CHAPTER I. William Shakespeare’s role in the English literature. Shakespeare's influence extends from theater and literatures to present-day movies, Western philosophy, and the English language itself. William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the history of the English language,1 and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.2 He transmuted European theatre through extending expectances about what could be performed by innovation in characterization, plot, language and genre. Shakespeare's writings have also impacted many notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville3, Charles Dickens,and Maya Angelou, and continue to influence new authors even today. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world after the various writers of the Bible many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. According to Guinness Book of World Records Shakespeare remains the world’s best-selling playwright, with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the almost 400 years since his
1] Reich, John J.; Cunningham, Lawrence S. (2005), Culture And Values: A Survey of the Humanities, Thomson Wadsworth, p. 102, ISBN 978-0534582272. 2)William Shakespeare". MSN Encarta Online Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 10 April 2008. Retrieved 14 June 2007. 3].William Shakespeare". Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14 June 2007.
2 death. He is also the third most translated author in history. Shakespeare influenced many writers in the following centuries, including major novelists such as Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy4 and William Faulkner5 Examples of this influence include the large number of Shakespearean quotations throughout Dickens' writings and the fact that at least 25 of Dickens' titles are drawn from Shakespeare6 while Melville frequently used Shakespearean devices, including formal stage directions and extended soliloquies, in Moby-Dick. In fact, Shakespeare so influenced Melville that the novel's main antagonist, Captain Ahab, is a classic Shakespearean tragic figure, "a great man brought down by his faults." Shakespeare has also influenced a number of English poets, especially Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge who were obsessed with self-consciousness, a modern theme Shakespeare anticipated in plays such as Hamlet. Shakespeare's writings were so influential to English poetry of the 1800s that critic George Steiner has called all English poetic dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."
Shakespeare's writings greatly influenced the entire English language. Prior to and during Shakespeare's time, the grammar and rules of English were not standardized. But once Shakespeare's plays became popular in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the standardization of the English language, with many Shakespearean words and phrases becoming embedded in the English language, particularly through projects such as Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language which quoted Shakespeare more than any other writer. He expanded the scope of English literature by introducing new words and phrases ,experimenting with blank verse, and also introducing new poetic and grammatical structures.
Among Shakespeare's greatest contributions to the English language must be the introduction of new vocabulary and phrases which have enriched the language making it more colourful and expressive. Some estimates at the number of words coined by Shakespeare number in the several thousands. Warren King clarifies by saying that, "In all of his work – the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems – Shakespeare uses 17,677 words: Of those, 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare." He is also well known for borrowing from the classical literature and foreign languages. He created these words by "changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used
4] Millgate, Michael and Wilson, Keith, Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Michael Millgate University of Toronto Press, 2006, 38. 5] Kolin, Philip C. Shakespeare and Southern Writers: A Study in Influence. University Press of Mississippi. p. 124. 6] Gager, Valerie L. (1996). Shakespeare and Dickens: The Dynamics of Influence. Cambridge University