Brush Up Your Shakespeare!: An Infectious Tour Through the Most Famous and Quotable Words and Phrases from the Bard

A great guide to many of everyday phrases that originate from Shakespeare (and those that didn't, there is a section of those too). The author quotes the phrase in context, describes its original meaning and current meaning (if they differ). A great book, that only sometimes becomes a tad tedious.

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Though I know most phrases, like "Once more unto the breach," there are many I've never heard uttered in speech, like: "Let Rome in Tiber melt" or "On the windy side." Overall though, excellent and entertaining. Recommended if you can find it cheaply.

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This is great reference book for those who love Shakespeare and desire brief references for the most famous quotes. While T. S. Eliot and Cole Porter may not have needed it, the book is helpful for those of us who do not read Shakespeare everyday. With quotes from all or almost all of the plays it

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is helpful as both a reminder of past readings and performances and a suggestion for new exploration of this greatest playwright of the English language. The book is a delight to browse or use as a reverence work. It also helps you avoid the faux Shakespeare that is in the air, those phrases wrongly attributed to Shakespeare which had origins in earlier works.

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Shallow and typos and factual errors and lazy writing. The one factual error that I'll note that I can remember: "the dogs of war" is from Henry V, not from Julius Caesar.

A fun book, reminding one of favorite (and barely remembered) lines in Shakespeare. It is a bit disappointing to find out which ones weren't actually original to him, but there are enough of his to be quite uplifting. Some of the quotes the author uses are not actually part of everyday language in

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any world I live in, so their choice was perhaps odd, but it was sort of fun reading about those lines, too. He also discusses lines that are commonly misquoted, but why he didn't include the line "Lay on, McDuff" as being quoted...or rather, misquoted...a lot is Greek to me.

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