The popular essay often known as "You Are Quoting Shakespeare," suggests that many common phrases have their origin in Shakespeare's works. This post shows that most of those phases were proverbial folklore, known well before Shakespeare's time. It suggests that attributing them to Shakespeare is a form of what Stephen Jay Gould called a "Creation Myth," and that the credit for many of the phrases should go to ordinary speakers of English. It argues that part of Shakespeare's greatness lay in his ability to use such phrases to create natural dialogue.
Note: this is the fifth, and probably the last, post on Folklife Today concerning Far Away Moses, a nineteenth century Jewish guide and merchant whose face was the model for one of the “keystone heads” sculpted in stone on the outside of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson building. For the other posts about Moses, …
Note: This is part of a series of posts about Far Away Moses, a fascinating celebrity of the 19th century, who served as the model for one of the keystone heads on the Thomas Jefferson Building. Moses, a Sephardic Jew from Constantinople, knew some of the most prominent Americans of his era, including Theodore Roosevelt …
On Monday, January 19, we will be celebrating the Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. King, the foremost leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, was actually born eighty-six years ago today: January 15, 1929. The Civil Rights Movement has struggled and continues to struggle for equal rights for all people, …
