Brit more likely to spot phrases from TV shows than from Shakespeare

Don’t mention the Bard! Britons ten times more likely to spot phrases from TV shows than from Shakespeare

  • A survey asked 1,500 adults if they knew the origin of 12 common sayings
  • Only six per cent knew that  ‘be-all and end-all’ was from the works of the Bard
  • The new research comes ahead of Shakespeare’s birthday next weekend 

He is famous throughout the world for the plays that brought hundreds of words and phrases to everyday English language.

But it seems that William Shakespeare is not as well known as he once was.

Britons are these days ten times more likely to recognise well-known phrases from television shows than those from the works of the Bard.

Research ahead of Shakespeare’s birthday next weekend show that just three per cent know the writer is behind sayings such as ‘wild goose chase’ and ‘cruel to be kind’.

We are, however, much more likely to know phrases from Fawlty Towers, Friends, Game Of Thrones, Star Trek – and even The Bible. Millennials were the worst at spotting Shakespeare, compared with Generation X or Baby Boomers.

Britons are these days ten times more likely to recognise well-known phrases from television shows such as Friends (pictured) than those from the works of the Bard

The survey by Deltapoll for The Mail on Sunday asked 1,500 adults if they knew the origins of 12 common sayings – half from Shakespeare – and to name that source. Even though ‘be-all and end-all’ is part of everyday parlance, only six per cent of Brits knew it originated from the world’s most famous playwright. The idiom, in Macbeth, was the most recognised of six of the Bard’s sayings.

For others – ‘brave new world’, ‘wild goose chase’, ‘in my heart of hearts’ and ‘cruel to be kind’ – it fell to just three per cent.

By contrast, 30 per cent knew that ‘don’t mention the war’ came from Fawlty Towers. Similarly, 28 per cent knew that ‘we were on a break’ is from Friends, and another 26 per cent that ‘winter is coming’ is from Game Of Thrones.

The only one to register below Shakespeare was ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’, credited to a saint from the 4th Century.

To celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday – and get more children into the Bard – Apple is releasing audiobooks aimed at youngsters. Priced at £1.99 each, they are narrated by actresses including Charithra Chandran from Bridgerton and Lolly Adefope from Ghosts.

The Mail On Sunday’s research comes ahead of Shakespeare’s (pictured) birthday next week

Professor Michael Dobson, director of the Shakespeare Institute and professor of Shakespeare studies at Birmingham University, said: ‘After four centuries of continuous performance, enjoyment, study and quotation, Shakespeare’s words and phrases have inevitably become part of the unattributed everyday currency of the English language. The sad thing about this survey is it reveals the level of general unfamiliarity with anything written before about 1900.’

This year is the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death.

Dr Chris Laoutaris, senior lecturer in Shakespeare at Birmingham University and author of books on Shakespeare, said: ‘Without Shakespeare and the First Folio, many of the familiar phrases that inform the texture of the English language would either not exist or would not have become so embedded in our lexical consciousness, such as: sea change, brave new world, thereby hangs a tale, at one fell swoop, the be-all and the end-all, break the ice, what’s done is done, rhyme nor reason, too much of a good thing and it’s Greek to me.’

Source: Read Full Article