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Shakespeare’s influence on the English language can still be heard or read today. Here are fifty expressions still in use after he first used them in his plays 400 years ago.

‘A sorry sight’ – Macbeth, Macbeth

‘All that glisters is not gold’ – Prince of Morocco, The Merchant of Venice

‘All’s well that ends well’ – Helena, All’s Well That Ends Well

‘At one fell swoop’ – Macduff, Macbeth

‘Bated breath’ – Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

‘The ‘be-all and end-all’ – Macbeth, Macbeth

‘Be cruel … to be kind’ – Hamlet, Hamlet

‘Brave new world’ – Miranda, The Tempest

‘A charmed life’ – Macbeth, Macbeth

‘Come full circle’ – Edmund, King Lear

‘Dog will have its day’ – Hamlet, Hamlet

‘Eaten me out of house and home’ – Hostess Quickly, Henry IV, Part 2

‘Elbow room’ – John, King John

‘Fair play’ – Hector, Troilus and Cressida

‘For ever and a day’ – Biondello, The Taming of the Shrew

‘Foregone conclusion’ – Othello, Othello

‘Foul play’ – Gloucester, King Lear

‘The game is up’ – Belarius, Cymbeline

‘Good men and true’ – Dogberry, Much Ado About Nothing

‘Good riddance’ – Patroclus, Troilus and Cressida

‘Greek to me’ – Casca, Julius Caesar

‘Green-eyed monster’ – Iago, Othello

‘Heart’s content’ – Henry, Henry VI, Part 2

‘I have not slept one wink’ – Pisanio, Cymbeline

‘In my heart of heart’ – Hamlet, Hamlet

‘I will wear my heart upon my sleeve’ – Iago, Othello

‘Into thin air’ – Prospero, The Tempest

‘The lady doth protest too much’ – Gertrude, Hamlet

‘Lay it on ‘with a trowel’ – Celia, As You Like It

‘Love is blind’ – Jessica, The Merchant of Venice

‘Milk of human kindness’ – Lady Macbeth, Macbeth

‘More fool you’ – Bianca, The Taming of the Shrew

‘Murder most foul’ – Ghost, Hamlet

‘My own flesh and blood’ – Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

‘My salad days’ – Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra

‘Pomp and Circumstance’ – Othello, Othello

‘Pound of flesh’ – Shylock, The Merchant of Venice

‘Seal up your lips and give no words but mum’ (giving us the saying ‘Mum’s the word’) – Hume, Henry VI, Part 2

‘Send him packing’ – Falstaff, Henry IV, Part 1

‘The short and the long of it’ – Mistress Quickly, The Merry Wives of Windsor

‘Short shrift’ – Ratcliff, Richard III

‘Sorry sight’ – Macbeth, Macbeth

‘Of sterner stuff’ – Mark Antony, Julius Caesar

‘Strange bed-fellows’ – Trinculo, The Tempest

‘Such stuff as dreams are made on’ – Prospero, The Tempest

‘To the manner born’ – Hamlet, Hamlet

‘Though this be madness, yet there is a method in’t’ (giving us the saying ‘There’s method in his madness’) – Polonius, Hamlet

‘Truth will out’ – Launcelot, The Merchant of Venice

‘Wild goose chase’ – Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet

‘The world’s mine oyster’ – Pistol, The Merry Wives of Windsor

Shakespeare survived these upheavals to emerge by the middle of the eighteenth century as Britain’s supreme dramatist and poet. The theatre had changed enormously since his time. The open air spaces of the Elizabethan stage had been enclosed and Londoners crowded into places like the carefully lit auditorium of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. The building itself had been designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674 but under the management of its latest impresario, David Garrick, had introduced many new features. There was a clear division between actors and audience. The auditorium was darker and the stage brighter, with footlights and other effects to enhance the action. Before these innovations members of the audience had been allowed to sit on the stage where they could prove troublesome, particularly if the production was not to their liking. In this environment David Garrick set about building his reputation as the finest actor-manager of his time. Many of his productions were boisterous pieces of popular fun, but he never lost sight of Shakespeare and wanted to be identified as a great interpreter of his roles. He played all the great parts – Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth among them – but his most popular performances were as Richard III and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. In 1769 he organised a jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It was three years late, but nobody minded. Garrick gave the public a splendid festival of entertainment, including snippets from his Shakespearean performances and his very own ‘Ode to Shakespeare’:

Untouch’d and sacred be thy shrine,

Avonian Willy, Bard divine.

No wonder Garrick’s friend and mentor, Samuel Johnson, described his death as having eclipsed ‘the gaiety of nations’.

Shakespeare’s international reputation began to grow in the nineteenth century. The rapid expansion of the British Empire brought with it British ideas and British culture, with Shakespeare at the helm. The first performance of a Shakespeare play in India was in Bombay, in 1770. Ten years later, in Calcutta, the capital of British India, Othello was performed at Christmas with many other Shakespeare productions following after that. By the middle of the nineteenth century his plays began to be translated and performed in Indian languages. In South Africa the African Theatre in Cape Town staged Henry IV, Part I, in 1801, with a notice in the Cape Town Gazette announcing that this was ‘the customary honour paid to our Immortal Bard’.

But it was not in the Empire but in a part of Europe where in the early nineteenth century Shakespeare achieved his most remarkable success. His work appealed naturally to the romantic imagination which was then the strongest cultural force in all branches of the arts. In Germany two of the principal exponents of romanticism were the brothers Friedrich and August Schlegel. Friedrich was a philosopher, but August was a writer and poet and in the early 1800s he began to translate Shakespeare into German. The results were outstanding. His understanding of Shakespeare combined with his own talents as a poet gave his translations a vitality all their own. Edited and amended by his fellow poet and critic, Ludwig Tieck, they became important works of literature in their own right. Today in Germany Shakespeare is revered almost as highly as the great masters of German literature, Goethe and Schiller: he has become almost German.

Shakespeare helped to give the British the ability to express themselves.

A nation needs inspiration. It may have been created out of purely pragmatic considerations, but it needs ideas to survive. Shakespeare helped to give the British the ability to express themselves, to look inwards with imagination and outwards with confidence. Ever since he first entertained the boisterous crowds in the theatres of London at the end of the sixteenth century, he has been, and will remain, Britain’s big idea, a vital stream of thought and ideas forever sustaining ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’