’Friends, Romans, countrymen – lend me your ears’ and many more. The English language is full of sayings and idioms that are originally quotations from Shakespearean plays. So profound is his influence on the culture and the language!

If you were a student in a school in an English-speaking country, there would be no escaping Macbeth, King Lear, As you like it, let alone Hamlet! But even as a student outside the English-speaking world, you will encounter Shakespearean quotations and references here and there, even in the world of entertainment. In a song by Nightwish called Wanderlust there is a line ’Straying, claiming my place in this mortal coil’, where ’mortal coil’ is taken from Hamlet’s monologue, and rougly means our physical body .

The web has a multitude of sites about Shakespeare. Here are two links, one with quotations and another with fun quizzes.

If you like Rowan Atkinson’s humour, you are invited to watch his Shakespeare sketches in YouTube, two of which are linked below.

A Small Rewrite – Here Shakespeare and his and his producer are arguing about Hamlet’s monologue. The producer thinks it long and boring!

Pink Tights and Plenty of Props is another one that parodies the conventions of Elizabethan theatre.

The picture is an engraving of the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays were playes (and when was that?). A replica of the building was recently built in London and it is a famous tourist attraction.