Comments on: 5 Things About Shakespeare You Didn't Know

By: Harris Jones

Harris Jones — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:28:10 +0000

Some scholars have tried to find ghost writers for Shakespeare. Others have tried to find ghost writers for Mark Twain. The reasons that neither could possibly have written their own works are basically the same.. A more plausible option is they were both very good at their crafts.

By: Ambrose

Ambrose — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:45:51 +0000

It is just *nonsense* to say that Shakespeare "invented" those words.

The mistake comes because proper dictionaries, like the OED, have to have a citation -- an example of the first time that word, used in that way, is known to have been used.

Shakespeare is a famous writer whose plays have survived better and are better known than most of the other writers from his time.

So when they go looking for a citation, often Shakespeare is where they find the earliest example. So he has a lot of citations to his name. But he didn't make up the words.

By: Woogie

Woogie — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:44:45 +0000

I used to lug my complete works of Shakespeare to work and read it. (Gas station cashier.) Customers would come in, see this HUGE book and go "Why are you reading THAT?" As if I was a freak for enjoying the bard.

Said more about them than me IMO.

By: TeaFizz

TeaFizz — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:11:42 +0000

Shakespeare gotta get paid, son.

http://www.sharingmachine.com/index.php?item=29

By: Stantor

Stantor — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:47:31 +0000

The Sir Francis Bacon stuff is bunk. The basic argument behind most "Shakespeare didn't write it" is pure snobbery: how could a bourgeois nobody from Stratford - a small town - be so good at writing? It must have been Francis Bacon (like HE had the time to write dozens of plays) Shakespeare was Shakespeare was Shakespeare. However, a lot of words were falsely attributed to him because the people scraping the dictionary together would ascribe the words to him. "Look, it's in Shakespeare" they'd say, and bung it in.

By: HollywoodBob

HollywoodBob — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:44:29 +0000

I've read some pretty convincing research that Shakespeare's works were actually composed by Sir Francis Bacon and a group of fellow intellectuals, and that William Shakespeare was a near illiterate actor who could barely write his own name, let alone some of the greatest works in history. That much of this stems from admirers of The Bard, who do not wish to ascribe the corruption and subsequent downfall of Bacon to.

By: Bukowski

Bukowski — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:17:39 +0000

Well, the word torture comes from French,torture, wich come from Latin tortus.
The same apply for the other words in the list, so i don't see how he invented those words, he just transposed them from French to English language.
"More than a third of all English words are derived directly or indirectly from French, and it's estimated that English speakers who have never studied French already know 15,000 French words."
http://french.about.com/library/bl-frenchinenglish.htm

By: sirwebster

sirwebster — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:24:21 +0000

pretty interesting, not sure i agree with the picture though, i really enjoyed reading Shakespeare at school