The Influence of Shakespeare Essay Example

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. Shakespeare’s influence affected not only the world of literature but also the language, our lives, and even our pop culture.

First of all, it is worth considering the amount of influence Shakespeare had had on the English language we use today. To him is attributed the invention of many words and expressions that today we use daily, such as the word uncomfortable or Fashionable or manager or assassination; for example in Macbeth is used the expression "What’s done is done", in the merchant of Venice we have "love is blind", "all’s well that ends well"; these are all expressions that we still use today. These words and phrases have helped make the language richer.

Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that his influence goes far beyond our language, if we think carefully we can notice how even our lives were influenced by him too. His words, his way of using the language, his plots, and surprisingly his characters keep on motivating a lot of our way of life and society; with his characters he create many of our most lasting cultural types. To give an illustration of what I mean, let’s look at the case of Hamlet, Romeo and Macbeth. Nowadays Romeo is synonym of a persistent romancer, Lady Macbeth of an ambitious female politician. The influence of these plays has been such that they have been adapted in both movies and songs, an example is "love story" by Taylor swift and for Hamlet "the lion king".

All things considered we can say with certainty that the influence of Shakespeare goes far beyond the world of literature. Not only did he manage to "transform" the language, but he also managed to condition our culture and, in a way, our way of thinking.