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Bard to the Bone

An "everything you thought you knew was wrong" article from The Conversation:

    Five myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language  

Shakespeare’s language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English.

Oh, right, sure, English only went downhill from there, and no other authors or poets ever created, or could create, anything worthwhile. I don't even know why we try.

But that status is underpinned by multiple myths – ideas about language that have departed from reality (or what is even plausible).

The sarcasm about pinnacles (can you put those on pizza?) aside, I'm all for correcting misconceptions.

The Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare’s language.

Speaking of which, has anyone told one of those LLMs to write a Shakespeare play yet? I bet they have, and I just haven't heard of it.

1. Shakespeare coined a vast number of words

Well, he did, but not as many as people think – even reputable sources assume more than 1,000.

Whatever the actual number is, anything we (or our computers) come up with is still an estimate.

The word “hobnail” first appears in a text attributed to Shakespeare, but it’s difficult to imagine it arose from a creative poetic act. More likely, it was around in the spoken language of the time and Shakespeare’s use is the earliest recording of it.

"Difficult to imagine" isn't evidence of anything. However, I can absolutely believe that unrecorded spoken language preceded things being written down. Speaking was the social media of the time.

2. Shakespeare IS the English language

The myth that Shakespeare coined loads of words has partly fuelled the myth that Shakespeare’s language constitutes one-quarter, a half or even all of the words of today’s English language.

Yeah, even if I had heard something like this, which I don't think I have until this article, my bullshit meter would have beeped.

3. Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary

Ludicrously, popular claims about Shakespeare’s huge vocabulary seem to be driven by the fact that his writings as a whole contain a large number of different words (as noted above, around 21,000). But the more you write, the more opportunities you have to use more words that are different. This means Shakespeare is likely to come out on top of any speculations about vocabulary size simply because he has an exceptionally large surviving body of work.

Seems like this is a version of survival bias.

4. Shakespeare has universal meaning

Sure, some themes or aspects of the human condition are universal, but let’s not get carried away and say that his language is universal.

Canonically, he stole Hamlet from the Klingons.

The mantra of the historical linguist is that all language changes – and Shakespeare isn’t exempt.

If the meanings didn't change, we wouldn't have whole bodies of work translating Elizabethan English to some modern version.

5. Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin

Within some theatrical circles, the idea that Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin emerged. Indeed, the contemporary playwright Ben Jonson famously wrote that Shakespeare had “small Latin, and less Greek”. Shakespeare lacked a university education. University-educated, jealous, snooty playwrights might have been keen to take him down a peg.

I'm not going to address this directly, but one thing I keep seeing is, I think, related: the conceit that Shakespeare didn't write what we attribute to Shakespeare.

The reason this is related, in my view anyway, is that both of these claims seem to be rooted in academic snootery. "How could a commoner have written such scenes and verses? It absolutely had to have been someone more educated."

For all I know, they may be right. I'm no expert, so I'm not weighing in. But claiming that on the grounds of literary snobbery just rubs me the wrong way. Whoever wrote those plays didn't write them for ivory-tower academics; they were the 16th-century equivalent of our pulp paperbacks, written for the amusement of the general public.

And besides, it just doesn't matter. Four hundred and some years later, we're still analyzing and reinventing these words, coined or not, and whoever originally penned them is long gone. As much as I like to dispel myths and correct misunderstandings, we know for sure that the words exist, as well as some historical context for them. And that's what really matters.