There are countless reasons for students of English to read the works of William Shakespeare. And they go beyond the algebraic rationale that the mental exercise more than justifies the unlikeliness of any practical use in the future.
Perhaps the least known or appreciated reason is his inventive wordsmithing. Such as introducing the word wormhole in a poem in which he explains how time has many destructive powers, including “To fill with worm-holes stately monuments.” And in another use, “Pick’d from the worm-holes of long vanish’d days.”
Shakespeare also penned many other original, cool words: hint, along with advertising, amazement, excitement, green-eyed jealousy, humor, kissing, obscene, puke, rant, retirement and torture. It is particularly remarkable how to this day we routinely encounter these words and literally thousands more he coined.
The book Coined by Shakespeare and other scholarship about the playwright and poet document his extensive and current influence on the English language. Employer, manager and investment are used in business. Circumstantial evidence and foregone conclusion are used in law. Politicians negotiate and petition. And writers reword and try not to misquote.
If lexicography isn’t incentive enough to read or reread Shakespeare’s classics like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “Hamlet” and “Othello,” consider this high-brow busting insight: The Bard’s mastery of double-entendres and euphemisms inspired multiple references to flatulence, which he typically called “wind,” such as when King Lear asserts, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!”
I am in the middle of Romeo and Juliet with my freshmen and the sophomores will soon start Othello.
Wow – Looks like I missed some opportunity in the past but it is never too late…Thanks Stu
Thank you so much Linda!! kisses