Sitting in a dusty, cold classroom, listening to your fellow students mumble the words of Shakespeare, while the teacher bears your awful pronunciation. I can remember it left me fairly clueless and disinterested, just like every other High-School student who had to suffer through their compulsory Shakespeare studies. Sometimes I doubt the necessity of studying something so old and outdated, however, once you start researching Shakespeare you discover his stunning relevance and influence. There is almost no doubt about the genius of his works, evident in the many modern pop culture references and storylines that are based on them.
However, some doubt his genius, claiming he couldn’t have innovated the hundreds of words credited to him. Suggesting that his plays would not have been as popular or as comprehensible to the average person, they deny he ‘invented’ all those hundreds of words. It is true that in Shakespeare’s time, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages amongst significant historical change; wars, exploration, and colonisation. To supplement the lack of vocabulary, writers were forced into borrowing, inventing or adopting from another language, known as neologising. As a result, it’s estimated that since 1500AD, Greek and modern Romance languages have innovated over 30,000 new words for the English language!
Shakespeare was certainly one who introduced many new words of which can be applied today, still remaining relevant. One surprisingly applicable example is his verbing of the word friend; “And what so poor a man as Hamlet is, May do, to express his love and friending to you” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5). Besting Mark Zuckerberg by almost 400 years, this neologism takes on new meaning in the modern digital age. However, there are numerous words and phrases that modern linguists cannot decipher. While searching modern, online explorations of Shakespeare, it’s easy to uncover videos that attempt to explain unknown words or claim to recognise original innovations of his words. These efforts can be wasteful and should be left to professionals, especially if the research is flawed or invalid. Often this is the case for Shakespeare’s admirers, who sought to further Shakespeare’s fame with limited and biased claims.
There are many questions of whether Shakespeare’s linguistic innovations were truly admired at the time? Some even ask whether Sonnet 18 is addressed to a young male? However, these fairly trivial details should be overlooked when subjected to the controversial opinion that Shakespeare was plagiarising and just using common language. Many words are credited to him since he’s the first documented user of them, however, those words were often in use for some time before Shakespeare utilised them. Their debut may not necessarily confirm that they were Shakespeare originals, but rather, point to influence and borrowings from peers and everyday conversation. In some research, Merriam Webster debunked the myths of 10 Shakespeare neologisms, including ‘frugal’, ‘deafening’ and ‘eyeball’. They acknowledge some of the words were relatively new or used in new ways, however, they quote uses of the words predating Shakespeare’s usage. “It is accurate to say that frugal comes from the Latin ‘frugalis’, but not that it was created by Shakespeare, as the word was in use well before he was born.” Blaming volunteers and eager civilians, they explain how purposely searching for words only in Shakespeare’s texts and thus ignoring possible listings in other works, led to the false accreditation of new and innovative words to Shakespeare.
Yet some people even doubt the historical claim of whether Shakespeare was the true author of his works. I would like to think in this day and age that we can make a historically complete and factual account of Shakespeare and his works. However, though we know and utilise so much of Shakespeare, there’s so much more we do not know. In reality, there are no documented facts about the life of William Shakespeare between leaving school in 1578 and marrying Anne Hathaway in 1582, and even then, there are only four legal documented facts between 1582 and 1592 (e.g baptism of his offspring, the legal dispute over land holdings). These ‘Lost Years’ are concluded in 1592 where he is referenced in a famous pamphlet produced by author and fellow playwright Robert Greene. The ‘Groatsworth of Wit', displays Greene attacking Shakespeare, quoting him as an "upstart crow"! This creates an incredible contrast with modern times, where authors often quote or use Shakespeare in admiration and appreciation of his literary brilliance.
David Mitchell and the QI panel ultimately concluded that historical gaps or uncertainty surrounding Shakespeare and his works do not matter. Mitchell explains how the legend of Shakespeare, whether completely true or not, doesn’t impact his own stance, as someone had to have written those plays anyway. They end up admiring Shakespeare and completely ignoring the conspiracy theorists and critics. Surely, we can all realise that Shakespeare certainly was a truly significant and innovative figure who has endured centuries, without any compromise on his fame. The nitty-gritty linguistic research into what is his and what’s not, is really a waste of time and effort, an attempt to push certain ideas or agendas. I tend to agree that, all that matters is those texts are written, and what a marvellous thing they are!
Yes this was for the English assessment