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It's now the 400th anniversary of The Bard's death. He's best known for enriching English Literature with his fantastic plays and sonnets, which are still relevant and poignant today.

However, he also contributed something else to the world - he coined and used some absolutely excellent insults throughout his work.

These are all far more cutting and verbose than swearing, and won't make you known for having a potty mouth.

William Shakespeare: truly a genius. Here are some of the best.

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15 great William Shakespeare insults which are better than swearing

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It's now the 400th anniversary of The Bard's death. He's best known for enriching English Literature with his fantastic plays and sonnets, which are still relevant and poignant today. However, he also contributed something else to the world - he coined and used some absolutely excellent insults throughout his work.

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Because, for the vast majority of us, our first encounter with William Shakespeare is in the classroom, interminably dredging over lines for hidden meaning and things we can use in an essay, people tend to view watching his plays as homework.

However, when a movie director gets a proper handle on one of Shakespeare's plays and gets actors good enough to speak it naturally, there's not a screenwriter who can match him. Here are ten movies that do wonderful things with Shakespeare plays. There will be no test later.

10. Love's Labour's Lost (2000)

Not a perfect adaptation by any means, but one with plenty of ambition. Kenneth Branagh, yet again - he loves a bit of Shakespeare, does Ken - imagines the story of four friends who swear off love as an old Hollywood musical, with a variety of George Gershwin and Cole Porter songs whacked in among all the iambic pentameter. When it works it's thoroughly charming; when it doesn't it's at least trying very hard.

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9. Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
Joss Whedon's follow-up to The Avengers couldn't have been smaller. It's a black-and-white version of Much Ado About Nothing, shot in his house and starring various friends from the Whedonverse. And it's a brisk adaptation that is much funnier than most. Amy Acker is particularly good as Beatrice, pratfalling and wisecracking like a 1940s screwball heroine. Less lavish than Kenneth Branagh's but no less well done. A perfect entry point for people who think they hate Shakespeare.

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8. Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
An explosion of loviness, with Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Briers, Imelda Staunton and other posh people making up the British side of this comedy of mistaken identities and suppressed affections. On the American side, Michael Keaton is superb as the bumbling Dogberry, while Denzel Washington makes a dashing prince. You suspect that Keanu Reeves, as the villain of the piece, might be there mostly for star power, bless him.

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7. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
After Romeo + Juliet, transposing Shakespeare to the halls of American high schools became, like, totally a thing. One of the most successful was 10 Things I Hate About You, which doesn't have any of that confusing Shakespeare language but does have the plot of the horribly titled The Taming of the Shrew. Much of its success is owed to its leads, with Julia Styles determined rather than surly as a girl tricked into a relationship with a slacker played by Heath Ledger, who acts with the enthusiastic charm of a puppy who got at the chocolate.

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6. Coriolanus (2012)
Ralph Fienne's directorial debut is a brooding, bloodthirsty take on the tale of a war hero whose optimism and pride turn to cruelty and bitterness as his rivals and self-regard bring him low. It's Shakespeare as gun-toting war movie and bristles with violence and glistens with blood. Shakespeare is rarely so manly.

5. West Side Story (1961)
Romeo and Juliet again, but this time turned into a New York musical with two rival street gangs and Tony, a member of the American gang, falling for Maria, the sister of the leader of the Puerto Rican gang. There's a lot you can make fun of - the rivals gangs and their dance-offs are about as threatening as a charging group of kittens - but the tunes are all exceptionally catchy and imaginatively staged. It does, however, wimp away from the ending of Romeo and Juliet, and perhaps undo the entire point of the play, by having Maria survive and just have a bit of a cry.

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4. Hamlet (1996)
There are several arguments for the best screen Hamlet. There's probably quite a big crowd screaming for the Laurence Olivier 1948 version, which won a Best Picture Oscar but is rather stagey and simplifies the play. There are probably even people fighting the corner for Franco Zeffirelli's Mel Gibson-starring version. Kenneth Branagh's take, though, is surely definitive if only for including every word of the play (oddly, Branagh was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for not adapting the play). It's impeccably played by an astonishing cast and rummages in both the political and psychological depths of the play. Also, it looks absolutely stunning.

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3. Henry V (1944)
You've got to have one Laurence Olivier in any Shakespeare list, so it's this grand, experimental take on Henry V. Made toward the end of World War II it was intended as a rousing rush of patriotism and support for 'our boys', and is very successful as such. The shift between stage and 'real life' settings works superbly and there's no better delivery of the St Crispin's Day speech.

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2. Throne Of Blood (1957)
Using the plot but not the text of Macbeth, Akira Kurosawa relocates the Scottish play to feudal Japan. Toshiru Mifune is on absolutely furious form as the samurai who is told he'll become a powerful lord and goes on a destructive mission of vengeance and entitlement, spurred on by an ambitious wife. There's no other Macbeth adaptation that captures the play's creeping doom.

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1. William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996)
You won't find another Shakespeare adaptation that matches Baz Luhrmann's for bravado and invention. He moves the story of the star-crossed lovers to modern(ish) day Verona Beach, where rival gangs party, shoot at each other (giving all the guns the names of swords, so as not to change the text, is a genius touch) and fall in love dramatically. Unlike most other cinema adaptations of this play, it really gets the sense that these are teenagers, not old dusty relics. And the soundtrack is killer too.

