up there, horoscopes, signs of the zodiac,

that sort of the thing is the idea behind this; astrology. Okay.

Right, so that's our selective list of words and phrases from Shakespeare which are still

used in the English language today. I hope you found it interesting. If you'd like to

answer a quiz on this topic, please go to the website: www.engvid.com,

and come and see us again soon. Okay? Bye for now.