1.
"Wild Goose Chase" // Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene IV
"Nay, if our wits run the
wild-goose chase, I am done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy
wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the
goose?" — Mercutio
This term didn't originally refer to
actual geese, but rather a type of horse race.
2.
"Green-Eyed Monster" // Othello, Act III, Scene III
"O, beware, my lord, of
jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds
on." — Iago
Before Shakespeare, the color green
was most commonly associated with illness. Shakespeare turned the notion of
being sick with jealousy into a metaphor that we still use today.
3.
"Pure as the Driven Snow" // Hamlet, Act III, Scene I and The
Winter's Tale, Act IV, Scene IV
"Be thou as chaste as ice, as
pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go." —
Hamlet
"Lawn as white as driven
snow." — Autolycus
Though Shakespeare never actually
used the full phrase "pure as the driven snow," both parts of it
appear in his work. For the record, this simile works best right after
the snow falls, and not a few hours later when tires and footprints turn it
into brown slush.
4.
"Seen Better Days" // As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
"True is it that we have seen
better days and have with holy bell been knolled to church, and sat at good
men's feasts and wiped our eyes of drops that sacred pity hath
engendered." — Duke Senior
The first recorded use of "seen
better days" actually appeared in Sir Thomas More in 1590, but the
play was written anonymously, and is often at least partially attributed to
Shakespeare. We do know Shakespeare was a fan of the phrase; he uses "seen
better days" in As You Like It, and then again in Timon of
Athens.
5.
"Off With His Head" // Richard III, Act III, Scene IV
"If? Thou protector of this
damnèd strumpet, talk'st thou to me of "ifs"? Thou art a traitor—Off
with his head." — Richard III
The Queen of Hearts in Alice in
Wonderland wasn't the first monarch with a penchant for liberating heads
from bodies. Her famous catchphrase came from Shakespeare first.
6.
"Forever and a Day" // As You Like It, Act IV, Scene I
"Now tell me how long you would
have her after you have possessed her." — Rosalind
"Forever and a day" —
Orlando
We have the Bard to thank for this
perfect fodder for Valentine's Day cards and middle school students' love
songs.
7.
"Good Riddance" // Troilus and Cressida, Act II, Scene I
[Thersites exits]
"A good riddance." —
Patroclus
Where would Green Day be without
Shakespeare’s riposte? In addition to acoustic ballad titles, "good
riddance" also applies well to exes, house pests (both human and insect),
and in-laws.
8.
"Fair Play" // The Tempest, Act V, Scene I
"Yes, for a score of kingdoms
you should wrangle, and I would call it fair play." — Miranda
Prospero's daughter never would have
been able to predict that "fair play" is used more often now in
sports than it is for the negotiation of kingdoms.
9.
"Lie Low" // Much Ado About Nothing, Act V, Scene I
"If he could right himself with
quarreling, some of us would lie low." — Antonio
Shakespeare's plays contain
brilliant wisdom that still applies today. In "lie low," he concocted
the perfect two-word PR advice for every celebrity embroiled in a scandal.
10.
"It's Greek to Me" // Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II
"Nay, an I tell you that, Ill
ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one
another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to
me." — Casca
"It's all Greek to me” might
possibly be the most intelligent way of telling someone that you have
absolutely no idea what's going on.
11.
"As Good Luck Would Have It" // The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Act III, Scene V
“As good luck would have it, comes
in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford's approach; and, in her
invention and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.”
— Falstaff
Determining whether a Shakespeare
play is a comedy or a tragedy can largely be boiled down to whether good luck
would have anything for the characters.
12.
"You've Got to Be Cruel to Be Kind" // Hamlet, Act III, Scene
IV
"So, again, good night. I must
be cruel only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse remains behind." —
Hamlet
Here’s an idiom that proves just
because a character in a Shakespeare play said it doesn't necessarily mean it's
always true. Hamlet probably isn't the best role model, especially given the
whole accidentally-stabbing-someone-behind-a-curtain thing.
13.
"Love Is Blind" // The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene VI
"But love is blind, and lovers
cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit, for if they could Cupid
himself would blush to see me thus transformèd to a boy." — Jessica
Chaucer actually wrote the phrase
("For loue is blynd alday and may nat see") in The Merchant’s Tale
in 1405, but it didn't become popular and wasn't seen in print again until
Shakespeare wrote it down. Now, "love is blind" serves as the
three-word explanation for any seemingly unlikely couple.
14.
"Be-All, End-All" // Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII
"If the assassination could
trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease success; that but this
blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here, upon this bank and
shoal of time, we’d jump the life to come." — Macbeth
Macbeth uses the phrase just as he’s
thinking about assassinating King Duncan and, ironically, as anyone who's
familiar with the play knows, the assassination doesn't turn out to be the
"end all" after all.
15.
"Break the Ice" // The Taming of the Shrew, Act I, Scene II
"If it be so, sir, that you are
the man must stead us all, and me amongst the rest, and if you break the ice
and do this feat, achieve the elder, set the younger free for our access, whose
hap shall be to have her will not so graceless be to be ingrate." — Tranio
(as Lucentio)
If you want to really break the ice,
the phrase appears to have come from Thomas North, whose translation of
Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans provided much of the
inspiration for Shakespeare's ancient word plays. This is a great meta
"did you know" fact for getting to know someone at speed dating.
16.
"Heart of Gold" // Henry V, Act IV, Scene I
"The king's a bawcock, and a
heart of gold, a lad of life, an imp of fame, of parents good, of fist most
valiant." — Pistol
Turns out, the phrase "heart of
gold" existed before Douglas Adams used it as the name of the first
spaceship to use the Infinite Improbability Drive in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy.
17.
"Kill With Kindness" // The Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, Scene
1
"This is a way to kill a wife
with kindness, and thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor." —
Petruchio
The Shakespeare canon would contain
a lot fewer dead bodies if his characters all believed they should kill their
enemies with kindness instead of knives and poison.
18.
"Knock, Knock! Who's There?" // Macbeth, Act II, Scene III
"Knock, knock! Who's there, in
th' other devil’s name?" — Porter
Though high school students
suffering through English class may disagree, Shakespeare was a master of humor
in his works, writing both slapstick comedy and sophisticated wordplay. And, as
the Porter scene in Macbeth illustrates, he's also the father of the
knock-knock joke.
19.
"Live Long Day" // Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene I
"To towers and windows, yea, to
chimney tops, your infants in your arms, and there have sat the livelong day
with patient expectation to see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome." —
Mureless
Today, the phrase "live long
day" is pretty much exclusively reserved for those who have been working
on the railroad.
20.
"You Can Have Too Much of a Good Thing" // As You Like It, Act
IV, Scene I
"Why then, can one desire too
much of a good thing?— Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.—Give
me your hand, Orlando.—What do you say, sister?" — Rosalind
Modern readers often call
Shakespeare a visionary, far ahead of his time. For example: he was able to
write about desiring too much of a good thing 400 years before
chocolate-hazelnut spread was widely available.
21.
"The Game is Afoot" // Henry V, Act III, Scene I
"The game's afoot: follow your
spirit, and upon this charge cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"
— King Henry V
Nope! It wasn't Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle who coined this phrase—Sherlock Holmes' most famous catchphrase comes
from Henry V, although both characters do often tend to find themselves
around dead bodies.
No comments:
Post a Comment