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(Images: AllStar)

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The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Movie Adaptations

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skip to main content Because, for the vast majority of us, our first encounter with William Shakespeare is in the classroom, interminably dredging over lines for hidden meaning and things we can use in an essay, people tend to view watching his plays as homework.

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Tragedy, branch of drama that treats in a serious and dignified style the sorrowful or terrible events encountered or caused by a heroic individual. By extension the term may be applied to other literary works, such as the novel.

Although the word tragedy is often used loosely to describe any sort of disaster or misfortune, it more precisely refers to a work of art that probes with high seriousness questions concerning the role of man in the universe. The Greeks of Attica, the ancient state whose chief city was Athens, first used the word in the 5th century bce to describe a specific kind of play, which was presented at festivals in Greece. Sponsored by the local governments, these plays were attended by the entire community, a small admission fee being provided by the state for those who could not afford it themselves. The atmosphere surrounding the performances was more like that of a religious ceremony than entertainment. There were altars to the gods, with priests in attendance, and the subjects of the tragedies were the misfortunes of the heroes of legend, religious myth, and history. Most of the material was derived from the works of Homer and was common knowledge in the Greek communities. So powerful were the achievements of the three greatest Greek dramatists- Aeschylus (525-456 bce), Sophocles ( c. 496-406 bce), and Euripides ( c. 480-406 bce)-that the word they first used for their plays survived and came to describe a literary genre that, in spite of many transformations and lapses, has proved its viability through 25 centuries.

Historically, tragedy of a high order has been created in only four periods and locales: Attica, in Greece, in the 5th century bce; England in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, from 1558 to 1625; 17th-century France; and Europe and America during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Each period saw the development of a special orientation and emphasis, a characteristic style of theatre. In the modern period, roughly from the middle of the 19th century, the idea of tragedy found embodiment in the collateral form of the novel.

This article focusses primarily on the development of tragedy as a literary genre. For information on the relationship of tragedy to other types of drama, see dramatic literature. The role of tragedy in the growth of theatre is discussed in Western theatre.

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Development

Origins in Greece

The questions of how and why tragedy came into being and of the bearing of its origins on its development in subsequent ages and cultures have been investigated by historians, philologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists with results that are suggestive but conjectural. Even the etymology of the word tragedy is far from established. The most generally accepted source is the Greek tragōidia, or "goat-song," from tragos ("goat") and aeidein ("to sing"). The word could have referred either to the prize, a goat, that was awarded to the dramatists whose plays won the earliest competitions or to the dress (goat skins) of the performers, or to the goat that was sacrificed in the rituals from which tragedy developed.

In these communal celebrations, a choric dance may have been the first formal element and perhaps for centuries was the principal element. A speaker was later introduced into the ritual, in all likelihood as an extension of the role of the priest, and dialogue was established between him and the dancers, who became the chorus in the Athenian drama. Aeschylus is usually regarded as the one who, realizing the dramatic possibilities of the dialogue, first added a second speaker and thus invented the form of tragedy. That so sophisticated a form could have been fully developed by a single artist, however, is scarcely credible. Hundreds of early tragedies have been lost, including some by Aeschylus himself. Of some 90 plays attributed to him, only seven have survived.

Four Dionysia, or Bacchanalia, feasts of the Greek god Dionysus (Bacchus), were held annually in Athens. Since Dionysus once held place as the god of vegetation and the vine, and the goat was believed sacred to him, it has been conjectured that tragedy originated in fertility feasts to commemorate the harvest and the vintage and the associated ideas of the death and renewal of life. The purpose of such rituals is to exercise some influence over these vital forces. Whatever the original religious connections of tragedy may have been, two elements have never entirely been lost: (1) its high seriousness, befitting matters in which survival is at issue and (2) its involvement of the entire community in matters of ultimate and common concern. When either of these elements diminishes, when the form is overmixed with satiric, comic, or sentimental elements, or when the theatre of concern succumbs to the theatre of entertainment, then tragedy falls from its high estate and is on its way to becoming something else.

As the Greeks developed it, the tragic form, more than any other, raised questions about human existence. Why must humans suffer? Why must humans be forever torn between the seeming irreconcilable forces of good and evil, freedom and necessity, truth and deceit? Are the causes of suffering outside of oneself, in blind chance, in the evil designs of others, in the malice of the gods? Are its causes internal, and does one bring suffering upon oneself through arrogance, infatuation, or the tendency to overreach? Why is justice so elusive?

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Visit Stratford-upon-Avon developed along the banks of the River Avon, known as the birth place of Shakespeare, a great day out for all the family

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2023 MrNussbaum.com is a copyright of the Nussbaum Education Network,LLC.

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Mr. Nussbaum - William Shakespeare Biography

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William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 23, 1564. He most likely attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford, where he learned Latin grammar and literature.

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Shakespeare is England's most celebrated dramatist and poet. His works have been translated into 80 languages, including Star Trek's Klingon. He helped shape the English we use today, introducing up to 300 words and dozens of well-known phrases.
His plays are known around the world for their universal themes and insight into the human condition. Yet much about the playwright is a mystery. Historians don't know his date of birth, where he was educated or how he spent seven years of his life.

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William Shakespeare: The life and legacy of England's bard

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Shakespeare is England's most celebrated dramatist and poet. His works have been translated into 80 languages, including Star Trek's Klingon. He helped shape the English we use today, introducing up to 300 words and dozens of well-known phrases. His plays are known around the world for their universal themes and insight into the human condition.