He may not have been the Ur-Example, Trope Maker, Trope Codifier, or even the Trope Namer, but you can bet your bottom dollar that he did it before you! Whatever great invention, character or plot device you come up with, Shakespeare is always the guy who has already done it and done it better than you could ever hope to. Note that he wasn't the first to use a lot of these conventions, however he's the earliest writer most people know who used so many of them.
His fans have been aware of this long before the Internet. Horace Walpole, widely recognised as the inventor of the Gothic Horror genre, proudly admitted he borrowed most of the ingredients for the Gothic recipe from his idol. Yes, even realising that Shakespeare did it first is something that has already been done long ago.
Shakespeare was not only the first to use many a trope, but the first troper. That is, the first to comment on it. Some examples:
- Ambition Is Evil: Julius Caesar discusses Cassius:
"Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous[...]
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves." - Belligerent Sexual Tension: Benedick and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing.
- The Bermuda Triangle: While the actual concept originated in 1960s pulp magazines, The Tempest was partly inspired by a real shipwreck in Bermuda
and is usually interpreted as set in the Caribbean or nearby. The overall plot— a ship is wrecked on an Island of Mystery somewhere near Bermuda by a magical storm, with everyone onboard believed to be dead— certainly could be a modern Bermuda Triangle story.
- Big Bad Slippage: Macbeth only gradually becomes the Villain Protagonist of the play, initially uncomfortable with his desire to murder and usurp King Duncan just to satisfy his ambition, but going through with it and discarding his conscience along the way.
- Bond One-Liner: Macbeth kills a guy and then says "Thou wast born of woman." afterward.
- Buffy Speak (and Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs):
"Come boy, come sir boy, come follow me sir boy!" (Much Ado About Nothing)
- Character Shilling:
"No more, I pray thee. I am half afeard
Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee,
Thou spend'st such high-day wit in praising him!" (The Merchant of Venice) - Dying Smirk: Mercutio doesn't stop his quips even as he lies dying from a stab wound in Romeo and Juliet, the humor growing increasingly bitter and accusatory as he realizes he's really going to die:
'Tis not as deep as a well, nor as wide as a barn door, but ... look for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: Prospero in The Tempest boasts about being able to make dead people walk:
"...graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped and let 'em forth
By my so potent art." - Evil Uncle: Claudius in Hamlet, who kills his own brother and marries his widow before the events of the play. His nephew sets out to kill him after discovering this.
- Eye Scream:
"Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?" (King Lear)
- Fatal Flaw:
"So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them...
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault." (Hamlet) - Foregone Conclusion: Shakespeare coined the phrase.
"But this denoted a foregone conclusion: 'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream'." (Othello)
- Go Out with a Smile: Romeo happily joins (he believes) Juliet in death with a peaceful resignation, and Juliet matches this even in her more violent true death:
"O happy dagger! This is thy sheath..."
- The Grotesque:
''"Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them—…\\”
- Hamming It Up:
"Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands, but suit the action to the word, the word to the action." (Hamlet)
- I Banged Your Mom/Your Mom note :
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother. (Titus Andronicus)
Painter: Y'are a dog.
Apemantus: Thy mother's of my generation. What's she, if I be a dog? (Timon of Athens) - The Igor: Caliban in The Tempest is the shifty and physically deformed servant of a reclusive sorcerer who's essentially an early Mad Scientist.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall
"If this were acted upon the stage I would condemn it as an improbable fiction." (Twelfth Night)
"How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!" (Julius Caesar) - Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: In The Tempest Miranda is the beautiful but sheltered daughter of an eccentric wizard who causes a shipwreck on his Island of Mystery.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Claudius, after being run through with a poisoned sword in Hamlet:
"O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt."
- Manly Facial Hair:
"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man;"
- Manly Tears: Lampshaded by Macduff in Macbeth.
Macduff: All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?
Malcolm: Dispute it like a man!
Macduff: I shall do so; but I must also feel it as a man! - Minimalism: Doubles as Hypocritical Humor when Polonius, whose major character trait is making overly-long speeches, makes the famous remark:
"Brevity is the soul of wit" (Hamlet)
- MST: The play within a play of A Midsummer Night's Dream is repeatedly interrupted by the audience's riffing.
- MST3K Mantra:
"Do not infest your mind with beating on
The strangeness of this business" (The Tempest) - Naughty Nuns in Measure for Measure
- No Man of Woman Born: The Trope Namer, in Macbeth.
