Vanish Into Thin Air

While it’s true that William Shakespeare used the phrase “Go; vanish into air; away!” in his play Othello in 1604 and “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air” in The Tempest in 1610, the exact phrase “vanish into thin air” is found in The Edinburgh Advertiser of April 1822, in a piece about the then imminent conflict between Russia and Turkey:

“The latest communications make these visions vanish into thin air.”

So while there may have been others before April 1822 who used the phrase “vanish into thin air” in their works, any references I could track down have vanished into thin air, making it impossible to confirm their existence.

Fair Play

Fair play is an established and agreed upon standard of decency and honesty where individuals in a competitive situation agree to abide by the set standard of decency and honesty.

The word fair comes from the Old English word faeger, meaning beautiful; the word play comes from the Old English word plega.  The traditional forms of games and other recreational activities in Medieval England were violent in nature.  Fair play came about as a way to create a more orderly approach to playing games and participating in other recreational activities.

The reason for this was so that betting — also a popular pastime — would have a level playing field for its participants.  By creating equal opportunities for participants of competitions, a secondary level of competition was built up for spectators.  When everyone knew the game and its rules, gambling became a worthwhile venture worth betting on.

In this way, fair play was a more ethical and more genteel way to wage war without firing shots and, for the most part, did away with the concept of winning at all costs … especially if it meant cheating in order to achieve this goal.

Shakespeare coined this phrase fair play and used it in several of his plays. The earliest usage of the phrase is found in his play The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, written in 1611 when Prospero comes across Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess.

MIRANDA:
Sweet lord, you play me false.
 
FERDINAND:
No, my dear’st love,
I would not for the world.
 
MIRANDA:
Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,
And I would call it fair play.

What’s Past Is Prologue

In the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate against Sarah Palin, Senator Joe Biden quipped, “what is past is prologue” when he was accused of focusing too much on the past.  Oliver Stone’s movie JFK ends with the phrase “What is past is prologue.”  The phrase is even incised in stone over the entrance to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.  Surely the phrase must be American!

The earliest publication of the phrase is found in Act II, Scene in The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1564–1616).  The direct quote, spoken by Antonio in lines 253 to 54,  is:   

“Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.”

So while the phrase is a much-loved American idiom, it originates in England with Shakespeare.