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Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of
nearly 3,000 words into the language. His vocabulary in his works, numbers upward of
17,000 words, quadruple that of an average, well-educated conversationalist in the language.
In the words of one notable professor of English, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing
words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King
James Version of the Bible – only once and never again”. Of the words he introduced, most
are in common use today, such as “bare-faced”, “critical”, “leapfrog”, “obscene”,
“submerged”, “fretful”, “hurry” and “lonely”. In addition, he introduced a huge number of
idioms and set phrases, many of which are still familiar today.
Shakespeare’s plays are usually divided into three major categories. These are comedy
(and romance) 11 works, tragedy 17, and history 10. The exact number of plays in each
group is uncertain, as there were collaborations, lost plays, plays of unknown authorship
very similar to Shakespeare’s work and also Shakespeare re-wrote five of his major works,
including “Othello”, “Hamlet” and “King Lear” into substantially different versions during
his lifetime.
Most historians agree that William Shakespeare – actor, playwright and poet – was a
single person, the life and work of whom there is considerable historical evidence. There is
also a large number of conspiracy theories that claim Shakespeare was a collective of
authors, another person entirely or even Queen Elizabeth I herself. These have been formed
as it is difficult to imagine how one man could have written so much of such quality.
“Hamlet” is one of Shakespeare’s greatest creations, and it is also considered the
hardest of his works to understand. Some critics proclaim it obscure and in the final count
even mysterious. It is the most written-about of Shakespeare’s plays and many different
interpretations of it exist, some of them very discerning and clever, some amounting to
downright nonsense. In our opinion, “Hamlet” can be properly understood only in
comparison with “Macbeth” and “King Lear”. The “mysterious” element in Shakespeare’s
play is found in the exceptionally complex character of Hamlet himself. Various
explanations have been offered. Some writers, like Goethe considered Hamlet
psychologically too delicate to carry out the mission laid on him. Others considered his will-
power to be undermined either by his marked tendency to contemplation as opposed to
action, his convintion of the futility of life as such or by his consciousness of his inability to
destroy all the evel in the world even if he succeeded in destroying Claudius, and so forth.
Even a special term “hamletism” was invented: it means a tendency to treat everything as
futile, to doubt everything, to let thought prevail over action. Still other critics declared
Hamlet to be a strong man with great will-power, and the delaying of his vengeance to be
caused by obstacles of an objective character. But Hamlet does constantly delay acting, and
Shakespeare emphasizes the fact. Probably Shakespeare never drew a more hateful
character than Claudius. Traitor, hypocrite, flatterer, coward, this “smiling, damned villain”,
makes us hate him and sympathize with Hamlet.
Shakespeare retired in about 1611. He is buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-
upon-Avon. His grave carries his well-known epitaph:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
But cursed be he that moves my bones.
Popular legend claims that unpublished works by Shakespeare may lie inside his tomb,
but no-one has ever verified these claims, perhaps for fear of the curse included in the
quoted epitaph.
In many of his views Shakespeare was far ahead of his time. He did not point out any

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