It seems all aspects of my life as I begin to prepare for this trip come back around to Shakespeare. I just started working at the Huntington Theatre Company just a week ago and to my surprise, their first show is called "How Shakespeare Won the West". It's about a troupe of actors who travel to California in search of fortune, not from the gold rush, but from tickets bought by rich miners to see their productions.
Shakespeare impacted our lives more than we think about. Certainly more than just reading his works in high school English, we use words and phrases he invented almost daily. Every time you wait "with bated breath" or "break the ice" when meeting someone new, you have the Bard to thank. If someone's "dead as a doornail", they died in a manner thanks to Will. If you're "fancy free" in a "fool's paradise", and you find yourself "in a pickle", it's Shakespeare's fault. When you "lie low" and have "not slept one wink", "in one fell swoop" you can blame W.S. All this might make you "sick at heart" to realize, and you'll be "a sorry sight," but the "long and short of it" is "what's done is done" and this "wild goose chase" is all thanks to Shakespeare.
He also put some words into print for the first time, including the vulgar "puke" and made many words into new parts of speech, suck as taking "market" into the adjective "marketable."
Who knew?
Until next time, "parting is such sweet sorrow".
-Nat
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