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The theatres as dissemination point for the masses.

The playwrights had a venue for broadcasting language to the masses.  Much as modern movies spread new words, the theatres in London passed on language.  Playwrights were aware of this; every time they put a new word onstage, they paired it with a definition so people would understand.  They were responsible for filling the English language with nuance and many of them deliberately invented words.  People came to the theatres with commonplace books, ready to write down every new phrase that spilled from the players' mouths and recycle them into their own conversation.

Playwrights coined terms-and poked fun at each other for doing so!

They often use a series of synonymous words to introduce many new words at once.  They also poke fun at the way indistinguishable language can obscure the truth.  In Fletcher and Beaumont's A King and No King, characters lighten the ominous implications of a challenge to duel by calling it anything else (even "an invitation"): 

There are many scenes that play on and expand the many, many different euphemisms current at the time, including one that joins together at least three synonyms for "fadoodling:"

The playwrights were involved in an ongoing competition for influence and prestige, known to scholars as "The Poets' War."  They tried to point out each others' ludicrous posturing.  In many cases, they used their own plays as a vehicle for demeaning those of other poets.  Often, this effect backfired, only making the attacked playwright more popular.  One great example is from Ben Jonson's Poetaster, which features a character, named "Crispinus," based on fellow playwright John Marston.  In one scene, other characters force-feed Crispinus special pills that make him vomit up his words-words which had their first or most prominent appearance in Marston's plays:

Ironically, most of the words featured in this scene-like retrograde and defunct-are part of our everyday language, while many of Jonson's coinages, like adventry and emphase have fallen entirely out of use.  The image of poor Crispinus vomiting up his words must have made those same words unforgettable to Jonson's audience.

Characters imitating real life show how language travels in the real world.

In order to expand their vocabularies, people began carrying commonplace books.  While for many, these were simple notebooks into which one scribbled a recipe, notes on a particularly good sermon, a witty exchange between friends, and the occasional new word, some scholars advocated a complicated system for organization.  One tract on commonplace books suggests that the writer "stitch a sheet or two of paper together to lie as a waste book or day book (as tradesmen call them) always ready on the table at hand; that you presently note down everything you meet with, promiscuously as it comes; from whence, at better leisure, you may transfer it orderly into your entry books" (Of Common Places 4).  The author then goes on to elaborate on the various ways one might construct a system of cross-referenced indices so one can find the right word, quip, or historical oddity at a moment's notice.  People took their commonplace books seriously; they regarded the books as an external memory, something that would last long after their minds began to fade.

Dialect characters

The plays can teach modern scholars a great deal about how the English of Shakespeare's time heard other languages and how they thought about themselves.  Often, characters in plays use an exaggerated dialect to demonstrate their difference from the English:

Because English had developed such a connection between standard speech and high social class, playwrights who gave a character non-standard speech gave that character an instant lower social standing within the world of the play.