Actually, Shakespeare.

What changes She says "clears us," not "washes." The irony lands later: in her sleepwalking scene she scrubs imaginary blood forever. The paraphrase flattens the foreshadowing.

What changes The elision "o'" for "on" is metrical. Modern quotation expands it, losing the spat, dying Mercutio's clipped venom.

What changes The phrase "pound of flesh" is Shakespeare's; it became idiom for an unreasonable demand. The qualifier "nearest his heart" — which makes the bond lethal — is routinely dropped.

What changes The compressed version loses the subject ("that which we call a rose") and with it Juliet's argument — that the name is the problem, not the thing named.

What changes The direct address to Horatio grounds the whole graveyard soliloquy. "Knew him well" is more English but loses the intimate audience.

What changes "Glister" was the Elizabethan form; "glitter" replaced it in everyday English by 1800. Editions differ on whether to modernise.

What changes Inside a casket's scroll — a lesson in disguise. Quoting the first line alone drops the acknowledgement that this is a rehash of already-known wisdom.

What changes The famous opening is only the setup for Jaques's Seven Ages of Man speech. Quoting it alone drops the bleak comparison that follows.

What changes Lopping off "they kill us for their sport" converts bleak theology into a mild simile. The second line is the indictment — without it, Gloucester sounds resigned rather than appalled.

What changes Correctly quoted, routinely mis-attributed to a range of writers (including Austen and Wilde). Feste is defending his own trade to Olivia — a professional fool arguing for the value of professional fools.

What changes Iago is warning Othello about jealousy while deliberately planting it — the warning is the weapon. Quoting it as advice ignores that Shakespeare made it a trap.

What changes Correctly quoted but often overdramatised — Shakespeare writes it as a quiet warning shouted over a crowd. Film adaptations tend to stage it as prophecy incarnate.

What changes The line is a storm-summons — Lear on the heath, ordering the weather. Cutting after "cheeks" keeps the image but loses the "rage! blow!" that makes it ravings.

What changes Polonius says this while launching into a famously long-winded speech. The irony is the whole point — Shakespeare writes him into immediate self-contradiction.

What changes Persistent misquote even among actors. "Double" doubles the sorcery; "bubble" just describes the cauldron. The rhyme ("trouble/bubble") pulls the mishearing toward itself.

What changes "Double" scans with "trouble" — the rhyme is the whole point. The misremembered "bubble" fits the cauldron imagery but breaks the meter.

What changes "Wicked" is the specific word — morally bad, purposefully harmful. "Evil" is a broader synonym that softens the line's sting.

What changes Caesar is pointing — "yond" means "over there." The paraphrase makes it a generalisation; Shakespeare wrote it as a suspicious glance across a room.

What changes "Does," not the archaic "doth" — Shakespeare used the more modern form here. Victorian editions sometimes "fixed" it back to doth, seeding the misquote.

What changes The couplet is balanced — cowards vs. valiant. Quoting the first half alone keeps the moral but loses the parallel Shakespeare built in.

What changes Correctly quoted; widely taken as the final line of the breach speech. It is in fact the battle-cry the soldiers are told to shout — a direction, not a declaration by the king.

What changes "Havoc" is a formal military command — an order to attack without mercy. Shakespeare quotes it in inverted commas; modern use treats it as a verb, losing the technical sense.

What changes Falstaff, the play's coward, is rationalising his cowardice. Shakespeare's phrasing makes valour the subject; the inverted modern form reads like a general maxim.

What changes Shakespeare coined the phrase here — past tense, about Falstaff. The idiom has since drifted to present continuous ("eating me out of house and home"), losing its specific origin.

What changes The stage dash matters. Caesar is not narrating his own death; he is interrupted by the recognition of Brutus, then consents to his end.

What changes Lear is mad on the heath, crowning himself with weeds. The "Ay" is the self-congratulation; dropping it lets the line land as dignity rather than delusion.

What changes Correctly quoted, routinely mis-attributed to various plays or cited as a Shakespeare line. It is a stage direction, not dialogue, and belongs specifically to Antigonus's exit.

What changes The couplet is the witches' thesis statement. The second line anchors it in physical setting; popular quotation severs it from the weird moorland where the play begins.

What changes The full couplet rhymes "woe/Romeo." Inserting "there was" fixes modern grammar but kills the rhyme Shakespeare built the ending on.

What changes Hamlet is railing against his mother's remarriage — a specific rant, not a universal statement. Quoting the line alone converts personal grievance into misogynistic doctrine.

What changes The opening is the hook; the second clause sets up the whole rhetorical trick of the speech. Antony claims neutrality then delivers a eulogy.

What changes Quoted alone, the line is nihilism. In context, it's an idiot's tale — a specific kind of noise, not a cosmic verdict.

What changes The curt "go" is the sting. In Elizabethan slang "nunnery" could also mean brothel, which doubles the cruelty to Ophelia popular quotation erases.

What changes Shakespeare never combined "gild" and "lily" — the combined idiom is a 19th-century compression. The original is a list of four impossible embellishments.

What changes Horatio says the line to the dying Hamlet. Repurposed as a general farewell, it reads gentle; in its place, it is elegiac and specific to Hamlet.

What changes "Heavy" is the common modern paraphrase; Shakespeare wrote "uneasy." One is physical, the other emotional — small word, different argument.

What changes Correctly quoted; often attributed to Shakespeare generally rather than Ariel specifically. The context is Ariel narrating the shipwreck — tabloid drama, not a world-weary maxim.

What changes A "petard" was a small explosive — the engineer who lit it could be blown up ("hoist") by it. Modern "hoisted by" misses that it means blown up, not lifted up.

What changes The subject is the experience ("to have"), not the child. Paraphrase makes ingratitude an attribute of the child; Shakespeare makes it a wound felt by the parent.

What changes Shakespeare wrote four adjectives, not three; "flat" is almost always the one dropped. He needed the fourth beat to land the line on "unprofitable."

What changes Shakespeare wrote the line across two lines of verse to throw weight on "a man" — a king reduced to the bare category. Modern prose paraphrase loses the humiliation.

What changes The "bad dreams" coda is the whole point — imagination frees you except when nightmares recolonise it. Pop quotation keeps the optimism and drops the horror.

What changes Othello is describing himself in third person — deliberately framing his suicide as an epitaph. The short paraphrase strips out "not wisely" and so loses the self-indictment.

What changes Correctly quoted but a classic tongue-twister. The four "done"s mean four different things — finished, finished, finished, performed — and conflating them loses the paradox Macbeth is circling.

What changes The famous first line sounds romantic. The full passage is about being so gorged on love that you go off it — the opposite of the sentimental reading.

What changes The quoted lines are the humane part of Shylock's speech; the next two — poison and revenge — are the part that justifies his cruelty. Cutting there turns villain into sympathetic victim.

What changes The second clause — the handle offered — turns a hallucination into an invitation. Shakespeare's dagger beckons; the paraphrase's dagger just floats.

What changes Shakespeare did not write "all Greek" — he wrote "Greek to me." The intensifier "all" is a modern addition that pulled the phrase toward idiom.

What changes The first clause anchors the metaphor — dawn, east, sunrise. Without it the sun comparison floats; with it, Juliet is a specific sunrise from a specific direction.

What changes "Lay on" is Elizabethan for "strike." Macbeth is inviting combat, not asking for directions. The modern misquote reads as polite; the original is defiant.