This St George's Day - 23 April 2018 - marks the 402nd anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's greatest contribution to literature is his use of the English language, in which he showed himself an expert both in style and variety. Using as many as 28,000 words in his writing, 1,700 of which he coined himself, the Bard's vocabulary has been dazzling and confounding readers for hundreds of years.
For every Shakespearean word that has remained in use - luggage, swagger and cold-blooded were all coined by the playwright - stands another that has thoroughly fallen by the wayside. Few people these days talk of putting on a half-kirtle (jacket) or how their favourite football team's defeat left them amort (dejected).
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Twelfth Night or What You Will: a 'riotous' late-summer jamboreeThe Week Recommends Robin Belfield's 'carnivalesque' new staging at Shakespeare's Globe is 'joyfully tongue-in-cheek'
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Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposesspeed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
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Much Ado About Nothing: Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell deliver 'full-on fiery and fleshy' performanceThe Week Recommends Jamie Lloyd's adaptation of Shakespeare classic leans on '1990s pop favourites'
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The Merchant of Venice: 'nothing short of gripping'The Week Recommends John Douglas Thompson is 'magisterial' as Shylock
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New-look books from Penguin's Vintage divisionThe Blend A bibliophile shares his early fascination with Penguin paperback design and hails a new chapter in the imprint’s cover story
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8 touring theater productions to mark on your calendar this fallThe Week Recommends A pop icon, Shakespeare reconsidered and a sublime musical about mortality are all on the boards
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Romeo & Juliet: 'all very clever, but to what end?'The Week Recommends Jamie Lloyd's 'turbo-stylised' production is met with mixed reviews
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The London Library and Elizabeth Winkler's female Shakespeare claimsIn the Spotlight Critics say an event suggesting Shakespeare may have been a woman is 'wildly inappropriate'