- No, You: Hamlet does this to his mother.
Queen Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended. - Not So Stoic: Don Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing:
"I bid thee peace, I will be flesh and blood,
For there was never yet philosopher
Who could endure the toothache patiently." - Obfuscating Insanity:
- Hamlet again, in (duh) Hamlet.
- Where Hamlet went for making it ambiguous if Hamlet is playing at being insane or playing up his actual insanity, Titus Andronicus makes clear that Titus is insane... but has him pretend to be differently insane in a way seemingly more easy to fool or play tricks on — giving him an opportunity to set his revenge in motion.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner
Macduff: Turn, hell-hound, turn! (Macbeth)
- Pun: Far, far too many to count.
Olivia: Dost thou live by thy tabour? note
Fool: No sir, I live by the church.
Olivia: Art thou a churchman?
Fool: No such matter, sir. I do live by the church; for I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church. (Twelfth Night) - Prophecy Twist: Two in Macbeth: He is told that he will be safe until Birnham Wood come to Dunsindane (it turns out to be enemy soldiers using forest camoflauge), and that he will never be killed by "any man of woman born." Unfortunately, Macduff was “ripped untimely” from his mother’s womb.
- Henry IV is told he will only die in Jerusalem. He dies in the Jerusalem Chamber of his palace.
- Reality Is Unrealistic:
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction." (Twelfth Night)
- Refuge in Audacity:
"If we shadows have offended
Think but this, and all is mended
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear
And this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding, but a dream
[...] Give me your hands, if we be friends
and Robin shall restore amend."' (A Midsummer Night's Dream)- Also counts as Delusion Conclusion.
- Russian Reversal:
"I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." (Richard II)
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Osric speaks like this, which is promptly mocked and lampshaded in Hamlet.
Hamlet: Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article; and his infusion of such dearth and rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.
- Shaped Like Itself:
Lepidus: What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
Antony: It is shap'd, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just as high as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
Lepidus: What color is it of?
Antony: Of its own color too.
Lepidus: 'Tis a strange serpent.
Antony: 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.— Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 7 - Show Within a Show: Many times, most notably in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
- "Shut Up" Kiss:
"Peace, I will stop your mouth." (Much Ado About Nothing)
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Benedick and Beatrice of Much Ado About Nothing.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: The Bard had five plays that made use of this plot - As You Like It, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline - long before the Trope Namer was written. (Because women were not allowed to act in his time, feminine-looking men played all the female roles; thus the joke was that they were men pretending to be women pretending to be men.)
- Teen Drama: Romeo and Juliet.
- Teeny Weenie:
Sampson: I am a pretty piece of flesh!
Gregory: 'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor Johnnote . (Romeo and Juliet) - The Secret of Long Pork Pies: One Roaring Rampage of Revenge that comes with a free sample-platter is Titus Andronicus. Eat your heart out, Sweeney Todd.note
- Villainous Valour:
Macbeth: I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before Young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff;
And damned be him that first cries: "Hold, enough!" (Macbeth) - Villain Protagonist/Protagonist Journey to Villain: Macbeth. Or, Richard III if you like them blacker than black from the start.
- Wall Bang Her: Discussed in this exchange at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet:
Sampson: A dog of that house shall move me to stand: I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's.
Gregory: That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest goes to the wall.
Sampson: 'Tis true, and therefore women being the weaker vessels are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall. - Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Invoked Trope in the Prologue of Henry V, where the Chorus admits that it would be nigh impossible to recreate a field of battle full of soldiers and horses, but asks the audience to play along anyway.
Quite possibly the ultimate proof of the truth of this law: Shakespeare has an example of a Sock Puppet in Julius Caesar. Yes, a character uses a made-up persona in a play set in ancient Rome and written in Elizabethan England. It's also used as an early example of Astroturfing.
For virtually all other professions, an appropriate substitution would be 'Leonardo da Vinci did it first'. Seriously, look the guy up. He did just about everything you could do except being an accomplished author, and that was just because getting a decent scribe to take down his lengthy fictional masterpieces for him would have been quite expensive in 15th-Century Italy.note
Has nothing to do with Zeroth Law Rebellion.
Dedicated in memory of TV Tropes founder William Shakespeare, who started every page on this site.
