What did William Shakespeare do for the English language?

Answer 1

The very first English tragedy was Norton and Sackville's Gorboduc, probably written around 1562 (two years before Shakespeare was born).

Theatre as we know it did not exist before Shakespeare's time. There were Miracle Plays, Mystery Plays, and Mummer shows - but these were amateur perfomances with very simple stories which were usually performed connected with a religious festival. They were more like a Christmas pantomime at the Church Hall than like a modern play.

Commercial Theatre - professional actors producing plays for entertainment, and people paying money to see them - only began while Shakespeare was growing up. The earliest playhouse of which we have record was the Bull Inn (mentioned by Richard Flecknoe in his Short Discourse of the English Stage) which only began to offer real plays 'about the begining of Queen Elizabeth's reign' (ie 1558).

So when Shakespeare first arrived in London in the 1580's theatre was a new entertainment medium. It was very unpopular with the forces of social conservatism (including much of the aristocracy and almost all religious fundamentalists) since it enabled the ordinary people who became actors sometimes to become very rich. (Actors were called masterless men. The idea that someone could make money without either being born rich, or training in an established profession, was new and scandalous in Elizabethan society). Theatre was also unpopular with the upper classes because it was an entertainment medium which ordinary working people could afford.

The company that Shakespeare joined - James Burbage' The Lord Chamberlains Men - had the first custom-built playhouse in the world. Burbage built it himself (Burbage was a builder before he became involved with drama) and when it opened (sometime around 1577) there was no name for such a place - there had never been one before. Burbage invented a name: he called it The Theatre.

Over the next sixty years (until in 1642 the religious fundamentalists had their way and closed all the theatres down) theatre became the first commercial entertainment medium in the world. Almost any working person could afford to go to the theatre (at least occasionally), and - because theatre was performed by masterless men, who had no special interest in protecting the existing class-system or the existing church - theatre plays could discuss social issues (Othello), sexual morality (Much Ado about Nothing), modern fashion (As You Like It). The theatre could also teach history (the Henry VI plays) or indirectly discuss contemporary political crises (Richard II is a historical play, but the issues it deals with were acutely relevant during the period it was written). A little after Shakespeare's time there were even plays about current affairs (Thomas Middleton's Game at Chess, or A Chaste Maid in Cheapside).

The Elizabethan theatre was the world's first commercial entertainment medium, and in Elizabethan society it did the work that is now done by Television, Cinema, Rock Music, political rallies, and even newspapers.

Shakespeare wasn't the only Elizabethan dramatist. Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Decker are all also important. But Shakespeare was the best - and Elizabethan drama was certainly the begining of the modern entertainment industry, and in an important sense it was also the begining of the modern world.

Answer 2

He made new words by adding words or letters to old words.

Answer 3

Every good/famous author these days has probably read shakespear. Therefore his morals that come from his literatue effect how and what modern day authors write about.

Answer 4

he made the english language fun :)