Influence of William Shakespeare on the English language
In both of these works he included new idiomatic expressions as well, by combining common words into a new semantic unit and adding a figurative sense to the resulting whole. “Hamlet” contains the expressions my own flesh and blood, meaning “a relative of mine”, and in my heart of hearts, “deep within myself”; while the idiom wild-goose chase, meaning “a search that turned out to be a waste of time”, has been taken from “Romeo and Juliet”.