Pre-Intermediate Reading: Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is famous the world over. Indeed his fame is to such an extent that even those who do not even speak English are famous with this playwright.

His influence on the English language is immense, in fact Shakespeare is responsible for introducing words and phrases in the English language which did not exist before and are now considered an integral part of the language. Examples of such vocabulary include phrases such as 'bedroom', 'fashionable', 'lonely', 'traditional' and many others are all said to have originated with Shakespeare.

In addition to his lexical influence in terms of the psychological aspects of his plays and their exploration of human nature they can be said to be immense.  Macbeth explores themes such as the the struggle between morality and the desire for power, male-female relations, friendship including both loyalty and betrayal. This maybe why to this day the play is still widely studied the world over.

Romeo and Juliet explores the issue of forbidden love and the emotional power of love. Othello focuses on jealousy and other themes.

Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in the central English county of Warwickshire far away from London,  to a glove-maker, John and his wife, Mary.

He went to school and studied the syllabus of that time which included Latin and the study of ancient classical writers.

The irony is that despite being a globally renowned writer relatively little is known about Shakespeare's life. In fact there are various stories about him which we cannot conclusively affirm or deny such as the claim that he may have even been a soldier at one point in his life in northern Europe.

What we do know is that he was married at the age of 18 but eventually moved to London and ended up becoming a playwright and also wrote poetry.

The English of Shakespeare's plays and poems are not totally clear for all modern English speakers and many words need to be 'translated' or at least 'explained'. However the 16th and 17th century of Shakespeare is far more clearer than the English of Geoffrey Chaucer a few centuries earlier and much, much clearer than Beowulf which was even a few centuries before Chaucer. The English of Beowulf called 'Old English' is actually, grammatically speaking, a different language.

For a foreigner to read Shakespearian texts is very difficult because as mentioned before most native-speakers need a bit of help to understand some of the words and sentences in his writing.

His works have now been read for centuries and are read today.

Have you ever read any of Shakespeare's works either in English or a translation in another language, what did you think?