Watch out! You might just be quoting a bit of Shakespeare

Tonight's the last performance for this year's Tennessee Shakespeare Festival in Bell Buckle, and if you haven't gone yet, you need to go. In fact, if you have gone, you need to go again -- and not just because 20 percent of the gate tonight goes to the United Way.

This is a great show -- the funniest one yet.

The last show starts at 8 p.m., but the gates open at 6 p.m. Picnicking is encouraged -- as is bug spray. Tickets are $5 festival seating, $15 premium seating ($10 if purchased in advance).

I get so frustrated when people tell me they don't want to see a Shakespeare play because they don't think they'll understand it, or it's boring, or it's stuffy. How do you know if you never try it? The fact is, Shakespeare is timeless because his story lines are those you see everyday -- in sitcoms, in movies, in real life.

Having sibling rivalry problems and arguments over dear old Daddy's estate? Watch "King Lear." Love a good rom-com where the fiesty girl and guy argue and end up falling in love? "The Taming of the Shrew" is for you. Whether you like the slapstick comedy of the Three Stooges ( see "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or the overweening ambition of "Citizen Kane" (see "Macbeth"), Shakespeare really does have something for you.

I know I'm biased. I majored in English with an emphasis on Shakespeare and I love the Bard even more than I love Hugh Jackman (but not as much as I love my husband who, I found out Wednesday, actually does read my column ...)

One of the things I've loved about the Tennessee Shakespeare Festival is that director Lane Davies has worked so hard to make the bard accessible to everyone. Not just physically, by putting the plays on in our own back yard, but culturally as well. You may not grasp the concept of two young men leaving a home you've never heard of to make their way in the world in another city you've never heard of. But who, living in Tennessee, so close to Nashville, doesn't recognize two ambitious young musicians making their way to the Grand Ole Opry?

You're actually a lot more Shakespeare literate than you think you are, and I don't care if you're "exceedingly well read," "hot-blooded" or "the more fool you." If you have, "as luck would have it," ever eaten "a dish fit for the gods" to your "heart's content" until you were "eaten out of house and home," then you have uttered the words of the immortal bard.

You are living in "a fool's paradise" and are "a sorry sight" in "all corners of the world" if you don't admit you have used the phrases -- and quoted Shakespeare.

It's "a foregone conclusion" that our life and our language would be "cold as a stone" and "dead as a doornail" if it weren't for Shakespeare. "As good luck would have it," his writings, "bag and baggage," have infiltrated our speech, whether we are ordering "a rose, by any other name," for "good men and true," or if , "at one fell swoop," we "screw our courage to the sticking place" and "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."

We all know some of the phrases, and even know they are from William's pen: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse;" "A plague on both your houses;" and "Et tu Brute?"

Common sayings

But did you know that these other, common sayings are also from the bard?

* All that glitters is not gold

* As pure as the driven snow

* It was Greek to me

* Discretion is the better part of valor

* Fair play/Foul play

* Fancy free

* Fight fire with fire

* For ever and a day

* Good riddance

* Green eyed monster

* Give the Devil his due

* I bear a charmed life

* I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

* In the twinkling of an eye

* Lay it on with a trowel

* Love is blind

* Make your hair stand on end

* In a pickle

* Milk of human kindness

* Mum's the word

* Out of the jaws of death

* Set your teeth on edge

* Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em

* The Devil incarnate

* The game is afoot

* Truth will out

* We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

*We have seen better days

* Tell truth and shame the Devil!

"Woe is me," I've run on too long. If "Brevity is the soul of wit," then my soul is witless or my wit is soulless because I have certainly led you on a "wild goose chase" -- and "thereby hangs a tale."

Oh, well.

All's well that ends well.