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    For the Love of Shakespeare
    For the Love of Shakespeare
    For the Love of Shakespeare
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    For the Love of Shakespeare

    By K.B. Chandra Raj

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    About this ebook

    Chances are good that youve used one of the following expressions in your everyday conversations: Eaten me out of house and home, Give the devil his due, Done to death, or The green-eyed monster. But did you know William Shakespeare authored each of these phrases, along with many other English phrases in common use?

    For the Love of Shakespeare celebrates these and other common sayings that appear in our daily conversations and correctly attributes them to their true author, William Shakespeare. K. B. Chandra Raj showcases these expressions, now over 400 years old, in their original plays and poems to explain how they have changed in meaning and context.

    In addition, Chandra Raj studies the influence of Shakespeares words and their remarkable staying power. His thoughtful commentary reveals how the originality and pure genius of Shakespeares works have led them not only to enter the public lexicon, but also to continue to be performed on screen and stage.

    Full of the beautiful language of Shakespeare, For the Love of Shakespeare celebrates the English playwrights incredible talent, and definitively shows how his works transcend time. Lovers of Shakespeare rejoice: Alls well that ends well!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrafford Publishing
    Release dateMay 25, 2011
    ISBN9781426968044
    For the Love of Shakespeare
    Author

    K.B. Chandra Raj

    K.B. Chandra Raj was born and raised in Malaysia. He was trained as an accountant and worked in that field before retiring. He and his family immigrated to the United States in 1985. Chandra Raj and his wife, Siva, have two grown children and two grandchildren and live in Hamden, Connecticut. He is also the author of For the love of Shakespeare, Your sense of humor—Don’t leave home without it, Mining my own life, and Reminiscing in tranquility of a time long gone by.

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      Book preview

      For the Love of Shakespeare - K.B. Chandra Raj

      © Copyright 2011 K. B. Chandra Raj.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

      Printed in the United States of America.

      isbn: 978-1-4269-6802-0 (sc)

      isbn: 978-1-4269-6803-7 (hc)

      isbn: 978-1-4269-6804-4 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011907050

      Trafford rev. 05/05/2011

      missing image file www.trafford.com

      North America & international

      toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

      phone: 250 383 6864 fax: 812 355 4082

      Contents

      Why Shakespeare?

      You may ask, What qualifies you to comment on Shakespeare?

      What will you find within the covers?

      Confessions:

      Familiar Expressions

      From Shakespeare’s plays

      From Shakespeare’s poems

      Familiar Expressions in Context

      The Quintessential Shakespeare

      SHORT BITES FROM SHAKESPEARE

      Shakespeare, His women and I

      Portia in Julius Caesar:

      The power of Shakespeare’s words

      For Neela and Deeran:

      Because of whom doting grandparents from

      three continents will always be around.

      "He that tries to recommend (Shakespeare)

      by select quotations will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen."

      Samuel Johnson.

      Why Shakespeare?

      All religions make this simple plea: Love one another. And religion in one form or another has existed from the beginning of time. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela and that unflappable and serene Aung San Suu Kyi among others practiced what Christ preached; the saintly Mother Theresa neck-deep in the trenches of poverty, sickness and squalor worked her heart out to alleviate suffering; theologian, philosopher, model teacher, Thomas Aquinas had a profound influence on the Catholic Church.

      They all made this world a better place but failed where the English language succeeded – to bring people of disparate cultures from different countries with diverse aspirations, together. From the banks of the Ganges to sacred Lourdes in the foot hills of the Pyrenees; from Freetown in West Africa to Murcia in East of Spain; from Seoul to Shanghai you can get by armed with knowledge of English. One man who will always remain front and center of this much sought after universal medium; the greatest name in the English language is Shakespeare. Sophocles, Tolstoy, Twain, Plutarch, Dickens, Hans Christian Anderson are all bright stars in the literary galaxy but the brightest of them all, the lode star, is William Shakespeare.

      Shakespeare told every kind of story – comedy, tragedy, adventure, love stories, fairy tales, melodrama and many more. During the time the Globe Theater remained burned down he switched to writing sonnets, the likes of which have yet to be seen.

      Who will not be moved by the wisdom and music in these lines?

      *"Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

      So do our minutes hasten to their end."

      *"But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

      All losses are restored and sorrows end."

      *"Who having two sweet babes, when death takes one,

      Will slay the other and be nurse to none."

      *Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?

      Or sells eternity to get a toy?

      For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?"

      To the question Why Shakespeare? author Harold Bloom succinctly provided the answer in four words. Who else is there?

      You may ask, What qualifies you to comment on Shakespeare?

      The answer can be found in these questions.

      Does one have to sculpt a David like Michelangelo or sketch like Toulouse-Lautrec the Can-Can dancers of the Moulin Rouge to be awed by the majesty and beauty of the human form?

      Do we not all lose ourselves in admiration witnessing a figure skater completing a Triple Axel Jump?

      Don’t children and adults alike hold their breaths in disbelief during a flying trapeze act when the flyer and catcher with complete control of muscle and mind, after doing twists and turns, flying and catching in midair return home safely?

      Pray, does one have to be able to duplicate the feats of Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth the Sultan of Swat, to be dazzled by the coordination, timing and lightning speed with which a triple play in Base Ball is executed?

      What will you find within the covers?

      Familiar Expressions.

      While looking over the books on the third floor of our town’s library, One Hundred Best One-Liners by Jack W. Thomas caught my attention. Below each ‘One-liner’ he also had words used in Shakespeare’s plays which have become house hold expressions. There must certainly be many more I thought. How about his sonnets? There must be some there too. And so patiently and sometimes painfully, (‘Good Heavens, Why do I need to do this?’) I labored through Shakespeare’s plays, his sonnets, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ and ‘Adonis’ and extracted expressions which we all use innocent of the fact they were either Shakespeare’s own invention or made popular by him. When for instance a young man is referred to as A Romeo even in the remotest village on the globe it is understood right away that he is a young man in love.

      Every time I fact -checked my work I came across new familiar expressions. One cannot empty the Atlantic Ocean with a tea cup. Like the Horn of Plenty the plays and poems keep on giving. It is believed well educated English speaking people use generally around five thousand words but in Shakespeare’s plays we come across as many as eighteen thousand different words. That is the genius

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