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Early Modern English as a literary medium was unfixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison to Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux.When William Shakespeare began writing his plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration, diplomacy and colonization.
This category is for English phrases which were invented by Shakespeare, and older phrases which were notably used in his works. The main article for this category is William Shakespeare . Pages in category "Shakespearean phrases"
William Shakespeare's play Hamlet has contributed many phrases to common English, from the famous "To be, or not to be" to a few less known, but still in everyday English. Some also occur elsewhere (e.g. in the Bible) or are proverbial. All quotations are second quarto except as noted:
Shakespeare added hundreds of new words to the English language, including many commonly used words and colorful expressions that we still use today.
Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) [2] or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late 14th century and was completed by the 17th century.
Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModE [1] or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle English, in the late 15th century, to the transition to Modern English, in the mid-to-late 17th century.
[b] In it he found words and phrases that he thought were repeated verbatim in William Shakespeare's works, even though Shakespeare had only begun to publish nearly a half a century later. [6] In 1927 he ventured to publish this notion in an article entitled "Il grande tragico Shakespeare sarebbe italiano". [7]
Shakespeare's Early Modern English [6] was a time of great linguistic change for the English language. [7] One change that was then taking place was the Great Vowel Shift, which changed the pronunciation of long vowels. [7] Many words of Early Modern English were pronounced differently from today's standard pronunciation of Modern English. [7]