Shakespeare is considered to be one of the greatest English writers in history. He was both a playwright and a poet. Shakespeare has 38 surviving plays, and he wrote most of them in only 20 years. The first play he wrote was The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the writing of it happened during 1589-1593. The last play of his was The Two Noble Kinsmen, which was written between 1613 and 1615. In between his first and last plays he wrote several globally known masterpieces, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Henry VI, and many other less known plays. They have been translated into every major language and have been performed more than any other playwright’s plays. In addition to his plays, he wrote 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems and a few other verses. …show more content…
Before Shakespeare’s time, the English language wasn’t as standardised as it is today. The language he wrote in was referred to as Early Modern English, which had rooted from Middle English and would be followed with Modern English, which is the language we use today. As he gained more popularity in between the seventeenth and eighteenth century, he helped with the standardisation of the language. He added new words, phrases, poetic and grammatical structures. Shakespeare used 29,066 unique words in his works, whereas most people only use 7,500-10,000 in both, their writing and speech. Nearly 3,000 of the words he used were the inventions of Shakespeare himself. These additions made the language more colourful and