If you’ve read “The Shade Ring” and “Albedo Effect,” the first two books in “The Shade Ring Trilogy,” you know there’s an important, Shakespeare-quoting character. You also know why he quotes Shakespeare. While you may think that’s a charming bit of fictionalizing on my part, the fact of the matter is: we all quote Shakespeare every day.
If you say “for goodness sake” when you get frustrated, or talk about your son “eating you out of house and home,” or if you talk about someone leading you on “a wild goose chase,” you’re actually channeling the Bard.
William Shakespeare is credited with either creating or popularizing oodles of expressions that are now ingrained in our everyday language. “Foregone conclusion” is from “Othello.” “Dead as a door nail” is from “Henry VI, Part II.” “To come full circle” originated in “King Lear,” and “there’s method in my madness” appeared in “Hamlet.”
If you compliment someone as having “a heart of gold,” you’re quoting Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” If you tell a knock-knock joke, you’re using a line from “MacBeth” – “Knock, knock! Who’s there?”
Of course, my character actually quotes lines that may not be so well-known and oft-used. Like “Madam, you bereft me of words, only my blood speaks to you in my veins,” from “The Merchant of Venice.”
I’m not a Shakespeare scholar. But I’ve enjoyed seeing many Shakespeare plays over the years and some movies based on Shakespeare plays. He was a fascinating and brilliant playwright, who has managed to stay relevant and entertaining even 450 years after his death.
There will be more Shakespeare references in book three of the trilogy, due out in the spring. I hope you’re all waiting “with bated breath.” Which is from “The Merchant of Venice.”
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