Shakespeare’s language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English. But that status is underpinned by multiple myths — ideas about language that have departed from reality (or what is ...

Yet this is not the most pressing problem with contemporary Shakespeare staging. The biggest problem facing contemporary Shakespeare is the indifference to the playwright’s original language and ...

“Iconoclastic” as I am thought to be on race, I have been struck by how equally unexpected one view of mine has been considered: that much of Shakespeare’s language is impossible to comprehend ...

John McWhorter is a contributing editor for The New Republic. "Iconoclastic" as I am thought to be on race, I have been struck by how equally unexpected one view of mine has been considered: that much ...

William Shakespeare, a linguistic master, shaped the English language with his innovative wordplay. He gifted us common words like 'eyeball,' 'bedroom,' and 'swagger,' enriching our vocabulary. His ...

Ask me to say a sentence that sounds like Shakespeare, and I might use a word like “forsooth” and say “doth” instead of “does.” But that’s shortchanging the bard on his sheer linguistic versatility, ...

How often have you sat through a Shakespeare play or read a text, feeling that you're missing something? He may be England's greatest playwright and his phrases may litter our everyday language, but ...

A man in Elizabethan dress, wearing an ass's head, spouts Shakespeare in Portuguese while borne aloft by seven nearly naked women marching in time to Mendelssohn's wedding march. So ends the first ...

THERE are few lines in literature as memorable as “To be, or not to be—that is the question.” Uttered in the third act of “Hamlet”, the soliloquy offers a poignant examination of whether it is better ...