When someone mentions William Shakespeare or any of his plays or sonnets, one may think of the old English language and ninth grade English class with Romeo and Juliet as required reading. What comes to mind is vague recollections of boredom and wishing to do anything other than reading some dead man’s play that is hard to understand.

However, people owe a lot to William Shakespeare.

According to shakespeare-online.com, “The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original.”

Among the words that Shakespeare coined are accused, addiction, assassination, backing, bandit, blanket, bloodstained, caked, cold-blooded, compromise, critic, dauntless, dawn, deafening, dwindle, fashionable, flawed, gossip, green-eyed, hint, label, and ode.

According to grammarly.com’s article ‘How The English Language is Shakespeare’s Language’, “…any phrases that we use daily originated in Shakespeare’s work. When someone talks about ‘breaking the ice’ or having a ‘heart of gold’ or when someone uses any number of other phrases, he is using Shakespeare’s language.”

2016 marks the 500th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. To celebrate the occasion, the SMSU Theater Department is performing The Tempest written by Shakespeare himself.

The English language would not have been the same if Shakespeare had not been a playwright. So next time someone mentions Shakespeare, one should think of his legacy rather than the plays they were forced to read.