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Pedro Kuzma
Mr. Phillips
English 9B
19 May 2014
The World Took a "Shake"
Many people may think that Shakespeare is just an old person who lived a long time ago
and wrote some very popular pieces. Unlike what many people think, Shakespeare and his work
were crucial for the formation and shaping of the world and culture we live in today. Also,
Shakespeare is important for our education becauseno high school English curriculum is
complete without a mandatory dose of William Shakespeare(mentalfloss.com). Shakespeare
had a great influence on our culture, especially in the aspects of language and vocabulary, his
characters being archetypes, and in talking about private topics like sex.
Probably the main influence Shakespeare has on our culture is the language. Throughout
his various plays, Shakespeare created "over 2200 never-before-seen wordsa diverse collection
of loan-words from foreign languages and compound words from existing English terms"
(Mentalfloss.com). People may think his words are very formal and elaborate words, but many
of these words are a common part of our vocabulary, that people do not even notice they were
made up by him. Some of these words are: addiction, assassination, eyeball, ladybird, and
uncomfortable(Mentalfloss.com). Words as simple as these, that we use everyday hadn't been
thought of before Shakespeare. The word addiction comes from Act II in Othello, without this
word how would we explain people that have a hard carving for something, like Cigarettes. The
next word is assasination, this word came from MacBeth, Act I, imagine the how incomplete
newscasts would look without this word. After that comes eyeball, this words comes from The
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Tempest, a simple way to describe the round thing through which we see. Next comes
ladybird, it comes from the line "What lamb! What ladybird!"(Romeo and Juliet,1,3) said by
the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Finally comes uncomfortable, a word everyone uses very
commonly now a days comes from Capulet saying "Uncomfortable time, why camest thy now to
murder"(Romeo and Juliet, 4,5). Of course not only because he was the first one to write these
words down in his scripts, doesn't mean they had not been used in the oral language before.
Who in the world does not know who Shakespeare's characters like Romeo, Macbeth,
Hamlet and many others are? Who does not know the story of the star crossed lovers that died
for each other, or the story of the man taking revenge for his fathers death. Shakespeare's
characters are very popular and known by everyone and are instantly recognizable when their
names are invoked(nytimes.com). In the world and culture we live in today Shakespeare's
characters are well known and used as archetypes and even as adjectives. People know Romeo as
a persistent romancer that is frequently in love with some girl. Hamlet is seen as an undecided,
confused overthinker. These archetypes are used by the people of the modern word, not only as
an archetype but also as adjectives, for example if people call you a Romeo they mean you are a
Romantic person that is the best with woman. Now if they call you Hamlet, they are probably
refering to you being over thinking or undecided about something.
Many of you may already know the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, considered the
father of psychoanalysis, but what you may not know is that Shakespeare had a great influence in
Freud as well as in psychoanalysis. As you will notice if you read Shakespeare's work, he talks
openly and freely about sex, and his unabashed frankness about sexuality made him the one
canonical author who dealt openly with sex(nypost.com). Throughout all of his plays,
Shakespeare talked about and described every type of sex and pleasure, even the most repressed
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ones for the time. Many of the ideas and thought from psychoanalysis and the 60s sexual
revolution came from came from Shakespeare's work and description of how human desire
functions. Out of all the other writers that have existed, Shakespeare was probably the one who
most supported permissive ideas and concepts.
Shakespeare was a very influential character that lived during the 1500s, he is most
known obviously for his plays and poems, but something that goes by unnoticed is that in the 52
years he lived, he gave the world a "Shake" and changed it, not only in the aspects mentioned
above, but also in many other ways. He helped us form the society we live in today, and
eventhough he is dead, he is still alive in our lives, especially in our culture, language and
education.












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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. "Acts 1 and 4." Romeo and Juliet. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

"20 Words We Owe to William Shakespeare." Mental Floss. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May
2014. <http://mentalfloss.com/article/48657/20-words-we-owe-william-shakespeare>.

"Why Is Shakespeare Important." Why Is Shakespeare Important. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May
2014. <http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/influencefaq.html>.

"The Global Influence of Shakespeare | GW Today | The George Washington
University." The Global Influence of Shakespeare | GW Today | The George Washington
University. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May 2014. <http://gwtoday.gwu.edu/global-influence-
shakespeare>.

"Great Shakespeare." New York Post Great Shakes Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May
2014. <http://nypost.com/2011/05/08/great-shakes-2/>.







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