Shakepeare said it first, you say it every day

[ablestmage]

English majors who are bored with Shakespeare, unite!

[smellincoffee]

I cannot see this man without thinking of Iago.

[drone81]

isn't branagh quoting from bernard levin's piece "on quoting shakespeare"?

[AdolfWHitler]

i wish i held his cock whilest he did that band of brothers speech

[drwhatson]

...not to mention the many commonly used sexual metaphors that Shakespeare invented! ;-)

[EyeLean5280]

@drwhatson, As a substitute teacher, I often find myself covering high school lit courses without any lesson plan left by the regular teacher. In those circumstances, I occasionally demonstrate the earthiness of Elizabethan culture by having the kids break out Romeo and Juliet and letting them in on all the off-color jokes. They especially love finding out the innuendo behind Tybalt's name.

[EpicureMammon]

So many household words...

(see what I did there?)

[decatus1]

Branagh is a miracle. His ability to modernize the language of Shakespeare in inflection and intonation, to take a version of English hundreds of years old and make it immediately relevant...inspiring.

[rosalindhulse]

one word, charming ,charming ,charming

[Aeschylus]

See, that's the problem with Shakespeare: too full of clichés! ;)

[CountArtha]

Shakespeare is the English language perfected.

[EyeLean5280]

@CountArtha, have you ever read Shaw's essay, "Better Than Shakespeare?"

[drwhatson]

@EyeLean5280 I know that Shaw professed to want to "dig him up and throw stones at him"!

[EyeLean5280]

@drwhatson, Doesn't surprise me. Generally, I found Shaw's essay to be a bit too ideological but it was very interesting nonetheless. He made great observations that had never occurred to me before.

Still, I see Shakespeare as a perfect mirror for his time and place.

[drwhatson]

@EyeLean5280 Both masters of the eternally evolving English language. Shaw had some influence on my becoming vegetarian I think after I read Hesketh Pearson's biography of Shaw many years ago.

[EyeLean5280]

@drwhatson, I didn't know Shaw was vegetarian. Leonardo da Vinci was, too. He said, "a man's body should not be a tomb for other animals."

[FactualTruthProvider]

Er......Dante wrote in english, did he?

[triczka]

...Italian

[damnoses]

Dante is the reason that what was then known as Tuscan Italian is now spoken by all of Italy

[EyeLean5280]

@FactualTruthProvider Yeah, if by Dante, you mean Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

[xxxxwhyohwhyxxxx]

also,

"disappeared in to thin air"

among many others.

[lustmyeyes]

"Cruel to be Kind"

"Dog have its day"

They're from Shakespeare

[AntinoosTheos]

And did you know, Shakespeare is one of the most frequently quoted poets in Germany, too? Right up there with Schiller and Goethe...

We owe that to his German translators, Schlegel & Tieck, who were no mean poets in their own rights, and who did a marvellous job of translating Shakespeare's works. If you know any German, go and read it - it's almost as though the Bard had lived and loved again, and rewritten all his best works in classical German.

[pvuf431]

@AntinoosTheos You haven't heard Shakespeare until you've heard it in the original Klingon

[ryuinz]

@AntinoosTheos Crap. Now I want to learn German, and I'm sure that'll take all kinds of time.

[arwentheelf02]

I LOVE KENNETH BRANAGH. He is a big reason why I am as in love with the Bard as I am now.

[hopeforrain]

Fantastic video. This needs to be shown in my English class, let me tell you...