The Elizabethan era in England saw art and culture blossom. The era is known for its phenomenal growth in literature and was also considered as the Golden Age in English history. One of the stalwarts of that age was Shakespeare. During that time, Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, and most of them were well-received. Some of his idiomatic expressions caught the public fancy and became a rage so much so that they are still used in day-to-day English. Let’s take a look at some of these expressions:
The green-eyed monster:
Shakespeare used the term ‘green-eyed monster’ in Othello. In Act 3, Scene 3 of the play Iago tries to manipulate Othello by suggesting that his wife, Desdemona, is having an affair. Iago plants the seeds of jealousy in Othello’s mind by saying:
O beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.
Shakespeare had previously used the idea in The Merchant of Venice where Portia refers to ‘green-eyed jealousy’ (Act 3, Scene 2).
In the olden times, all emotions were matched with colours. The colour green was associated with envy and jealousy. Although the idea of jealousy being green was not a novel idea for the audiences; however, Shakespeare took an ordinary saying and transformed it into the immortal idiomatic phrase – ‘green-eyed monster.’
Neither rhyme nor reason:
The term ‘neither rhyme nor reason’ comes from a French expression ‘sans rime ni raison’ literally translated as without rhyme or reason. Shakespeare made the phrase popular, using it in his play The Comedy of Errors, written in 1590:
Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?
Rhyme or reason describes whether something makes sense, poetically or logically. The phrase rhyme or reason is usually rendered in the negative, denoting that the said argument can’t be justified on any logical grounds.
Cruel to be kind:
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again good night
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
(Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4)
At the face value,the idiom ‘cruel to be kind’ seems like a contradiction. However, it means acting towards someone in a way which seems harsh but will ultimately be of benefit to them. In this speech, Hamlet is talking to his mother. He reprimands her for her closeness to her new husband, the villainous Claudius, calling him a ‘mildewed ear.’ He explains that he has to be cruel to her only to be kind, to dissuade her from being with Claudius as that is a betrayal of her previous husband, Hamlet’s father. He is being very harsh with his words but his intentions are good.
It's Greek to me:
Cassius: Did Cicero say anything?
Casca: Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cassius: To what effect?
Casca: Nay, an I tell you that, I’ll ne’er look you i’ the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.
( Julius Caesar, Act 1 Scene 2)
The idiom means ‘It's unintelligible, I cannot understand’. ’It’s Greek to me’ has a long history. The ancient Romans were bilingual. They spoke Latin as an everyday language but the ‘chic’ people used Greek. In the Middle Ages, the use of Greek began to decline and Latin remained as the language of both the educated and the ordinary people. The scribes in the monasteries, working away, making copies of precious books in both ancient languages, began to hand the Greek books to Greek language experts as many young monks couldn’t understand Greek. They would make a note: ‘Graecum est; non legitur,’ which means ‘This is Greek: it can’t be read.’ It would then be copied by an expert. ‘Greek’ began to mean anything that can’t be understood. In that sense it became an idiom, first in Latin, and then in English, as a direct translation from Latin. It didn’t have to have something to do with the Greek language, but with anything someone didn’t understand.
Wild-goose chase:
The first recorded citation of this idiom is from Romeo and Juliet, 1592:
Romeo: Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.
Mercutio: Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five.
(Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 4)
In contemporary times, this phrase popularised by Shakespeare means ‘A hopeless search for something unattainable’. However, many centuries back, the phrase had a different connotation. Unlike today, it did not suggest a useless pursuit that’s doomed to be a failure. As it goes with all idioms, it didn’t have anything to do with geese.The idiom came around due to horses. In those times, a 'wild goose chase' was a race in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, imitating wild geese flying in formation. The random movement of the horses led to the figurative usage of this phrase as an erratic course pursued by someone by giving in to impulses.
And that’s how Shakespeare has become an integral part of everyday conversations and most of us aren’t even aware of it.
Share
