Even if you've never seen a Shakespeare play, you'll have used one of his words or phrases. On the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, Hephzibah Anderson explains his genius – and enduring influence.
If the fact that William Shakespeare's First Folio, that legacy-defining collection of his plays, is turning 400 has passed you by, you can be sure he'd have had a zinger of a putdown to sling your way. Or better yet, a whole string of them."Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood" might just do it, borrowed from King Lear railing against his daughter, Goneril.
Next time you refer to jealousy as"the green-eyed monster", know that you're quoting Othello's arch villain, Iago. Back in 2008, two antiquarian booksellers in the US, George Koppelman and Daniel Wechsler, declared that they'd found the dictionary Shakespeare used. The book, which they bought on eBay, was a copy of John Baret's Alvearie, a popular late-16th-Century dictionary in four languages.
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