We have the Bard to thank for this perfect fodder for Valentine’s Day cards and middle school students’ love songs.ħ. “Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her.” - Rosalind “FOREVER AND A DAY” // AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT IV, SCENE I Her famous catchphrase came from Shakespeare first.Ħ. The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland wasn’t the first monarch with a penchant for liberating heads from bodies. “If? Thou protector of this damnèd strumpet, talk’st thou to me of “ifs”? Thou art a traitor-Off with his head.” - Richard III “OFF WITH HIS HEAD” // RICHARD III, ACT III, SCENE IV 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.ĥ. 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. “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 “SEEN BETTER DAYS” // AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT II, SCENE VII 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.Ĥ.
SHAKESPEER SAYINGS FULL
Though Shakespeare never actually used the full phrase “pure as the driven snow,” both parts of it appear in his work. “Lawn as white as driven snow.” - Autolycus “Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. “PURE AS THE DRIVEN SNOW” // HAMLET, ACT III, SCENE I AND THE WINTER’S TALE, ACTIV, SCENE IV Shakespeare turned the notion of being sick with jealousy into a metaphor that we still use today.ģ. “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” - Iagoīefore Shakespeare, the color green was most commonly associated with illness. “GREEN-EYED MONSTER” // OTHELLO, ACT III, SCENE III This term didn’t originally refer to actual geese, but rather a type of horse race.Ģ. Was I with you there for the goose?” - Mercutio “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. “WILD GOOSE CHASE” // ROMEO AND JULIET, ACT II, SCENE IV Here are 21 phrases you use but may not have known came from the Bard of Avon.ġ. But an incredible number of lines from his plays have become so ingrained into modern vernacular that we no longer recognize them as lines from plays at all. Famous quotes from his plays are easily recognizable phrases like “To be or not to be,” “wherefore art thou, Romeo,” and “et tu, Brute?” instantly evoke images of wooden stages and Elizabethan costumes. “We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance.William Shakespeare devised new words and countless plot tropes that still appear in everyday life. “Comets, importing change of times and states,īrandish your crystal tresses in the sky.” These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.” Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,Īnd lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change. “The bay-trees in our country are all withered,Īnd meteors fright the fixèd stars of heaven. “These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.” Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.” “My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. “O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable” Office, and custom, in all line of order.” Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, “The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center Or say with princes if it shall go well.” Of plagues, of dearths, or season’s quality
“Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,