... bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. William Shakespeare derived his ideas both from his own imagination and from a wide range of earlier sources.The main source of ideas for many of William Shakespeare's plays on classical themes was Thomas North's 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Lives... bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. William Shakespeare derived his ideas both from his own imagination and from a wide range of earlier sources.