William Shakespeare ,the master of theather, has written many tragedies, comedies, sonnets or poems. Every piece of his, consists of a wonderful language that lets his texts to survive for centuries. Shakespeare shows his great ability to play with words in his texts and almost all of his plays include rhetorical questions. Considering that in 16th century-it is called as Elizabethan era- the English language was not very strong and there were no sources for a writer to regard-for example a dictionary, it can be seen that Shakespeare did a great job with shaping his own language in terms of quality and quantity.
It is estimated that Shakespeare’s educated and striking language has contributed around 3,000 words to English. Even though the Modern English seems far way from the language that Shakespeare used, the history of usages of many words are based on Shakespeare’s vocabulary. It might seem hard to understand because the word order was different back then, and actually this difference lets Shakespeare to use the language flexible enough the sharpen his expression. Here are some examples of Shakespeare’s word plays:
- "A little more than kin, and less than kind". - (Act I, Scene II,Hamlet)
- "Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?" - (Act III, Scene II,Hamlet)