New English File: Beginner level. Teachers Book with Test and Assessment. Six-Level General English Course for Adults

He was so prolific that he could (in Hamlet) put two in a single sentence: БЂњThough I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.БЂ«If we take the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as our guide, then Shakespeare produced roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances written or spoken in English since its inception-a clearly remarkable proportion. Yet curiously English was still struggling to gain respectability. Latin was still the language of official documents and of serious works of literature and learning. Thomas MoreБЂ™s Utopia, Francis BaconБЂ™s Novum Organum, and Isaac NewtonБЂ™s Principia Mathematica were all in Latin. The Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1605 possessed almost six thousand books. Of these, just thirty-six were in English. Attachment to Latin was such that in 1568 when one Thomas Smith produced the first textbook on the English language, he wrote it in Latin. Thanks in no small measure to the work of Shakespeare and his fellows, English was at last rising to preeminence in the country of its creation ...»