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The aim of the course paper is Shakespeare`s historical chronicles, drama and tragedies. Shakespeare wrote as a dramatic poet and playwright, and not as a scientist or historian. Combine the flow of early modern English with Shakespeare's artistic license (and don't forget to add a lot of words that either changed the meaning or completely disappeared from the lexicon), and there will be some subtle difficulties in interpreting the meaning of Shakespeare 400 years after the fact.
Practical value of the course paper. Still the plays of this period are based on sharp conflicts. Shakespeare early comedies already present the mixture of tragic and comic elements – the contrast between the laughable and the serious, or in other words the blending of opposite qualities, which is so characteristic of Shakespeare's realistic art.
The structure of the course paper. The course paper consists of introduction, main body, conclusion and bibliography.

1. Shakespeare's place in English drama of 16th century
The 16th century was a period of rapid development of literature in England. Negotiations were held on the overwhelming influence of France on the public sphere and culture. The national printing house was developing rapidly. Also during this period, many temporary and converted books appeared. The translation of the Bible into English was of great importance.
Among the writers of the XVI century, there were two trends in relation to the problem of normative language. Edmund Spencer was a representative of the first direction, and William Shakespeare was a representative of the second.
Edmund Spencer is recognized as one of the outstanding masters of modern English verse in its infancy and is considered one of the greatest poets in the English language. Although Spencer was well-read in classical literature, scholars have noted that his poetry does not paraphrase tradition, but rather belongs to himself. This individuality, perhaps, to some extent was the result of a misunderstanding of the classics. Spencer sought to emulate such ancient Roman poets as Virgil and Ovid, whom he studied at school, but many of his most famous works differ markedly from the works of his predecessors. The language of his poetry is deliberately archaic, recalling earlier works such as Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Francesco Petrarch's The Canzonniere, which Spencer greatly admired.¹
Spencer was called the poet of poets, and was admired by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, among others.
During Shakespeare's lifetime, the English language experienced a significant growth in both the number of words and the variety of syntactic structures in which words can be used. While the authors translate many words from Latin into English, they also experiment with syntax to achieve accuracy and expressive range of lost intonations. This freedom of experimentation is not hindered by established systems of rules and usage, which may limit the range of meanings of individual words or ways of combining and ordering them.
Thus, Shakespeare writes not only in a linguistically rich field, but also in an era when grammatical rigor was low. Like dictionaries, grammar textbooks were written for (and associated with) foreign languages, not for English.
The most striking feature of Shakespeare is his command of language. This is all the more striking if we take into account not only Shakespeare's meager formal education, but also the curriculum of that time. Dictionaries did not exist; the first such lexical work for native English speakers was compiled by schoolteacher Robert Cowdrey in the form of a table in alphabetical order in 1604. Although some grammatical treatises were published in Shakespeare's time, organized grammatical texts did not appear until the 1700s. Shakespeare in his youth studied his native language no more systematically than any educated person of that time.
Despite this, the Oxford English Dictionary credits Shakespeare with introducing almost 3,000 words to the language. His vocabulary, taken from his works, has more than 17,000 words (four times more than the average, well-educated interlocutor in this language).
Shakespeare had a huge influence on the English language. Some people reading Shakespeare for the first time today complain that the language is difficult to read and understand, but we still use hundreds of words and phrases invented by him in our everyday conversation.
Here are some of Shakespeare's most popular phrases widely used today:
The Laughing Stock ("Merry Wives of Windsor");
A pitiful sight (Macbeth);
Dead as a doornail (Henry VI);
Eaten Out (Henry V, Part 2);
Fair Play (The Tempest);
I'll wear my heart on my sleeve (Othello);
In brine (Storm);
In Stitches (Twelfth Night);
In the blink of an eye (The Merchant of Venice);
Mother's Word (Henry VI, part 2);
Neither here nor there (Othello);
Send him packing (Henry IV);
Grit your teeth (Henry IV);
There is a method in my madness (Hamlet);
Too much good (As you like it);
Disappear into thin air (Othello).
In many cases, it is not known whether Shakespeare actually invented these phrases, or whether they were already used during Shakespeare's lifetime. In fact, it is almost impossible to determine when a particular word or phrase was first used, but Shakespeare's plays often contain the earliest quotations.
The power of Shakespeare's plays lies in the fascinating stories they tell, in the richness of complex characters and in the eloquent speech - bright, assertive and at the same time lyrical - that the playwright puts into the mouths of his characters. It has often been noted that Shakespeare's characters are neither completely good nor completely evil, and that it is their flawed, inconsistent nature that makes them memorable. Hamlet fascinates the audience with his ambivalent attitude to revenge and uncertainty about how much of his madness is fake and how much is genuine. Falstaff would not be loved if, in addition to being good-natured, open-hearted and witty, he was not also noisy, cowardly and, ultimately, shrill. Finally, the plays are distinguished by their unsurpassed use of language. Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary and a corresponding sensitivity to nuances, as well as an exceptional ability to come up with neologisms and puns.
It is mentioned that Shakespeare influenced a large number of writers of the following centuries, including such major novelists as Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner. Examples of this influence are the large number of quotations from Shakespeare in Dickens' works and the fact that at least 25 of Dickens' titles are taken from Shakespeare, while Melville often used Shakespearean techniques, including formal stage directions and lengthy monologues, in Moby Dick. In fact, Shakespeare influenced Melville so much that the main antagonist of the novel, Captain Ahab, is a classic Shakespearean tragic figure, “a great man humiliated by his shortcomings"[1]. Shakespeare also influenced a number of English poets, especially romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who were obsessed with self-awareness - a modern theme that Shakespeare anticipated in plays such as Hamlet. Shakespeare's works had such a strong influence on English poetry of the 1800s that the critic George Steiner called all English poetic dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson “weak variations on Shakespearean themes.”