Shakespeare Aphoristic Dictionary | The World of English

William Shakespeare Aphoristic dictionary

Shakespeare Aphoristic Dictionary is a book of 600 pages. It includes 8 essays, 562 entry words, more than 3,000 quotes and 200 value judgments by great authors and scholars to fully appreciate the real greatness of the most famous literary genius of all time.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!
William Shakespeare

Since Shakespeare had a like for revolutionary rhetoric, let’s all cry: “Peace, freedom, and kindness.” So now we can start the play!
Carl William Brown

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale.
William Shakespeare

If you really want to change something, you have to start by changing yourself, going against yourself to the very end. The greatest civil commitment is self-contestation.
Carmelo Bene

The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact and they have such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare Aphoristic Dictionary is a great book of 600 pages. It includes 8 essays, with hundreds of quotes, a rich preface to explain Shakespeare, his work, his talent and his time; 200 opinions and value judgments on Shakespeare by great authors and scholars; 562 entry words with more than 3,000 aphorisms; 90 famous texts and soliloquies of Shakespeare, extrapolated from the entire corpus of the Bard and a detailed commented biography.

As a matter of fact we have, a dedication, a preface, an introduction, the following essays; aphoristic wisdom, Shakespeare time, Shakespeare greatness, Shakespeare reputation, English Renaissance, Shakespeare identity, Shakespeare sources; then we have the Aphoristic dictionary and Shakespeare famous texts, a conclusion text, plus the bibliography, the list of entry words and the Index of contents.

All this to reiterate and help spreading, in a period of poor predisposition to reading, the importance of aphoristic literature and the fundamental thoughts of classical culture, both from a philosophical and psychological point of view, and from an aesthetic and sociological one.

In this “Aphoristic dictionary”, all the best aphorisms of the great playwright magically follow one another as if the author himself were compiling a real rhetorical glossary for his own use and consumption, to underline as always the literary, historical, linguistic and scientific importance of the aphoristic expression. I believe this is an elegant and direct approach because it will allow the aphorisms to speak for themselves, much like a pure collection of wisdom. The dictionary format will also make it easy for readers to explore specific themes at a glance.

I have voluntarily chosen to leave the quotes without any comment or reference to the works, precisely because the value of the aphorisms, as linguistic expressions in themselves, without the citation of the source of the work or the character, express the true essence of the language and communication, and contain the true message that one wants to communicate, beyond the name of the author or the other who wrote them, after all what is in a name, a rose would not be such, if only it were called by another term.

Let’s take for example the aphorism “War kills more cuckolds than peace breeds men.” Certainly, if we consider that it is Timon who expresses it in a certain context of the drama, we could also say that it is not the true thought of Shakespeare, or of whoever wrote or reworked the text for him, but if we analyze it without any reference to the work from which it was extrapolated, we have the distillation of the profound idea expressed by the phrase, which could be the thought of more than one character or author, it is a general idea that does not allow itself to be imprisoned by the surroundings and travels freely in the minds of more people.

Each aphorism, in its original form, has been carefully selected for its didactic power, offering guidance to the young, consolation to the weary, and admonition to the wayward. In an age where madness often masquerades as wisdom, Shakespeare’s maxims serve as beacons, illuminating the path to prudence, justice, and compassion. They are not abstract philosophies but practical counsels, forged in the crucible of human experience and polished by the poet’s art.

This collection therefore, gathers the poet’s most concise and weighty sayings-maxims drawn from the mouths of kings, fools, actors, lovers or soldiers that distill the moral and prudential essence of his plays and sonnets into propositions of enduring truth, crafted to instruct, elevate, and inspire readers of every age, since they transcend the context of their dramatic origins to speak universally to the human condition.

What to say today about Shakespeare and his relevance, if not for example to quote Matthew Arnold who states: “The dialogue of the mind with itself has begun; modern problems have presented themselves; we already hear the doubts, we see the discouragement of Hamlet and Faust.” and thus realize that the work of this great genius is timeless, immortal, and best represents the restlessness, ambiguity and unhappiness of modern man in all its nuances, and just as in his sonnets good mixes with evil, beauty with deformity, desire with repulsion, passion with shame.

More than 400 years after his death, the cult of our universal bard shows no signs of fading. Indeed, Shakespeare is now a brand, an industry, “Shakespeare Inc.” as Time called it, titling the cover “Will Power.” Everything is sold in his name: from T-shirts to mugs, from mouse pads to corkscrews. Not to mention Shakespearean tourism, which brings in significant revenue to the coffers of the United Kingdom. The new Globe in London, modeled on “his” seventeenth-century theater, is always sold out. “But this global market does not in the least affect his greatness, does not diminish the ever-new charm, the magic – we would say with Prospero in The Tempest – that the words of his texts evoke, a true universe of words.”

To conclude this brief description I want to say, paraphrasing Martin Amis, that while we write, or read, someone watches over us: the mother, the teacher, Shakespeare, God.